Chapter 12
Great thinker’s
View on Education?
Introduction:
When I was giving finishing touches to this book, I spent a day browsing the net to see what great thinkers - the writers, scientists had to say about education.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that some of my opinion, recently formed, were that of great thinkers. Some of these opinions were as old as two centuries.
These quotes establish that the education system is directionless and defective all over the world and all the time.
One sure use of Education.
I thought it fit to start with an acknowledge the magnanimity of a person who gave his opinion in favour of education.
I am not sure how many can enjoy the following for its punch.
Quote 01: “Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.” - G.K. Chesterton It is time, we set the education of the right course. Let us take a look at the Quotes before we move on with other topics.
Problem 02 : Education has its adverse effects. on the students.
Quote 2: Beatrix Potter: Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.
Quote 3 Alexandre Dumas: How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
Quote 4: (1) Michel de Montaigne: I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
Defective education system
Quote 01 College isn’t the place to go for ideas. - Helen Keller (1880 - 1968) (If someone does, it would be a bad idea).
Quote 02: School is learning things you don’t want to know, surrounded by people you wish you didn’t know, while working toward a future you don’t know will ever come. - Dave Kellett: (The predicament of the students cannot be described better than this. Why not parents, teachers and the authorities understand this simple fact?.)
Quote 03: Frank Zappa: “If you want to get laid, (job?) go to college. If you want an education (knowledge?), go to the library.” (Education prepares one to living through a limited professional skills and does not help learning and and thus become knowledgeable)
Quote 04: Henry Brooks Adams: Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune. (This is same as quote 03, is it not?)
Futility of Faulty Education
Quote 1 Ralph Waldo Emerson : We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyfull of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.
Quote 2 : Alec Bourne: It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
Quote 3: Mark Twain I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
(He must be referring to learning while mentioning schooling).
Quote 4: Mark Twain: That which is looked upon by one generation as the apex of human knowledge is often considered an absurdity by the next, and that which is regarded as a superstition in one century, may form the basis of science for the following one.
(That must be the very reason that most people are reluctant to learn).
Quote 5: Alex Bourne: It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
(Dictionary has largest vocabulary in it but yet it cannot think speak or act.).
Quote 6: Plato: Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehoods school. And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool.
(Today’s schools now, continue to be like that of Plato. Then it was Plato. now it is me telling the truth).
Quote 7: Plato: Whoever would be a teacher of men let him begin by teaching himself before teaching others; and let him teach by example before teaching by word. For he who teaches himself and rectifies his own ways is more deserving of respect and reverence than he who would teach others and rectify their ways.
(Already the schools are facing problem getting teachers. For the peanuts of the pay, it is too much to expect from a teacher).
Quote 8: Albert Einstein: “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
(It is proved time and again the most successful people received the least education and ensured Education did not affect them adversely..
Quote 9: Albert Einstein: “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it” -
(This is what Tamil Scholars like OVVAIYAAR stressed . Schools are expected to prepare the students to fullfil that objective).,
Quote 10: Albert Einstein: “Information is not knowledge.” (Unfortunately most education system delivers Information as knowledge).
Quote 11: Henry Adams Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of facts.
Quote 12: Albert Einstein: The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Quote 13 Peter Drucker: When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
Quote 14. Charles William Eliot: Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
What is expected of an
Education system?
Education is useful
But it should be the right education.
Quote: 1 Agustin Marissa: Education is bitter but the fruit is sweet.
Quote: 2 Aristotle The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
Quote 3 Henry Peter Broughan: Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.
Quote 4: Ernest Renan : The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
What an ideal education should be?
Quote 5 Epictetus - Greek philosopher,
* To accuse others for one’s own misfortune is a sign of want of education.
* To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun.
* To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.
(There cannot be better way to define what education should do to humanity)
Quote 6: Aristotle - “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
Quote 7. Robert Frost: Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.
Quote 8. Anatole France: The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
Quote 9: Galileo : You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself. (Give a head-start to learning)
I summerize the learning from the above quotes:
(1) What we get from Education system is some assorted collection of information on various sources, package them and distribute to students.
They are required to memorize and ratain in memory for a short time - a maximumofsixmonths(onesemester). Alternately, if these informations supplied are required to be retained for the entire period of learning, it might serve some purpose.
Unfortunately, in practice, most students memorize limited portion of what was taught to them - a few days before examination and forget there after.
(2) Information is not knowledge. They are raw material for knowledge. One need to go through one or more processes before the information becomes a knowledge. The Education system does not have any explicit process to introduce these concepts.
Further, it is the wisdom that is ultimately useful to the students.
Unfortunately, the education system is unaware of these.
Education system cannot make every student knowledgeable because it is so vast. But students could be knowledge enabled.
By knowledge enabling I mean, there should be processes to train the students on every thinking processes upto one converts the information into wisdom.
(3) Teaching and learning are complementary activities. Teaching helps learning till some age and stage. After a point, teaching slows down the learning.
So most people who spent long time in academies are poor learning through teaching. Of course there are exceptions in every situation.
(4) The poor are mislead to believe that every educated can get a white collar job. That would raise their economic and social status. The notion is that degrees can get a coveted white collar jobs.
Once upon a time it was
Lottery tickets that ruined the poor.
Then the stock market
Now it is the education systems
that thoroughly ruined
educated poor and middle class.
The common factor in all the three instances are their education did not help them to understand the reality and save them from the economic disaster that they faced.