The strongest bond between culture and school reform is forged by youth. The school is the institution that preserves the accomplishments of humanity while continually presenting them anew. But whatever the school achieves remains merit and achievement of the past, even if occasionally of the recent past. Vis-a-vis the future it can marshal nothing more than strict attention and respect. The young, however, whom the school serves, furnish it with precisely the future. The school receives a generation unsure of itself in everything... but a generation at the same time full of images, which it brings with it from the land of the future. After all, the culture of the future is the ultimate goal of the school --- and for this reason it must remain silent before the future that comes toward it in the form of youth. It must allow young people to act on their own and consequently must rest content with conferring and fostering freedom. And so we see that the most urgent requirement of modern pedagogy is to create space for the emergent culture. Youth must learn by degrees to work, to take itself seriously, to educate itself: by placing trust in such youth, humanity places trust in its own future
Early Writings 1910-1917, pg 60, Walter Benjamin
