Education Provides Some Interesting and Challenging Ideas

¶ … education provides some interesting and challenging ideas that requires the reader to examine some of the more intangible aspects of learning and living. The purpose of this essay is to respond to this article and inject my personal views about the quality of education and the meanings of learning and knowledge.

Kohn's introduction to this topic surrounding his wife's extensive schooling and her relative lack of knowledge outside of her chosen field of expertise provides an adequate starting point to begin the discussion. Although the author appears to be simultaneously bragging about both his and his wife's accomplishments, he exposes some of his dogmatic assumptions about the topic. Kohn assumes that acquiring a PhD and attending medical school means that that person has achieved some level of education. This is a poor example of attempting to define the meaning of education, much less well-educated. Schooling does not equal education as the essay would like you to believe. The article's conflation with schooling and learning ultimately distracts the defining mechanism this article's title insists it is trying to do.

For me schooling is more of a socialization tool that does try to condition students to behave according to social norms. Kohn does address this topic slightly when he critiques the more obvious flaws that schooling presents. His comments on job skills and test scores exposes what is the heart of the systematic attempts of school systems that try to provide a narrow view of knowledge by forcing students to participate in groupthink and view life through a very narrow and constricting lens.

Kohn's desire to inject virtue into standardization emboldens his desperate attempt to coalesce students into to larger systems to encourage his readers to abandon individual interpretation. Kohl's description of quality demonstrates his ability to see the other side of the fence but only in a superficial and self-aggrandizing manner. While I do agree that quality over quantity in terms of knowledge is very important, the author continues to emphasize a reliance on schooling and traditional approaches to the topic.

The article tends to avoid a balanced approach to learning and education and stresses the importance of what others think to define personal levels of satisfaction in terms of learning. For me, a balanced approach of education is what it contributes to an individual's well being and approach to life in general. Wellness is relative as Kohn points out, but only in terms of consensus opinion. Kohn's article demonstrates his need to join the crowd to serve whatever greater purpose that the other parts of his personality seem so desperately to achieve.

A balanced approach to learning incorporates both knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom is a more subtle and intangible quality that is psychic in nature and requires a right-brained approach to summarize. Human beings have two sides of a brain that work together to produce balance and harmony. Too much of analytical thinking is par for the course today as the scientific method has become religion. This dogmatic approach to education has cornered many people into thinking that mystery and faith have no place in this arena.

Absolute truth can be known and is fleeting. Balance is an art form and attempts to standardize education can only lead to problems. Some questions need to be answered to find a suitable approach to this problem. What is the difference between truth and knowledge? Kohn addresses this briefly in his article " It is misleading and even dangerous to justify our own pedagogical values by pretending they are grounded in some objective, transcendent Truth, as though the quality of being well-educated is a Platonic form waiting to be discovered." My contention is that objective truth can be achieved through the use of subjective practices.

To ignore the transcendent is to ignore the capabilities of the human spirit. This is not addressed in Kohn's piece. Science tends to ignore the spiritual side of learning and its importance in development. The mainstream scientific approach to schooling and learning. essentially claims that the origins of existence began with a big bang that incorporated all natural law. This is akin to suggesting that all science needs is one miracle and that it can explain the rest. Dark matter and dark energy which according to mainstream educational approaches, contains nearly 99% of the measurable universe. The question remains why aren't we searching there for answers?

Education attempts to hide the student from the most important aspect of his or her existence; themselves. My rebuttal suggests to humanity to know thyself. The individual is the great mystery of the world and answers like everything else in nature moves from an inward position to an outward position.

External influences such as schooling can and does help the individual learn, but only if they choose to do so. It is impossible to teach anybody anything. The individual must choose to be educated. How do you teach one to ride a bike? You can't. The aspiring bike rider must do it himself. This is no different than math or literature. The individual must take it upon themselves to educate themselves and actually perform.