On Education

Doodling about the internet, I came across two quotes about education. The first is from Nelson Mandela: "Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world." And it seems to me that it's true--as far as it goes, which, it turns out, isn't very far.

Education will certainly "change the world," but not necessarily for the better. And changing the world for the better is the real challenge. North Korea has been carefully educating its people for generations, educating them to belief lies and in the process to be tyrant-worshipping automatons. Such education can be described in hip terms as an epic failure.

Closer to home, Michael Toscano and Peter Wood concluded in a recent National Association of Scholars report, that the things Bowdoin College, the elite Maine liberal arts school, does not teach includes:

Intellectual modesty. Self-restraint. Hard work. Virtue. Self-criticism. Moderation. A broad framework of intellectual history. Survey courses. English composition. A course on Edmund Spenser. A course primarily on the American Founders. A course on the American Revolution. The history of Western civilization from classical times to the present. A course on the Christian philosophical tradition. Public speaking. Tolerance toward dissenting views. The predicates of critical thinking. A coherent body of knowledge. How to distinguish importance from triviality. Wisdom. Culture. 

And, of course, Bowdoin isn't alone. An education that leaves such things to chance may change the world, but probably not for the better. This is particularly true if education is void of self-restraint, hard work, self-criticism, moderation, prudence, wisdom, and virtue.

The second quote is from the poet William Butler Yeats: "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." While our pails will be filled by education--you need information in order to think critically--real education uses the information as tinder and then strikes iron to flint so that sparks fly. Read a great book and things begin to happen internally and in our world.

They say, "It's never to late to have a happy childhood," but I'm not sure. Nonetheless of this I'm certain: It's never to late to get a well-rounded, well-grounded education. School, you may know is derived from the Latin word schola, meaning "leisure given to learning." and getting older in America typically means more leisure time. 

What better way to spend that time than striking sparks and lighting fires. We can overcome our own educational gaps and deficiencies, encourage young friends in their educations, and, if we choose wisely, change the world for the better.