Certainly, for a child or youth, what to learn and how it is be taught should be left up to the adult, the child being too inexperienced and young to know better.
But if a child is to learn, spending at least the required twelve years in school in America, why this “education”?
For one, there are certain, as Allan Bloom believed, education standards required to enhance not only communication amongst a people but understanding. In addition, there is a certain level of significance to the fact that children must learn reading, writing, arithmetic, science, literature, history and such, for intellectual and vocational satisfaction. However, specifically what the depth and breadth of that knowledge should be is widely debated.
But there is more.
As we all know, there is quite a bit missing from education: for one, the heart and soul little touched.
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” ~~ Aristotle
And imagination is given lip service in the arts (it should be used in all disciplines) but our students are little encouraged to fly, rather working to the test ingesting fact, theory, and formula.
“He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.” ~~ Joseph Joubert
In addition to an under-stimulated imagination, we do little to encourage independent intuitive and critical thinking, the student marching on for the academic machine; or as one of my students claimed “To serve.”
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” ~~ Dorothy Parker
“To control and sort young people for the sake of institutional efficiency is to crush the human spirit.” ~~ Ron Miller
And little is done to encourage individual thinking that which comes through quite reflection and solitude, especially in a day-n-age of constant motion: texting, television, games, and chatting.
“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.” ~~ Albert Einstein
But I am here to tell you that even though all of these greater things are missing, the argument as to what of the lesser (fact, theory, formula) should be taught in school matters little.
But “Why?” you say. Because most of what is taught to the student is not only of little interest but most of it is never thought of or used again.
But there’s more.
As long as a child is exposed to a good variety of knowledge and, probably more importantly, an enthusiasm for gaining discipline and consistency in obtaining that knowledge, when the child obtains young adulthood she will, through proper training or happenstance (which unfortunately is most often the case), learn what she desires to end up doing the majority of her waking hours here on this earth. And from here she will take the necessary steps to seek satisfaction, if she is fortunate. Unfortunately, within 5 to 10 years after graduation, 70% of college grads are no longer working in a field related to their major. After all that which has been learned in high school has been forgotten and that which has been learned in college no longer of use to the majority, one can see the waste this so called “education” is.
The key issue here, as alluded to above, is that the student needs to know how to self-teach, for it is here and only here where most of her development will occur. (An inward understanding of desires, talents, abilities, and gifts is also necessary to waste less time working where one should not be, a critical point I have spoken to often). It is interesting to note that the majority of those seeking improvement from the mislabeled field of self-help (interesting that ideally this is where the help should come from–the self) begin to do so around the age of twenty-seven. It is at this point in life when the majority get an inkling that “education” has failed them and that they must personally make amends.
But why is this self-educating critical to one’s greater education?
For those who go the extra mile, students will complete their formal education at the age of twenty-two. Of course some later, some sooner, and some will return, regardless, for those who maximize their education they will do so after completing 16 years of a formal education.
Then what?
Since school systems force what is to be learned upon students in a rigorous manor with little desire for input or feedback from them as to feelings, concerns, or thoughts, this has turned off the majority to learning; because of this there is little hope that learning will continue beyond those 12 years, 16 if going on to college. And since learning by wrote to the test is often the plight of most students (after all this “training” they get it and do little other than look to nurture their grade average), learning how to think creatively, intuitively, and rigorously to see the more stimulating and enlivening bigger picture is a moot point. Unfortunately, we are creating drones with little imagination and ability to adapt and think creatively, intuitively, critically in an age when job security and even career security (some experts say up to 10 career changes over a workers life span) is a thing of the past.
Bottom line, if education does not instill a passion for learning in the student, the student has been shortchanged emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually.
Another related point to consider is that education fades. Consider that within 24 hours of reading one forgets 80% without review, what does that say of an education months, never mind years, after completion if, first, that knowledge gained is repulsive (many taking the test and then purging what has been learned like a bulimic), second, that knowledge is never revisited for lack of use.
We fool ourselves as a nation if we think education has any great redeeming or lasting importance under these circumstances. People treat education as if it were a saving grace, the knowledge and understanding gained to be used for greater human good or “job security” (to be a good human one learns wisdom–difference between right and wrong–not facts, stats, and formulas). Yet the majority of knowledge is taken in and lost faster than you can say “Senior skip day.”
“Education in our times must try to find whatever there is in students that might yearn for completion, and to reconstruct the learning that would enable them autonomously to seek that completion.” – Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind
Some of that “completion” may entail a standard education, but not much. There is so much beyond what schools teach our children that is not only never taught but never mentioned and is, in most cases, stumbled upon as graduates real from trying to discern why their lives are out of control and missing so much satisfaction not only in career pursuits but greater pursuits of the emotional and critical strengthening of the character.
“As it now stands, students have powerful images of what a perfect body is and pursue it incessantly. But deprived of literary guidance, they no longer have any image of a perfect soul, and hence do not long to have one. They do not even imagine that there is such a thing.” – Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind.
May our minds remain open to the possibility of the need for the greatest of change to bring about a better education so that formal education does not simply expire and fade away. May we seek the best answers for our youth now and in the future.
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