What is the purpose of education? Cynics will point out the desire to mold a population for a certain purpose. To them education is all about social engineering. Since we are preparing young people from many backgrounds to be successful in the larger society that view has some traction. The idealistic would think along the lines of giving children the tools to be productive and happy. They want citizens, people who can make a contribution by using their gifts in a positive way.
Either way education is training for things to come. It is not the final step, but a foundation. Educators get all kinds of grand ideas. The current Common Core Curriculum (CCC) people talk about preparing students for jobs that don’t even exist today. They think they have the wisdom to determine what those skills will be. Unfortunately their vision is a Socialist Workers’ Paradise that will never exist because they have a false vision about the nature of human beings. Instead they should be focusing on the basic fundamentals of being an educated person. Until a child has a firm grasp of what used to be called the Three R’s they will never be able to grasp the complexities of future society.
Picture a football team in spring training. They don’t start by working on the Statue of Liberty play or triple reverses. They start with blocking and tackling. They work on conditioning. It is a time of preparation. When the basics are taken care of what do they do? Work some more on the basics and begin to introduce some plans for the year. When they have a losing streak what do they work on? Basics.
To be continued...
homo unius libri
I always viewed education as learning HOW to learn and how to reason. In that way one becomes a lifelong learner.
ReplyDeleteEducators tend to be elitists. They act humble but think they know what is best for everyone. In their hearts they are afraid that people will do exactly what you advocate. If they do that we will have more independent thinkers and then who will consider them wise any more?
DeleteThe list of great people who had little formal schooling includes people like Washington and Lincoln. I prefer to run with that crowd.
Grace and peace.