“I say, no one receives the same education [as anyone else]. Everyone, if I may put it this way, has for his preceptors the form of government under which he lives, his friends, his mistresses, the men by whom he is surrounded, his reading, and, finally, chance, that is to say, an infinite number of events whose causes and connections our ignorance does not permit us to perceive.”

I was recently asked by my undergraduate college to fill out a survey. The first question gave me pause. It was something along the lines of was I satisfied with the education that I had received. I wasn't thinking about education according to the broad outlines that Helvétius proposed. Perhaps I should have...