On Education

My mind has obviously been taken over by Green Day. I was looking over my syllabus for a history class a moment ago, and the readings for tomorrow are pages 1-21... and the first thing that came to mind was "1, 21 guns, lay down your arms, give up the fight..."

Now, on to more serious matters.

I suppose I am not qualified to comment on the U.S. education system. After all, I was homeschooled for a large part of my life, and my perception of the "high school experience" came largely from films like Freaky Friday. Therefore, any anecdotal evidence from my own life can hardly serve to prove my point about an education system in which I did not participate. However, I did ask a friend who attended a public high school, and she agreed with my complaint, so perhaps I am not entirely mistaken.

I have noticed that, in elementary and high school education, learning is reduced to the absorption of information and the subsequent regurgitation at appropriate times. Lessons in math mean learning how to solve equations and how to use equations to solve "real-life" problems, like how tall Janey's sandcastle must be if it is casting a five-foot long shadow across the beach (even though it doesn't really matter, because some rude and insensitive child will probably knock it down anyways). Lessons in history mean remembering people like Pericles and Charlemagne and Winston Churchill, and what important things they did and when they did them. Lessons in grammar mean learning syntax and punctuation, lessons in literature mean reading fat books that you probably won't understand, lessons in science mean learning that stars are made of gas and that insects have skeletons on the outsides of their bodies, and so on and so forth. 

Although I studied all of these subjects, it wasn't until college that I was invited to ponder why I should study them. In college, I was given the opportunity to think about what these subjects really mean as disciplines, and how they can alter the way you think about the world, and how they can teach you to live well. I suppose that college professors are more aware than elementary and high school teachers of the implications of their own field of study. They have had to ask themselves the same question for years: "Why is this discipline so important?" And they have had to find answers in order to justify all the time and effort and finances they invested in graduate school. Still, I very much wish that these kinds of questions would be posed to students at a younger age. I wish that the very first thing any child was taught in school was not the material itself, but how and why the material is important to learn.

You might argue, of course, that children are not ready to grasp abstract concepts. This may be true. I know nothing about educating small children. Perhaps these open-ended questions would blow their little heads clean off their shoulders. But I cannot imagine that it is any more sensible to expect that a creature endowed with reason should accept the fact that he or she must learn about a certain subject "just because," and that he or she should pour most all the time and energy possible into gaining competency in these subjects without knowing the reason why. Grades are empty markers of achievement, and education without the correct motivation and context is an empty pursuit. Ingesting information with no greater purpose than to get a good score on a test is completely useless. Once the test is over, the information is forgotten, and all the time spent learning it becomes time lost. But if you take in the same information with the understanding that knowledge in this area of study is valuable because of how it helps you expand your worldview, the time spent studying was spent well. You may not remember all the information itself, but you will remember how it helped you see the world.

The more you learn how precious knowledge is as a child, the more receptive you will be as an adult. I think that college students complain about classes and homework not because it is hard, but because as children they viewed schoolwork as work without a significant reward. If only they had known that learning is its own reward, they might be more inclined to see higher education as a gift, not a burden.