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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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by John Boleyn
The revolution in advanced technology confronts our nation with an educational problem which exceeds in difficulty those educational problems our society has faced over the last sixty years. We are not on the road to solving the educational problem which confronts us. Most Americans do not understand the magnitude of the problem; and it would almost seem as if most American educators have deliberately tried to avoid recognizing it. Yet the problem is the most serious which our society faces and it will become even more so. We mask this problem with all sorts of political jargon: school vouchers, school choice, charter schools, more schools, smaller classrooms, self-esteem, better text books - this is the jargon of the education debate as it is currently played out in the United States today. If the polls are reliable, education is the number one issue on the minds of the American people. Books and articles abound on the subject -- ranging from public education reform, vouchers for private schools to phonics and whole language theory. And no matter the nature of the reform, most advocates see the correction as an end in itself rather than a means to improve and strengthen our education process. In the current debate, these terms are purely political issues with very little educational context. There is no question that many of these ideas could be useful in improving the quality of education in the Untied States. But there will never be any real improvement in education until we come to a re-conception, a new understanding of what education is; that all human beings are educable; that education is the vocation which prepares everyone for the common elements and callings of life. An education is not completed with the obtaining of a degree. It is a lifetime of learning. Education must prepare the young to educate themselves through out their lives but our current system of education doesn't reflect this at all. The purpose of education is to cultivate the individual's capacity for intellectual and moral growth by helping him or her acquire the intellectual and moral virtue that is needed for a good life. It can not exist for the sake of a social debate or as an institutional system apart from the lives of people. Education exists for the betterment of human beings -- nothing more, nothing less. Right now, our approach to education has one way of attempting to better or improve children and adults with respect to specific functions and talents. But there is another approach which develops the capacities and functions which are common to all people. In societies of both advanced nations and underdeveloped nations there has been a basic as well as a complex division of labor. Societies exist through a diversity of occupations, through different groups of people performing different functions. In addition to the division of labor and the consequent diversity of functions, there is the natural fact of individual differences. This is one view of education which takes these individual and functional differences into consideration by stating that people are made better by adjusting them to their occupations, by making them better carpenters or better dentists or better computer technicians and improving them in the direction of their own special talents. But there is another view which accentuates the aspect of our common human nature. The primary aim of education is the betterment of human beings not with respect to their differences but with respect to the similarities which all men have. According to this idea, if there are certain things that all people can do, or certain things which everyone must do to achieve a good life, it is with these that education is chiefly concerned. We must recognize the need for a substantive, general education in our public and private schools, which emphasizes the liberal arts. These are the permanent studies, which are directed toward the training of human beings as human beings. This general training has been traditionally identified as liberal education. Most people today who use the phrase "liberal arts" or who refer to liberal education do not have the faintest notion of the role the liberal arts once played in the history of education and the role they should have at the level which we would today call basic education. This is because in the course of modern times, the liberal arts have all but disappeared from the course of study. We must consider one very important fact considering the basic abilities of our high school students, and especially since the mid 1980s our college graduates as well. They are not entering college and even graduate programs with sufficient training in the liberal arts or a sufficient appreciation of the humanities. They certainly are not well read, nor can they read very well. Employers from both white and blue collar sectors report that bachelors and masters graduates have a poor proficiency in writing, reading, speaking and listening as well as calculation; whatever general intellectual comprehension these young adults have is usually fuzzy and foggy. With decreasing ability in the arena of learning, an increasing number of these students are ill-equipped at learning to the degree which warrants their pursing remedial training at the college level. In a 1962 article on liberal education, educator Mortimer J. Adler cited this trend, which is even more prominent today. The leading professional schools in law, medicine and engineering complained that they had to take the graduates of our colleges and teach them how to read and write before the can teach them law, medicine or any number of the learned professions. Dr. Adler recalled that in his position as a faculty member of the law school of the University of Chicago in the 1930s, substantial numbers of students needed remedial schooling in the arenas of reading, writing, and comprehension. In a typical school curriculum, instruction in writing continues beyond the elementary level; it goes on into high school and even in the early years of college, yet the writing skills of the nation's high school and college graduates continue to decline. But instruction in reading seldom goes beyond the elementary level. Continued instruction and development in reading skills beyond the elementary school level is absolutely vital if today's students are to have any chance in improving their learning skills and their chances for success in life. The liberal arts should focus on the most basic intellectual need we have as human beings; the need to communicate effectively. They are the arts of learning which discipline our creative power. And they are the preparation for further learning. They must be evident in our lives as educated human beings. For them to become evident, we must be as competent as possible in the arts of reading, writing, speaking and listening. These four arts are the keys to being effective in the use of language for any human being and they fall into two pairs; reading and writing as well as listening and speaking. It is believed that the liberal arts in basic schooling are accomplished with instruction in English. But today most English courses in our schools stress creative writing rather than the kind of writing which tries to convey thought - ideas, knowledge, or understanding. Sure, some students receive instruction in speaking and listening but this is far short of the training in the skills for effective speech communication which we all must engage in, everyday of our lives. Few, if any of our students receive daily instruction on listening. Few teachers have as well. The skills of reading and writing are intricately connected to the skills of speaking and listening. One glaring, terrible defect in our education system is the lack of training in listening skills. It is rare any effort is made in our educational system to help children and adults learn how to listen well - at least well enough to complete the cycle which makes speech an effective means of communication. There is communication among non-human animals in a wide variety of ways, but no conversation. Without communication there can be no community. Human beings can not form a community or share in a common life without engaging in good conversation and discussion with one another. A new understanding of education is not about making everyone "computer literate." Without question, everyone must have experience in the use of computers in order to enhance their ability to succeed in the workplace. But our ability to build a good life will not be dependent upon how much knowledge or money we have, but on the intellectual skills we possess in an advanced technological work place. It is these skills which will enable us to earn a good living and have a good life. We have yet to fulfill the goal of an equal education for everyone in the United States because the equal education which has been delivered is one of quantity; we have pretty much given a minimum education to almost all Americans, but not the same quality. Education must build the skills of a solid intellectual curriculum, such as acquisition of organized knowledge, development of the intellectual skills of learning and enlarged understanding of ideas and issues. The revolution in advanced technology is a revolution not so much in politics, but of social and economic proportions, and it will test our system of education as it has never been tested before. The social and economic changes are immense and they occurring in an inconceivable brief amount of time. Our approach to education should be liberal; not the liberalism of politics, but the liberality of a free mind. It must be general in character and its end is people first, then the discovery of our own unique talents. It is the education of a free people. It is starts with the liberal arts, which are to cultivate our minds and prepare us for a lifetime of learning. But education should not be confined to the cultivation of the mind. Physical education and moral training, which is directed to good habits of virtue, are other important aspects in a proper philosophy of education. In all three the mind is crucial. A philosophy of education, which does not behold wisdom, respect and reason above all else, leads to the frustration of the individual and the brutish disharmony of social forces. Failing to develop critical minds; failing to liberate the mind by discipline, contemporary education is making the way easy for demagogues of all sorts. For whenever reason does not rule, our minds will yield to the weight of opinion propagated by pressure where only might remains and no one will dare say it is not right. Mr. Boleyn is a writer in the fields of education, philosophy and politics. You can respond to this essay in The Radical Academy Forum Enrich your life or a child's life with an education book... Enrich your life or a child's life with an education magazine... |
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