Education:
1. the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.
"a course of education"
synonyms: teaching, schooling, tuition, tutoring, instruction, pedagogy, andragogy, coaching, training, tutelage, drilling, preparation, guidance, indoctrination, inculcation, enlightenment, edification, cultivation, development, improvement, bettering
2.
an enlightening experience.
From this nice little piece.“The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.” ~Eric Hoffer
“No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.” ~Emma Goldman
“The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.” ~Ayn Rand
“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think— rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.” ~Bill Beattie
“The one real object of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking questions.” ~Bishop Creighton
“The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each student.” ~Carol Ann Tomlinson
{...}
As Tom Peters reminds us, “What gets measured, gets done.” Regardless of high-sounding rhetoric about the development of the total child, it is the content of assessments that largely drives education.
So round my way, education has become more and more standardised, more and more tested, more and more tightly pre-ordained, and the results have been declining. — unenlightened
In many ways, to get back a bit to the themes of the previous thread, it seems to me that the students and those who work within the schools are all treated like objects which produce commodities (good citizens, strong nations, or correct beliefs) for the state, or for various interests utilizing the state. The people with the least amount of say -- at least officially -- are the people doing the educating, whether that be the students, the teachers, or their communities. Hence they are objectified in the sense that they are denied autonomy, 1, and treated like machines which produce goods, 2. — Moliere
Indoctrination is, so I'd say, an inevitable aspect of education. — Moliere
The liberal stream is harder to characterise, because it is focused on the individual, on the learner rather than the teacher; one has to use terms like autonomy, freedom, wholeness, creativity. For this stream, because it is focused on the individual, a goal cannot be set in advance, but must be developed in vivo as part of the educative process. — unenlightened
Individuals are embedded in a social context, so one of those potentials is, ipso facto, the capacity to function in the given social context. Hence some grasp of language, mathematics, art, science and social science is implicit in education; together with the capacity to deal with others. — Banno
Yes, exactly. There seems to be broad agreement here so far, that education involves indoctrination and liberation together. The point I am trying to get to by making the distinction is not that one should be pursued and the other neglected, but that one is measurable, testable, and predictable, and the other is not.
One cannot have a qualification, a competition, a hierarchy, of liberation; it isn't that sort of thing. And this means that this aspect of education is not amenable to science and scientific psychology. It is quite close to the problem of defining the value of philosophy, which philosophy professors' inability to articulate led to the closure of several departments in my country. No product, no funding.
And so there is a strong tendency, amongst politicians particularly, to neglect what cannot be measured, or fitted into a neat slogan. There is much talk here of 'failing schools'. And failure is failure in the measurable, in the grasp of language, mathematics, etc. Failure to bring forth the potential in other ways does not register.
It's easy to register a complaint. What do you want to do about it? — csalisbury
Thus a Facebook meme of a school notice."Dear parents
We would like to remind you that magic words such as hello, please, you’re welcome, I’m sorry, and thank you, all begin to be learned at home
It’s also at home that children learn to be honest, to be on time, diligent, show friends their sympathy, as well as show utmost respect for their elders and all teachers.
Home is where they learn to be clean, not talk with their mouths full, and how/where to properly dispose of garbage.
Home is also where they learn to be organized, to take good care of their belongings, and that it’s not ok to touch others.
Here at school, on the other hand, we teach language, math, history, geography, physics, sciences, and physical education. We only reinforce the education that children receive at home from their parents.
