The ESL Teacher C · Nomad Educator

For most of us (born into cities or well organized communities) we have at least gone through the obligatory elementary school and high school levels and studied the material imposed by our country’s government. That is what we call our education. Some of us continued and went to university or college and call that higher education.

☞ But what did it give us? What is an education?

What I’ll talk about

• Schools make parrots
• Schools are irrelevant
• Schools are robot factories
• Education is a set of tools
• Education is also knowledge
• Education is also knowing how to deal with information
• Education for what comes ahead

Schools make parrots

One critic of the school system is that it systematizes everything, so students only end up memorizing and regurgitating on the exams the information they were given, making them closer to automata than to autonomous individuals.

Schools are irrelevant

Another argument against school is that it doesn’t teach enough stuff relevant to the students or to the world. So the subjects learned on the benches don’t help in the trenches of life.

Schools are robot factories

You might have heard the cynical response: public schools were built to make obedient factory workers (as suggested by this article (specifically on p.10)). Which is not false, but I hope that I’m not the only one to feel I did manage to obtain more from my time at school than that. I was lucky enough to have more than one educator who shared and taught beyond the basic curriculum in addition to pushing us to pursue our passions and seek answers on our own.

Education is a set of tools

So here is my take on what I perceive as a useful definition and end goal of education. It is a set of tools that help you navigate the realities you’ll be exposed to. An example of this is the scientific method, it teaches you to observe, analyse and get conclusions likely to help you interact with the world, society and challenges that arise.

Education is also knowledge

Knowledge is useful too and necessary. For example core knowledge: based on a philosophy that educators should focus on teaching about people, places, events, objects, etc on which a society agreed everyone should know (check this webpage to know more). Not knowing this would not only be proof of ignorance but also of foolishness because that information (such as the Earth is a sphere) has strong foundations and it allows us to work together with agreed information and interact more successfully with the world as a result.

Education is also knowing HOW TO deal with information

One reality to consider at this point in time is that we have entered an age of information, a label I have seen used on different recent timelines of history and I think it hits the nail perfectly. Most developed societies have the means to access the internet and all it has to offer: encyclopedic knowledge, news and social media. So the volume of data we can be exposed to or search through is massive. It has become ever more relevant to learn skills relative to searching, parsing and organizing information (☞ I wrote a poste about it here). The consequences of not learning these make us more vulnerable to be easily misinformed or disinformed and eventually manipulated and misguided, which also contributes to low epistemic wellbeing, a reasonably based sense that you’ll be  able to know what you want and need to know about the world in order for your life to go well (☞ I delve more into it here).

Education for what comes ahead

We have to consider that education is for the children, our successors in existence. What we are trying to prepare here is an independent individual, confident in their own power to act for themselves and on the world around them (hopefully in order to improve it). And what they will face is the future, an unknown (unless you’re Destiny and decide to cheat and read ahead in the book of the universe).

In conclusion

So education should be a dedicated space for a mind to develop. It should allow the students to experiment, analyze and expose themselves to different ideas and perspectives and methods of learning, so that they may be well equipped for the hurdles of life.

What to take from this post?

☞ Critiques of the school system

☞ Concrete things education can contribute

Questions/Comments

☞ Do you agree with my description?

☞ What other critiques or problems do you think deserve our attention as teachers, or as parents?