Education: For the Mind
or Mass Production?
Published in Marietta Daily Journal July 24, 2016
Modern
education is obsessed with utility. If
it doesn’t help you get a job, education is considered useless. More and more, Americans are viewing education
as a sheer commodity, as job training and prospecting for careers.
This view, less than 50 years old,
is an unfortunate departure from the time-honored view of education as mind
training and character building.
Consider the word “educate.” Its origin is the Latin word “edu-cere” which
means to lead forth or draw out, not, as we have come to believe and practice,
to put in. Rather than put into students
any information, skills, or biases which we believe will lead them to
productive living, “edu-cere” actually means to draw out of students, and then
hone, that which is already within.
Doesn’t every child and youth have
within them something that can be developed, groomed, and heightened for their own good and
for the world in which they must function?
Doesn’t everyone have a personality, an ability, an interest, or an
inclination which if “educated” (drawn out), can lead to fulfillment as well as
a way to make a living?
The Latin word implies the necessity
of encouragement and grooming. I’ve not
known very many teachers who were not encouragers. Good thing, since the saddest sight in the
world is a discouraged, already defeated child or youth whose life stands
before them but whose gifts are not being drawn out.
The
task of the educator and of schools, then, is to learn how to draw out that
which is within. Just as surely as
undisturbed water grows stagnant, so does the undisturbed, unstirred mind. The question becomes what should we do to
bestir the minds of those we are educating or drawing out? What does the draw-ee need that the draw-er
can provide?
We hardly need to state (or do we)
the necessity of the three “R’s.” Beyond
the three “R’s” is where draw-ers (not teachers, but educational policymakers)
have gone wrong. Draw-ers are insisting
that all draw-ees need higher education.
But for what? Are we to tell the
manually gifted draw-ee, many of whom will make more money than the draw-er,
that he best get a college degree?
The second mistake draw-ers make is
slightly ironic. Although the draw-ers
are telling the manually gifted that they need higher education, they are also
telling non-manual (“intellectually oriented”) draw-ees that certain studies
are useless if they don’t lead to gainful employment. This is a whopper of a contradiction.
In Russian history lies an example
of the debate between the value of “useless studies” such as history,
literature, language, philosophy, music, and art and that of practical,
job-oriented studies. In 1862 Russian
writer Turgenev published his novel “Fathers and Sons.” The main character was a doctor, a man of
science who troubled the “fathers” (conventional wisdom) by denouncing useless
art and poetry.
The denouncing of classical values,
personified in Turgenev’s hero, caught on.
The “sons” of Russia rebelled against their “fathers.” Young educators in czarist Russia opposed
their elders, arguing that only that which is “practically useful” has the
right to exist, a claim akin to modern education’s claim that all learning must
be measurable and test-able, and that teachers, incidentally, must be paid
according to the findings.
Russian monarchs were OK with utilitarianism
because peasants certainly didn’t need to get any ideas about freedom or
self-worth from poetry or music. But
three things happened: an enlightened czar and two writers. Alexander II, the Gorbachev of his day,
abolished slavery and loosened the chains of peasantry. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky produced great novels
read by millions. “Useless literature”
began to flourish as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky resisted Turgenev’s view of
education. Alexander, who didn’t like
literature, began to see its value.
Even in Czarist Russia minds and
character were influenced and inflamed by two writers who wrote of freedom and
of the relationship of man and God. For
a brief, shining 4 decades Russian life was different, a measure of hope
introduced, because of a curriculum that touched mind and heart, not just spade
and scythe.
Yes, everybody needs a line of work,
but students should not be led to believe that bread is their only need. There is a natural world to learn of and
appreciate, beauty to enjoy for its own sake, and human beings with whom to
talk and laugh when the work day is over.
No amount of industry will produce
an educated man of character, but there is many a great work of literature that
can. Happy we will be when we
acknowledge that proper schooling educates the head, the heart, and the hand.
Roger
Hines
7/19/16
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