A Study of History

The possibility of turning education to account as a means of amusement for the masses—and of profit for the enterprising persons by whom the amusement is purveyed (p. 312)

The bread of universal education is no sooner cast upon the waters than a shoal of sharks arises from the depths and devours the children's bread under the educator's very eyes. (p. 312)

The edifice of universal elementary education was, roughly speaking, completed [...] in 1870; and the Yellow Press was invented some twenty years later—as soon, that is, as the first generation of children from the national schools had acquired sufficient purchasing-power—by a stroke of irresponsible genius which had divined that the educational philanthropist's labour of love could be made to yield a royal profit to a press-lord. (p. 312)

[The commercial institutions that set about at once to prey on forced mass schooling] attracted the attention of the rulers of modern would-be totalitarian national states. If press-lords could make millions by providing idle amusement for the half-educated, serious statesmen could draw, not money perhaps, but power from the same source. The modern dictators have deposed the press-lords and substituted for crude and debased private entertainment an equally crude and debased system of state propaganda. (p. 313)