The Aims of Education -- Skewed Too Far

[Neonatrias]

Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth. What we should aim at producing is men who possess both culture and expert knowledge in some special direction. Their expert knowledge will give them the ground to start from, and their culture will lead them as deep as philosophy and as high as art. We have to remember that the valuable intellectual development is self development, and that it mostly takes place between the ages of sixteen and thirty. As to training, the most important part is given by mothers before the age of twelve. A saying due to Archbishop Temple illustrates my meaning. Surprise was expressed at the success in after-life of a man, who as a boy at Rugby had been somewhat undistinguished. He answered, "It is not what they are at eighteen, it is what they become afterwards that matters."

In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must beware of what I will call "inert ideas" -- that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilised, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.

In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. The reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful -- Corruptio optimi, pessima. Except at rare intervals of intellectual ferment, education in the past has been radically infected with inert ideas. That is the reason why uneducated clever women, who have seen much of the world, are in middle life so much the most cultured part of the community. They have been saved from this horrible burden of inert ideas. Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.

(Taken from Alfred North Whitehead's 'Aims of Education' 1929)

Funny, isn't it? I think people need to start taking a look at this type of thing and figuring out whether or not we're accomplishing the true purpose of education. Grades are given based upon what is known -- rarely how it is applied. Most of my classes are conducted in this fashion, and I feel the need to express my views on such a problem. As a result, this essay -- a rant, as it may be -- will address issues currently circulating in many educational systems.

Firsly, the issue of quantity versus quality. As far as personal experience goes, I have only one instructor with a skewed viewpoint on such a subject. We're expected to answer questions "on one full side" of a sheet of paper. If the response doesn't fill up the entire page, we're given a lower grade. As a result, twenty-two lines of senseless rambling often recieves a higher grade than twelve lines of a well-thought-out and honest answer. To make the problem worse, many of the questions asked are entirely ambiguous, making them nigh on impossible to completely answer. Work should be graded on how well a response is thought out -- certainly not on how much one can write out before his wrist hurts.

A second problem: general incompetence. I myself have experienced instructors who are not worthy of the title they hold. While their class structure is generally good, and their grading system is at least decent, there is no respect for them in the classroom. They simply do not possess the social skills -- or, in some cases, the intellectual competencies -- to keep an educational setting. In personal experience, when a teacher does not teach -- rather, he explores physics problems with the students -- then he has no right to teach.

The final problem is the basis of the material covered within a school setting. Therein lies the problem: it is covered, but never applied. Students are tested often on what they can remember -- their memorization skills and nothing more. This is the biggest problem in schooling. Granted, subjects such as history cannot be taught in any other way. However, English, mathematics, and science classes should be applied before the course is completed. It's only in this way that the student can truly learn to utilize the facts that they have learned. Otherwise, it's nothing more than a recital. To the credit of my mathematics teacher, everything we are taught is applied shortly afterwards, and continues to be applied. That is, though, the nature of mathematics.

Such are the problems with modern schooling. It is why we, as humans, do not develop quickly. We are too weighted down in "fact" that we fail to explore new territories. Therefore, I ask you to inspect yourselves as well as your instructors. Be sure they understand their duty to the next generation. Do not let yourself be corrupted by motionless and lifeless fact.