What is Education

   What is Education?

        

        If I were to ask students or friends passing by "Why are you here" they would likely respond that they are here to get "an education". If I was to ask them what that meant their answers would vary syntactically but I suspect that the vast majority would answer with a description of education as training.  This would be things like to get a job, to learn about finance, to get into med school or to get a degree in engineering.  This could not be more foolish, ignorant, and saddening. If Education is mere training then not only is every university structured idiotically but furthermore every person there is wasting their time and money by getting one of these degrees. Of course our Universities have become mere tests of intellectual capacity and diligence and abandoned their sacred roles in our society. 

        Some degrees are much more technically based than others, this is true. Engineering was long kept separate from Universities for this reason because everything one must study is a tool in an engineers tool belt. In this sense an engineering degree is the most "efficient" as one learns the least obviously "useful" information. At the same time I would contend that they receive the least education. 

        So then what is education? To answer this I must detach myself from any sort of modern conception or misconception of the idea of Education. I would radically maintain that Education properly has very little to do with skills, tools or anything useful. I would say the specific preparation of an individual for a task is rather training or programing than education. This is not to say that learning to make financial calculations or to weld is not supremely useful and valuable, on the contrary they are immensely valuable but to call them education does a disservice to both the welder and the person seeking true education. 

        Education properly may seem not to have a purpose or a goal; there is no end or completion to education.  Now, enough of what education is not. 

       A great mentor of mine said once that "Education allows us to become who of we are". Now this is the sort of grandiose claim that he makes that is simply above my paygrade, but today I was sitting and I figured it out and started writing this. I think it is safe to assume that we exist to the extent that we think and act and do; syntactically to exist is to be, so our existence or our being is constituted by what we are. So with this understanding it is fair to say that if we do not have minds, thoughts, opinions etc we do not really exist. Education, properly shapes the undefined unrefined unexplored minds of people into something more fleshed out. By studying history, mathematics, literature, philosophy, religion, physics etc  they not only learn about the way the world works but also how people exist within it and by extension they come to know themselves.  A more poetic and religious version of this that of the great greek philosophers who said that education was the shaping of one's soul. 

          I would maintain somewhat easily I think, that someone who has never thought about anything ever exists less than someone who has thought about everything. If someone has never thought about a thing, regardless of their capacity to, then their mind is less shaped than the person who has and we exist to the extent that we have minds. If someone does not have a mind (a soul) then they are just a corpse and re not in any meaningful sense real, so the logical conclusion is that by doing and thinking more we are existing more, we are being more. 

        There is necessarily much debate about the extent to which someone should be educated and the extent to which one ought to educate themselves. Greatness has come from self made men and great students alike; for every King David of humble beginnings there is an Alexander the Great tutored by Aristotle. A selfish and arrogant teacher can shape his pupils into his image and almost always in doing so harms them. Likewise, an arrogant learner can teach themselves poorly and do so with nonsense for material. The good teacher shows his students greatness and looks upon it in awe and unison with his students. Having reverence for great thinkers without making judgement is what I believe the pinnacle of teaching.  

        This takes me to some of the problems I have with modern academia especially in the humanities who claim to maintain a truer spirit of education but who in reality have oft fallen into one of two evils and somehow sometimes both. The first and scarier is the narcissistic, self serving force feeding of ideology onto their students as unquestionable doctrine. If a doctrine cannot stand criticism, that is to say if it relies on force to be maintained it must be untrue and unnatural (see Stalinist Russia or Maoist China). The second is training for the appearance of intelligence. I mentioned earlier that if something can be called training it is necessarily not education because education is not an ability but a good in itself. Teachers fall into this when they teach the history of philosophy or of religion as if the ability to recite names dates and events will make students moral. 

        Education is dying because of two misguided parties. The first are those who seek to push their ideology upon students which is mostly postmodernist, deconstructionist, victimizing, and self defeating. Their opponents are those who seek to keep politics and ideology out of education. They are both wrong and absolutely wrong. Going back to what I said before, education comes best from the study of great thinkers and the contemplation of their works. To take a class on the Quran with someone who thinks it is made up is worthless, how can someone teach the beauty and truth of a thing if they don't see it themselves. Furthermore, why study history if we do not see evil and condemn it. To study World War II and not condemn the Nazi's as evil is not only a waste but a disgrace to those who died. 

        To conclude, the sterilization of education is its downfall. Good education shapes people anew, it gives them new eyes to see the world, and it helps them come to know and understand the way things are. Finally as we come to be more educated and we come to be more of ourselves we also come to be more of who God made us to be.