How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so

"How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it." Thus spoke Alexandre Dumas, the brilliant French novelist whose words still dance between humor and prophecy. Beneath his wit lies a piercing truth: that the innocence of the child’s mind—so curious, creative, and unbounded—is often dulled by the rigid patterns of formal education. Dumas, who lived in the 19th century, was no enemy of learning, but a lover of life and imagination. He saw that the spark of wonder that burns brightly in a child often fades when education becomes a cage rather than a window. His quote is not a rejection of learning—it is a lament that we have forgotten what true learning is.

The child, Dumas observed, approaches the world with awe. Everything is new, everything is possible. The child learns by touching, asking, imagining—by uniting heart and mind. But as one grows older and passes through the machinery of modern education, that radiant curiosity is often replaced by conformity. Schools, rather than cultivating wonder, too often train the young to obey, to repeat, to measure themselves by others. What was once living knowledge becomes sterile instruction. Thus, the intelligence of the child—born of curiosity and instinct—slowly gives way to the stupidity of arrogance, routine, and fear. The mind becomes cluttered with facts but starved of vision.

History is filled with those who, like Dumas, saw the danger of this transformation. Albert Einstein, one of the greatest thinkers of all time, once said, “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” He too believed that the mind of a child is a temple of discovery, and that true intelligence lies not in memorization, but in the freedom to ask “why?” and “how?” Einstein’s genius was not born in the classroom—it was born in his refusal to let the system crush his imagination. He saw that when education becomes a ritual rather than a revelation, it produces not wise men, but well-trained fools. Dumas, in his irony, had already sounded the same alarm decades earlier.

In the ancient world, education was not meant to restrain the mind but to liberate it. Socrates walked barefoot through Athens, teaching through questions rather than lectures. He sought not to fill the mind with answers, but to awaken thought. He treated every conversation as a spark to ignite understanding. The ancients knew what modernity has forgotten—that to educate is to draw out, not to press in; to cultivate wisdom, not to manufacture obedience. It is this ancient spirit that Dumas mourns in his words: that somewhere along the way, education ceased to be an act of awakening and became an act of control.

And yet, Dumas’s message is not one of despair—it is a call to remember. He reminds us that the child’s intelligence is not lost; it merely sleeps within us, waiting to be rekindled. To recover it, we must return to the virtues of the young: curiosity, humility, wonder, and joy. We must question the systems that prize compliance over creativity. We must teach the young not just to know, but to think, to feel, to imagine. For the child who sees the world as a mystery to be explored grows into the adult who shapes it with wisdom and compassion. Without that spirit, education becomes a machine that manufactures mediocrity.

The world’s greatest innovators—Leonardo da Vinci, Newton, Edison, Curie—were not molded by the classroom but by their refusal to stop learning after leaving it. Their intelligence remained childlike: restless, playful, hungry. They asked foolish questions and dared to follow them to divine answers. They understood that wisdom grows not from what is taught, but from what is discovered. In them, the flame of curiosity never dimmed; in them, Dumas’s lament found its answer—that education does not have to kill the soul of the child if it is rooted in freedom and guided by wonder.

Let this, then, be the teaching passed to all who seek to learn and to teach: never let education silence the song of your curiosity. The moment you cease to question, you cease to grow. Guard the child within you as you would guard a sacred flame, for it is there that true intelligence dwells. Seek not to appear wise, but to remain curious. Study not to pass exams, but to understand the world. Remember that the purpose of education is not to make you a servant of systems, but a seeker of truth. And in doing so, you will prove Dumas both right and wrong: for though education may have made many men foolish, the wise will always find a way to make it holy again.