Post by Moses on Nov 25, 2005 5:07:50 GMT -5
The true meaning of "educated"
By Mark Moe
"Education is what remains after we have forgotten what we learned."
- B.F. Skinner
When I would tell the seniors in my humanities seminar that the philosopher Socrates' great wisdom lay in the fact that he realized his own ignorance, I'd get the same kind of befuddled, head-cocked-to-the side look my dog gives me when I ask her why Paris Hilton is famous.
After all, high school students today, products of CSAP, PLAN, SAT, ACT, etc., don't like hearing conundrums such as "ignorance is wisdom."
It goes against the current rage of quantifiable academics. "Scores and skills," they murmur, their eyes and their brains glazed over. But I would submit that not until students can understand and own such intellectually probing riddles such as Socrates' are they truly educated, and if we do not challenge students to do so, then we are not educators.
To me, education is about gaining broader perspectives, deeper insights, and more complete self-knowledge, not just facts and skills. Facts and skills are indeed essential in their own way, and I don't want to demean them, but ultimately they are like the shadow-figures on the wall of Plato's cave - only the semblance of education. To be truly educated is to see information and skills not as ends in themselves, but as the beginnings of a path, the first steps of a journey. Right now, it's the journey part that's in jeopardy.
So few of my students these days, even the AP (advanced placement) students, are genuinely intellectually curious. They get their tests or essays back, check the score, enter it into their grade calculator and file it in the back of their notebook. During discussions, they rarely ask questions, and even more rare is the question asked that makes me think. But who can really blame them?
What good is it to waste time on philosophical discussions, when what really matters is the hard stuff - good old unambiguous, black-and-white data?
For too many of them, the journey of inquiry ends there. They simply accept their scores on standardized tests as the measure of their education.
Worse, we are teaching them that if the process of education is so easily quantifiable, then the goal must be as well. Thus, when I ask my students what they see as the purpose of education, increasingly the response is, "To make money, of course. Duh." They are just as convinced that the payoff of education is wealth as they are that wealth brings happiness.
Sadly, for many of them, given the depth of their "education," money probably will be all that it takes to make them happy.
But back to Socrates. The statement that made him perhaps the most famous philosopher ever goes to the very heart of education as well. I know it sounds preposterous, but the realization of one's ignorance should be the real goal of education. The "secret" meaning here is, of course, that educated people realize all that they don't know, and more importantly, they embrace their ignorance, their not knowing. In doing so, they gain an enlightened humility as well as a deep respect for the difficulty of truly knowing anything. They are open-minded, curious and eager to question things.
Ignorance is indeed a kind of bliss for them, but not the bliss of oblivious stupidity. It is the hunger to learn new things, the excitement of deeper investigation, the satisfaction of a lively, informed discussion or debate. To educated people, knowledge is always flexible and in flux, and they use it to tell them what they still need to know. Further, the critical thinking skills they gain help them to handle those inevitable - and unquantifiable - curves life throws them.
In the end, education is perhaps the most important "skill" we can obtain in living a fulfilled, meaningful life. It is knowledge of the most dynamic, self-aware kind.
CSAPs test only the shadow images of such knowledge. We can parade out the scores and make them dance in the media, but too often their effect is to blind us, not enlighten our students. The allure of CSAPs and all objective tests is that they yield an end product that is somehow "finished" and demonstrable, as if the kids who "pass" such tests should have their foreheads rubber-stamped with the word "educated."
From where I stand, the cave of this kind of "education" is only getting deeper and darker. We need more Socrates to lead us back to the true meaning of education, where questions are often more important than answers, and where knowledge isn't just a means to a spurious, if quantifiable, end. We need to lead our students to the enlightened, open-minded inquiry that makes the human race great, and no child should be left behind.
Mark Moe is a retired English teacher and a flyfishing nonconformist with reclusive tendencies.
— Mark Moe
Denver Post
2005-11-13
By Mark Moe
"Education is what remains after we have forgotten what we learned."
- B.F. Skinner
When I would tell the seniors in my humanities seminar that the philosopher Socrates' great wisdom lay in the fact that he realized his own ignorance, I'd get the same kind of befuddled, head-cocked-to-the side look my dog gives me when I ask her why Paris Hilton is famous.
After all, high school students today, products of CSAP, PLAN, SAT, ACT, etc., don't like hearing conundrums such as "ignorance is wisdom."
It goes against the current rage of quantifiable academics. "Scores and skills," they murmur, their eyes and their brains glazed over. But I would submit that not until students can understand and own such intellectually probing riddles such as Socrates' are they truly educated, and if we do not challenge students to do so, then we are not educators.
To me, education is about gaining broader perspectives, deeper insights, and more complete self-knowledge, not just facts and skills. Facts and skills are indeed essential in their own way, and I don't want to demean them, but ultimately they are like the shadow-figures on the wall of Plato's cave - only the semblance of education. To be truly educated is to see information and skills not as ends in themselves, but as the beginnings of a path, the first steps of a journey. Right now, it's the journey part that's in jeopardy.
So few of my students these days, even the AP (advanced placement) students, are genuinely intellectually curious. They get their tests or essays back, check the score, enter it into their grade calculator and file it in the back of their notebook. During discussions, they rarely ask questions, and even more rare is the question asked that makes me think. But who can really blame them?
What good is it to waste time on philosophical discussions, when what really matters is the hard stuff - good old unambiguous, black-and-white data?
For too many of them, the journey of inquiry ends there. They simply accept their scores on standardized tests as the measure of their education.
Worse, we are teaching them that if the process of education is so easily quantifiable, then the goal must be as well. Thus, when I ask my students what they see as the purpose of education, increasingly the response is, "To make money, of course. Duh." They are just as convinced that the payoff of education is wealth as they are that wealth brings happiness.
Sadly, for many of them, given the depth of their "education," money probably will be all that it takes to make them happy.
But back to Socrates. The statement that made him perhaps the most famous philosopher ever goes to the very heart of education as well. I know it sounds preposterous, but the realization of one's ignorance should be the real goal of education. The "secret" meaning here is, of course, that educated people realize all that they don't know, and more importantly, they embrace their ignorance, their not knowing. In doing so, they gain an enlightened humility as well as a deep respect for the difficulty of truly knowing anything. They are open-minded, curious and eager to question things.
Ignorance is indeed a kind of bliss for them, but not the bliss of oblivious stupidity. It is the hunger to learn new things, the excitement of deeper investigation, the satisfaction of a lively, informed discussion or debate. To educated people, knowledge is always flexible and in flux, and they use it to tell them what they still need to know. Further, the critical thinking skills they gain help them to handle those inevitable - and unquantifiable - curves life throws them.
In the end, education is perhaps the most important "skill" we can obtain in living a fulfilled, meaningful life. It is knowledge of the most dynamic, self-aware kind.
CSAPs test only the shadow images of such knowledge. We can parade out the scores and make them dance in the media, but too often their effect is to blind us, not enlighten our students. The allure of CSAPs and all objective tests is that they yield an end product that is somehow "finished" and demonstrable, as if the kids who "pass" such tests should have their foreheads rubber-stamped with the word "educated."
From where I stand, the cave of this kind of "education" is only getting deeper and darker. We need more Socrates to lead us back to the true meaning of education, where questions are often more important than answers, and where knowledge isn't just a means to a spurious, if quantifiable, end. We need to lead our students to the enlightened, open-minded inquiry that makes the human race great, and no child should be left behind.
Mark Moe is a retired English teacher and a flyfishing nonconformist with reclusive tendencies.
— Mark Moe
Denver Post
2005-11-13