This post is largely inspired by a comment made by Chris Horrie yesterday. He said 'the outcome of education is enlightenment.' This comment has being going round in my mind because until yesterday everyone I have ever been taught by has instilled in me the belief that the outcome of education is knowledge and success.
As we move through the motions of the education system, being rewarded with what can be simply explained as pieces of paper with various letters of the alphabet on to reflect our achievements we are taught that by ticking all the right educational boxes we will grow up to have successful lives; the closer to the top of the alphabet your letters are, the better you will do in life.
Of course as soon as we learn of the success of people such as Richard Branson, with no qualifications to their name, the theory that top grades lead to success flies out the window, onto the street below and gets run over by a Lamborghini driven by someone who dropped out of school at 14!
If you were to look at my GCSE and A-level results you might assume that I have worked incredibly hard at my education my whole life. The truth is I have spent the majority of my educational life being certain that I would drop out after taking my GCSEs, then decided I would drop out after my A-levels, and then thought I would drop out of University after my first year; but each time something stops me. Until Chris' comment yesterday, the thing which has stopped me dropping out at various points of my life has been the belief that by staying in education I would have a successful life.
The idea that the outcome of education is enlightenment is not something I had ever really considered. I completed coursework and exams purely based on the belief that they were building blocks to a more successful life.
Since yesterday I have been considering why we are not taught that education is valuable for more than being vocationally successful. Had I spent my time in education being given the encouragement that I was moving towards some form of enlightenment I am quite certain that I would not have considered quitting at so many points!
I believe that no one should be forced to be educated in something which does not interest them, or causes stress, confusion and unhappiness. While vocational or monetary success do have a places in society, if they do not have a value in your life then don't worry if you are not moving towards them! I would urge those of you reading this, whether you are in education or not, to educate yourselves with things which are going to bring you happiness and enlightenment.
Of course enlightenment can then lead to "success" depending on how you want to define success. Getting money I think is one view of success or "suck-cess" to quote Alan Ginsberg.
ReplyDeleteOne of the philosophers mentioned in HWP showed that using knowlege of the seasons it was possible to monopolise the olive press and therefore make a lot of monet. But he did not do so.
Mostly I personally think that money is a trap, and people ending up working in a call centre or something like that because they are addicted to buying things they don't really need.
I would recommend a kantian approach to education and to others involved in any sort of educational enterprise, which is to treat the process and the people involved as things worthy in themselves, and not as a means to an end. To treat education as a means to some otehr end is bad faith and to my mind represents moral failure.
And on your last sentence - the best one - education is a thing which by definition can only be done by oneself. "Self educated" is a tautology, just in terms of the meaning of the word (from the Greek educate - "healthy growth"). Nobody can "educate you". There is a difference between education and training. Training is something you do to a slave or a plant or an employee - restricting them to perform a certain act or grow in a certain way to conform to the will of another.
ReplyDeleteTraining is fine, but very different to education. The educated person could train an uneducated person, but the uneducated can not even train themselves.
At WINOL we do both things and adopt radically different approaches - much of WINOL is training and it has the announced purpose of getting people jobs. The joibs we seek are the chance to do journalism. This is not for the money, though the money can be good and using the money can be in good faith, so long as the person is not corrupted as to the purpose. We wish to do journalism for national media etc because it will be fun and exciting, not because it is primarily a way to make money or have a noce car, etc. Journalism is a route to poverty and job insecurity for many/most people and to death and torture for manyt around the world.
We need to train you so you are safe and successful within these terms.
Education on the other hand is entitely different. The only education you get at Winchester is in relation to HCJ topics and hopefully the discussions youi have with others about these topics, and these are designed on the basis of 1000 years of experience as good 'soil' in which you can grow to be an educated person. Many people go through life - including many who have university degrees - without being educated. That is a perfectly valid choice - some people prefer slavery to freedom, the vast majority according to Nietzsche. But some do not and even a minority of probably one in a hundred do wish to be free and in the past this have proved to be enough to prevent a return to the dark ages.
I think AC Grayling puts this very well on "the unexamined life (meaning - not educated in he Greek sense I have outlined) is not worth living".
AJ GRAYING ON 'THE UNEXAMINED LIFE' -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY5FcCQ8BIg
the above pretty much sums up my approach to 'education' whgich is to say the classical greek approach.
Indoctrination, dogma, training is something as I say you do to a dog or slave - or (for a good reason) a doctor, soldier or journalist!
There's no reason why you can't be an educated journalist, though this is not needed (you only need to b e trained - eg shorthand).
There's no need to be educated if you don;t want to be. Many prefer dogma.
Success anyway is very subjective. One person's idea of success is anotehr person's idea of hell.