Staff Picks

Moe Anderson’s comments about a recent article published in the Lilipoh Magazine:

The article, as written by authors Douglas Gerwin, Ph. D. and David Mitchell, identifies three widely held assumptions about the purpose of education and question the validity of these assumptions as reasons for attending school.

The first assumption as to why students attend school is for instruction. In this view,  teachers are given the task to convey what they know to their students, often through textbooks, visual or auditory mediums. Other modes of learning are often neglected. Tests are then given to confirm the efficiency of this transfer of information.

However, teaching is not just the transfer of information, but also the drawing out of the students’ capacities. Herein lies the fundamental difference between instruction and education. If one were to look at the etymology of instruction,  one would find that it has the same origins as to pour stones (Latin, structus) into an empty vessel . Education means to draw (Latin, ducere) forth or out (Latin, e). When they instruct, teachers are inserting what they know into an empty vessel (the student), whereas when teachers educate, they are drawing forth from the student what he or she in some sense already knows.

While not in the above mentioned article, I found it fascinating to learn that the etymology of words often used in education have significant origins. Knowledge, basically means “that which we are kin to.” Curriculum actually means “let’s run together.” In both these instances, everyone (students, teachers and families) has a relationship to the subjects being studied. Learning then stays fluid and alive, full of potential discovery for everyone,  versus being merely a transference of data.

A second assumption for attending school rests on the idea that a chief purpose of education is to prepare students for the work force. Implicit in this view is that there is an economic motive for education.  A school however, is not primarily an economic organization; it is a cultural organization. If we place schools in the service of economic goals, we begin to undermine our centers of learning. Cultural institutions or activities motivated by something other than themselves soon lose their cultural integrity. The value of a poem is in its poetic worth; cultural values remain self-reflexive. The authors suggest that a better way to prepare students for economic and political life is to develop in them capacities of judgment and discernment.

A third widely held assumption for going to school is to prepare students to be responsible citizens. This motive is really to persistently teach the values and rules of society to help students align themselves with established social/political norms.

But this assumption flies in the face of the original intention of the founding members of our country, most notably, Thomas Jefferson. Far from raising children to fit into a pre-existing order, education is intended to cultivate a generation of leaders who renew society out of their own insights, thinking and discoveries.

The overarching purpose of education, according to the authors then, is to assist human unfolding: physically, emotionally and intellectually. Schools need to serve the children, teachers and families so that capacities that make each person unique, unfold unencumbered by social, political or economic agendas.