Well, obviously "education" is already a political term and will be defined as required. The way I mean education is in a holistic sense. Education is about learning to learn, learning to think for yourself, learning about history and science in an as-unbiased-fashion as possible. But the learning about yourself and how to think for yourself is the key. In countries with that sort of education you'll have less problems with free speech to begin with. Because first of all there are fewer people who come up with unfounded conspiracy theories and second of all fewer people who fall for it - because they learned to think for themselves. But it's gift that keeps giving ... third of all there will be less division in society because it will be a fairer society to begin with. Education is based on a fair society, leads to a fair society and stabilizes a fair society. But if a country is at a point where a Betsy DeVos is appointed as secretary of education - well, good night ...

These examples are of technical education. German rocket scientists, and British blast-furnace wizards (to France). These things are important of course but seem orthogonal to political institutional memory.

Scholars deeply steeped in Bismark's thoughts & mistakes, or in English constitutional law, didn't make these jumps.

> or in English constitutional law

Carl Schmitt did in fact made the jump, and he's one of the most read constitutional law writers in the last century. Not sure if Max Weber would have done the same, most probably not (he was really versed in English constitutional law, his "Economy and Society" has lots of quotes to Maitland's "History of English Law"), but he didn't strike me as a fervent supporter of democracy rights either.

And there was also the definite jump made by Heidegger, not exactly a legal scholar but a very well-read person nonetheless (and a mentor to Hannah Arendt, among others).

These don't seem like the sort of jumps I had in mind. I meant the wholesale import of a school of knowledge to a new place. As happened for instance with the arrival of many modern sciences in the US; lots of fields where everybody's family tree goes back to germany.

The germans you mention were certainly well-informed about foreign traditions, but their knowledge didn't create a living continuation of these traditions where they ended up.

(The context is, since it's been a few hours, was a claim that education was a way to circumvent this 50-year institutional forgetting, which I took to mean national institutions. And the counter-claim is that many places have good education and terrible institutions, why haven't they imported this ersatz institutional memory? If it works for local preservation, why doesn't it work for international transplanting? And I don't completely know, but the successful international knowledge grafts seem to be technical subjects. )

Not just mentor, he was her boyfriend!!!

And an ironic situation, given his nazi ties and her jewishness...

While there’s not a 1:1 from education to happiness or prosperity, the least educated countries are really not doing well.

Possibly the cause and effect are flipped and education is merely a recreation expense item for the masses.