Why we need education

We need good education. We face so many problems.

Babies are born addicted to drugs. Children are denigrated by their parents. Children are bullied by their peers. Teenagers have guns, and kill people. People face long-term unemployment, because once you are unemployed, employers think there must be something wrong with you so they won't hire you. People get beaten for being transgender, or for being Muslim. Political commentators use misleading statements and doctored videos to sow divisiveness and hatred. People get so worked up about things that aren't even true -- the idea that President Obama was not born in U.S., or that Park51 is to be a "Ground Zero Mosque," while our planet is suffering the effects of climate change, including floods, drought, hurricanes, and heat waves.

We need technical knowledge of science and engineering. We need people with skills in policymaking. We need people who can help us transcend divisiveness and hatred, and work together to solve our problems. We need journalists and historians and librarians to help us build our knowledge. If we are going to address the problems of the world, we need people with many different areas of knowledge to work together. We need everyone to contribute. And that is why we need education, to create a world in which everyone is equipped to contribute.

The goal of education should be learning

My experience of school was that in K-12, we were there because we had to be there, and we did boring homework because we had to. When I got to college, I was at a school I chose, studying what I chose to study, and my feeling was, "why did they never tell us before this that school could be interesting?"

However, many students feel about college they way I did before college. I have been reading some comments at http://www.studentsreview.com. Students write things like, "the social life is awful. The adminstration is really starting to crack down on drinking and parties making the social life even worse. They care more about their reputation than students having fun."

When my great grandfather was starting college, his father told him, "you can send a boy to college, but you cannot make him think." My great grandfather took this as a positive challenge, and chose to think.

Students feel they need to go to college in order to get a job, and yet, they don't really want to partake of the academic offerings. What can we do? Is the system all wrong? It seems to me that the educational system should be suited to students' interests (giving them skills they need to succeed in life after graduation), and it should be rigorous. That is, students should know that there are certain standards they will have to meet in order to be successful in their chosen career. Education should be aimed at helping them develop the skills they need. A degree should signify that the student has achieved a certain level of knowledge and skill, rather than signifying that a student has sat through a certain number of classes. Students may not know exactly what career they want to follow, so they should be able to try several different areas before deciding which to pursue. Education should also cover the knowledge that all should have. For example, people need to know some history, so that we don't repeat our mistakes, and people need critical thinking, so that they can recognize false claims.

In a sense, this is how our educational system is already structured. Students focus their study on a particular subject, their future career field, while also studying the areas which all people should know. However, it has gotten to be more about the structure of the educational system -- you need a degree to get a job, and you need to take certain classes to get a degree. We tend to lose sight of the fact that the real goal is that you need certain knowledge and skills in order to be able to succeed in life. Students go to school because they need a degree, not because they need knowledge.

Excuses

The article On Deadlines and Dead Grandmothers by Thomas Benton talks about how when exam time comes, professors hear from many students claiming to have dead grandmothers, wanting to delay taking the exam.  The author is torn -- offering sympathy and an extension would be kind if the claim is true, and yet if it is not true, he wants to challenge them.  He concludes by saying, "Maybe if I were a more open and approachable professor, with a longer history of generosity and kindness, fewer grandmothers would have to die."  That is, if the students felt he would give them an extension without a dead grandmother, then they would not have to make up false excuses.  I would like to see an educational system which encourages truth-telling.  I know that if it were easily done, we would have it already, but still, that's what I'd like to see.

Let us encourage those who seek to learn and contribute

My tai chi teacher told me to drop my shoulders and open up my collarbone. Sometimes my body doesn't always do as it's told. When I was learning to rollerblade, the person teaching me would always say, "Push to the side, not to the back." I would tell my feet to go to the side, but they would keep going to the back. Eventually, after the friend who had been teaching me had quit teaching me, my feet started obeying. I hope that in time, my collarbone will also figure out how to obey. I usually practice tai chi almost every day. In our most recent class, my tai chi teacher seemed pretty exasperated with my collarbone's disobedience, and went into scolding mode. After that, I didn't feel like practicing tai chi at home, and I felt like quitting the class.

A few months ago I joined an e-mail group. I fantasized that the members would be impressed by the wisdom of my contributions. Instead, they hated my outlook so much that the moderators rejected my post. I questioned whether I really wanted to be a part of that group after all. In that questioning, I discovered three people who had quit the group because their contributions had been rejected. I decided to stay, at least for now, but I'm reserved. I hesitate to participate fully in the group for fear of being rejected again.

Let us not squash the aspirations of those who seek to learn and contribute. When people tell me how impressed they are with my abilities, I am inspired to live up to those expectations. The world needs all the help it can get. Let us encourage those who seek to learn and contribute.