Our kids are going back to school. So, what are they learning? We nurture our kids from pre-school to the University. What is it that we expect from a twelve to sixteen year process (from high school to college) of formal education? Obviously the basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic. But it doesn’t take sixteen years to teach the basics. So what else is our educational system teaching our children, given all those years in the classroom?
Well, among other things, we want our kids to be introduced to social values, the principles and practices of proper behavior—social etiquette, good manners, personal accountability and responsibility, to develop a good work ethic, to learn self-respect and respect for others, to develop self-discipline, self-knowledge, to move toward self-actualization, to learn the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, ethics and morality. But is this also an educational system’s responsibility?
If so, which values, whose morality, what standards of right and wrong should be taught? For many, religion is taboo, the Bible is out, and moral authority, of any kind, is suspect—to be questioned and challenged at every turn. Pluralism, relativism, multi-culturalism is the norm. That is to say: All opinions are to be considered valuable and all values to be respected. This is especially true when it comes to religion: all varieties of faiths and beliefs are to have equal status—which usually means little or no status at all.
In fact, when it comes to values, there is always a discriminatory Authority at work, arrogating to itself the right to determine good input from bad input. This Authority, whatever its ideological source—science, religion, economics, culture—begins with the assumption that it and it alone has the correct and fundamental vantage point from which to decide such things. Take the simple question of God’s existence. There are those who begin with an authoritative claim that there is no God and those who begin with the opposing but equally authoritative claim that God is. In the end, both sides rest their case on the simple assertion that their starting point is fundamental truth and therefore authoritative.
Therein is the rub. Exercising values presumes authority, the right to judge and discern between competing perspectives and authorities as to what is acceptable or unacceptable. It de facto assumes that it has the correct standard by which all else is to be measured and judged as to good or bad, correct or incorrect, safe or dangerous, positive or negative, helpful or unhelpful for human consumption, application, and growth and development. The irony is that no system, educational or otherwise, can remain intact without such a presumptive authority to make such choices.
For example, a justice system presumes that it already knows and understands the nature of true justice. An economic system presumes it understands the fundamental principles of good economics (and all societies are to agree that it is Capitalism, right!?). So what does an educational system presume—that it too knows the purpose of knowledge, what it is, and that it understands knowledge-attainment, the best and most effective means to conduct knowledge-transference (the right kind of knowledge)—how to educate the present and future generations.
What are our assumptions respecting our educational system? Where are we heading? From pre-school to the University, what are our expectations? What new paradigms might we need to implement? What doesn’t work anymore? And here is my concern: How is the “business” model of education helping and/or hindering (or perhaps possibly even harming) the whole educational process? Here I’m thinking of the many “for-profit” educational institutions of higher learning whose fundamental motivation for being in the business of education is the making of money—such a motivation cannot really be good for education, can it?
So, as you send your children back to school, give it a thought. What are you expecting from your school district, regarding your child’s education? What do you expect of the University for which you are paying dearly in tuition costs? Are you getting your money’s worth? How would you even know? What does it even mean to be properly educated? And who is to say?
Well, at least this much is still true: a good education begins right at home. And, it is far better to be wise, though formally uneducated, than to be highly educated yet remain ignorant in the things that really count in life.
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