Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Enough



For too long have we allowed our children to range through the world of education with their eyes toward the ground. For too long have we allowed them to grow with their backs hunched and their shoulders slumped forward.
For the past ten decades we have allowed the development of skills to become the focus of education. From educational journals and state agencies across our beloved country we hear cries about our need to do more to help our students develop the skills to be more competitive in the global marketplace. Indeed, we all can see the tremendous push to deliver products, graduates, that are better in math and science. We are told that this is necessary because of our increasing dependence on technology and that if we are not careful, our beloved nation will be left behind. We are in danger of becoming a third-world nation. Education slowly slipped into training and is ramping up to reduce our future citizens to “doing-beings” rather than “thinking-beings” that do.
There are many that agree that replacing education with training is a threat to the future of our children as thinking-beings as well as a threat to the exceptional greatness of our nation and its opportunities for individual prosperity. However, their own notions of education have all the trimmings of a better course to take, but they, too, fall short of what education is in the main. They believe that a college education is the key to the good life. Many parents of primary and secondary school children believe that they must do everything they can to get their children ready for college; they believe that the purpose of education is to get into college. After getting into college, they believe that their children learn what they need to be successful in life. They inadvertently teach their children that the purpose of education is to make a living.

The general notions of education that have arisen over the last ten decades offer nothing truly inviting, nothing that calls forth the childrens' better selves; these notions offer nothing for the soul.

It is time to begin anew, again. Where should we begin?