Interesting points. I'd just add that in my opinion, the child needs to encounter, at some point, part of the harshness of reality - and they will inevitably encounter it. What I mean by this - not everyone will be valued and appreciated by others. Not everyone will treat you as a person - many people will treat you as an object. And so forth. If the child is kept insulated from all this by force, then they'll have a very negative reaction when they finally encounter them - think about Buddha for example, how he went so far as abandoning his own family when he finally encountered suffering. Civilisation can always collapse at any moment, and the rule of the jungle can always return. So the child needs to understand this Real Politik as I call it, and not blindingly trust that everyone will act morally. Schools are not very effective at teaching it, because they never focus on helping the person - as a unique individual - find a way to overcome these situations and reframe them. For example, school doesn't teach people who aren't valued by others to find value by themselves. In daoism there is a story - there was a crooked man who everyone laughed at and said he was useless. Then war came, and all those who laughed at him went to perish. Only he remained and lived - because he was useless. There's both advantage and disadvantage in all situations regardless of how you are. It's about (1) learning to see it, and (2) learning to use it.Dear teachers,
I teach my child respect by showing her respect, just as I taught her to speak by talking to her, and not at her. She comes to you aged 4 with an insatiable curiosity and hunger to learn about everything, with confidence and enthusiasm to relate to adults and children, with her own developing personality, and with a need to participate in the community and feel valued and appreciated.
And in a few short years, you do your best to turn here into a bored, sullen uncooperative unhappy box ticking non-entity. You do this by treating her as an object, by showing no interest in her as a person, and then you have the temerity to blame the parents. — unenlightened
Yes being capable to deal with failure I agree is important. But I'm not sure that's everything there is to it - personally I haven't really ever failed when I tried something. If I thought I was going to fail I wouldn't try. I only tried when I was quite certain I'll succeed. For example I was like this with my driving license. Many people go try to take the test immediately after they finish driving school - I was like "No, I can't do it, no point going". So I waited about 1 year until I was finally ready to take it (people were actually calling me a coward and laughing at me :P ), and I passed it from the first try. Whereas I had friends who kept failing it even after I had passed it - they just had too relaxed an attitude to failure. I was the same with my girlfriends - by the point I asked them out, I was certain that they'll accept - like it would have been a miracle by that point, considering how things were going, if they refused.A head teacher who consciously embraced failure as valuable, as part of learning and improving, and wanted teachers and pupils alike not to fear it for themselves or despise it in others. — unenlightened
Common that's too much conformity - everyone has the same non-answer. Instead everyone should have to answer with the wrong thing - that way it is underdetermined - there's many more wrong answers than correct ones, so students can develop their creativity. ;)For a pass, you have to turn up but not answer any of the questions — unenlightened
- personally I haven't really ever failed when I tried something. If I thought I was going to fail I wouldn't try. I only tried when I was quite certain I'll succeed. — Agustino
Yeah I agree, I didn't actually mean that to be there, it was just the first image I found with the find x problem - and me being lazy I just took itI can do without the 'blonde' cliche though, It's an insult to Trump and everyone who shares his hair colour. — unenlightened
Maybe I am. I am quite slow to get started at something, and I don't like failure. This is a personality trait of me though - I seek to avoid failure more than I desire success. I remember being like this from a very young age. I may have learned it from playing chess, which I used to do all day long with my grandfather before I started school. One bad move costs you more than one good move gains you - so the first priority is make no mistakes. And I've adapted that through all of my life - early lessons are hard to forget :P - although I suppose that if I'm missing out on good, I'm also missing out on badYou're missing out then. — unenlightened
Yes that is true. That kind of failures I have overcome, although I don't like those either, so I have to push myself through them.To get from can't drive to can drive, one has to start with can't drive, and start driving, preferably somewhere quiet and with someone to intervene before one hits a tree. One overcomes the failure there; the test is not where one learns anything — unenlightened
Providing guidance as to how one ought behave socially is pivotal to teaching; One might pretend that teachers are not moral instructors, but it would be no more than pretence. — Banno
Providing guidance as to how one ought behave socially is pivotal to teaching; One might pretend that teachers are not moral instructors, but it would be no more than pretence. — Banno
If that's the case, seems like teachers wasted a lot of time lecturing, assigning homework, and testing on stuff most of us largely forgot that wasn't social. I guess we learned to mostly get along being forced to learn in a place with a lot of people we didn't particularly care bout for seven hours a day. Preparation for the office, I suppose. — Marchesk
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.