What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down.

From G.K. Chesterton in the Illustrated London News, July 5, 1924.

What is education? Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. Whatever the soul is like, it will have to be passed on somehow, consciously or unconsciously, and that transition may be called education. ... What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down. In other words, it is a truth, however sad and strange, that we cannot give what we have not got, and cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves.

Can't help but feel like a lot of our universities have transformed into filters to prevent civilizational transmission.