I have written a series of threads this morning and I don’t see them
as separate and different topics, I see them as variations on a theme…
next is the age old question of education… this question of education drove
much of what the Greeks acted and thought about…or as they called it,
Paideia…not only how was it taught, but what was taught…
the point of Paideia was to achieve Arete, which means excellence…
education was meant to help people become excellent at their
appointed task…the early Greeks thought of Paideia as being
the search for excellence as being a Warrior…the Greeks thought of
the Iliad and the Odyssey as educational tracts, not just as being entertainment…
the point of Achilles was to give an example of what one was suppose to be, Achilles
is a educational tool…as is Odysseus is an educational tool, Paris not so much but
Hector was meant to be an example of excellence…in other words, each character is
meant to be an educational example… of what should be what we humans are,
what we are suppose in be in the quest of, is exemplified by each character…
the characters are meant to be what we should be pursuing by their actions…
and we see this today in the examples set by such leaders as Washington
and Lincoln… Washington, I cannot tell a lie, for example and Lincoln,
“with Malice toward none; with charity for all; with the firmness in the right,
les us strive on to finish the work we are in”
these are not just random words thrown out “ad hoc”, these words are meant
to be an ideal of what it means to be human…
both Washington and Lincoln are setting examples of what it means to be
human, of what we should be aiming for, in both words and actions…
both Washington and Lincoln are meant to be educational standards for
us to follow and they are to guide us to become better human beings…
there are two schools of thought about modern education…
the first lasted from roughly 1600 to about 1900 and the second has
gone from 1900 to today… the first school of thought was that education
was meant to create a Humanist, to create a gentleman…not to teach
any specific skills but to create someone who could adapt to any situation…
the second school has been since 1900 and the point of education is to
teach someone a skill in which they can earn a living… education isn’t meant
to teach us to become better human beings but for us to become better workers…
our priority is to make profits for business, not to improve who we are…
or to become better human beings…
and so we have turned education into one who has some sort of skill to
make money, instead of achieving Arete or becoming a better person…
education is meant to pursue money/profits… and that is the only goal
of education… notice the distinct demand of the conservative to eliminate
anything that doesn’t make money… thus we have the conservative demand
to end the ARTS, music, sports that don’t make money, literature… if it doesn’t lead
to one making money, it is eliminated… to create better workers is the goal of
education today, not to create better human beings…
the conservative belief that education is the three R’s…
reading, writing and arithmetic… skills to have to pursue a job,
not to better oneself…and given the basic failure of education to
reach even these minimal goals of reading, writing and arithmetic,
we must question the modern educational system…
if we are not teaching children to become better human beings and we
are not teaching basic skills as reading, writing and math, then what is
the point of education?
and on this basis, has the modern conservative attack the educational
system… or we as we might say best said by Pink Floyd…
“We don’t need no education”
the conservative considers modern education as nothing more then
propaganda by the left… and the left has lost any understanding of
what is the point of education…
and so we must ask, what is the point of education?
and I hold that the modern failure of education to be a failure
of deciding what is the actual point of an education…
why do we educate children?
what is the point of or the meaning of being educated?
what is the goal?
and because we haven’t figured it out, we have lost the
point of the educational system…
once we make a decision as to what is the point of education,
then and only then, can we have education become a success once
more…
why do we educate children? to become better workers or to become
better human beings?
Kropotkin