The most empowering feeling a person can have is when they have found their purpose and identity. “Know thyself,” cried the ancient philosophers and this rings as true today as it did a thousand years ago. To the person who has found purpose, waking up is an experience of joyful expectation instead of tired drudgery. Conversations are engaged and meaningful instead of mindless chatter. Actions are purposeful and reflective instead of routine and robotic.
It stands to reason then, that the younger one finds one’s purpose, the better it is for that person as it would mean more years of meaningful living instead of just passive existence.
Yet the sad reality in our modern society is that we force our children into the institution of school where they spend more than a decade of their lives. School is hardly a place for self-discovery, but of repression and conformity. Students are expected to wear uniforms, follow prescribed haircuts, do their homework, copy their notes, and pass tests. Every hour has been neatly scheduled for them including breaks and meal times. Lessons and tests have been meticulously planned by their teachers, principals, superintendents and experts — everyone except the students themselves who have no say at all whether they find their lessons interesting or even relevant to their lives. We teach them to march to the beat of our drums instead of helping them find their own beats, their own rhythms.
What, after all is a high grade? What is a 95 or 99 or even 100? More often that high grade is awarded to a student who conforms best to what the teacher wants, who expresses ideas that the teacher wants or expects to hear.
This is not the fault of any one teacher nor any one principal. In truth most teachers and principals have high ideals and noble visions, yet they are constrained by the system, whether they realize it or not. But there is little they can do. A single worker or even a few of them in a bottle-producing factory has very little power to change the factory’s output. They may be able to change the shape or color of the bottle, but the output will still be bottles. They cannot make the bottle factory suddenly produce cars, no matter how good or noble their intentions are.
The education system is one big, complicated mess of machinery. Throw in the bureaucracy and politics of government and it becomes an even bigger mess — the proverbial Gordian knot of education. There is no fixing it. No untangling can be done. One cannot work in the system and expect to make a difference, not even a dent or a scratch.
The only way through the knot is to cut it, not to reform, but to replace it altogether. Our educational system has been built on a philosophical foundation that is either wrong or outdated. It is time to build from the ground up with the correct principles that prioritize the learner’s self-discovery and self-direction over the agenda of those in power.
We owe our children this much.
Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.