Schooling is something that we excessively idolize to the extent that we have stopped asking what its purpose should be and whether it is fulfilling this purpose. In this past post of mine, “Why much of our schooling is oppressive”, I described how our current school paradigm is more concerned with creating a citizenry that is obedient and conformist rather than enlightened.
Art courtesy: Johannes Vermeer’s “A Lady Writing” (1665)
On one hand, we say that schooling is supposed to help the child realize his potentialities. In practice, schooling teaches the child how to mindlessly follow a leader (teacher), to think on his (the teacher’s) terms, and to view the suffering of being bored as an acceptable state of life.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche already saw the flaws of modern schooling in Germany.
He writes: “What is the task of all higher schooling?” To make man into a machine. “What are the means employed?” He must learn how to be bored. “How is this achieved?” By means of the concept of duty.”
Fortunately, Nietzsche has also determined the three goals of schooling.
Students should learn to keep their eyes calm and to withhold judgements.
They should look at issues from many different perspectives as if their eyes were a prism that catches light from as many angles as possible. Someone who is trained to view things from different perspectives is less dogmatic and is more willing to admit his views are wrong and to change them accordingly.
Students should learn how to think.
Thinking is an art that should be learned as dancing should be learned. Although necessary for any critical minded thinker, it is a dying discipline among even academics.
Students should learn how to speak and to write.
We should learn to dance with ideas, with words and with the pen. Our ideas are meant to be spread and communicated. If not communicated toward others, at least communicated to ourselves.
These three purposes of schooling make up, what I call, the “intellectual craftsmanship”. I believe that this craftsmanship has been absent from our school system. The consequence is that we live in a society where distorted logic rules:
- in which many people have an opinion about everything, but know absolutely nothing.
- where simplicity is twisted to sound sophisticated.
- where we tell others how to live, but are barely capable of dealing with our own struggles.
- where we use preventive wars to preserve peace.
- where we need socialism in order to safeguard capitalism.
- where we kill under the guise of humanitarian action.