|
Click here for full version in printable format.
HOW TO EDUCATE YOUR "SELF" (4 of 5)
The Philosophy Behind the Program
The vitality, expansion, and scope of that vision will affect your sense of purpose or purposelessness, chaos or order, personal meaning or meaninglessness. Thus, through education one learns, to varying degrees, to make judgements and establish priorities. An individual learns not only how to solve problems but to determine which problems are worth solving and at what costs.
The cultural responses into the most basic questions of life reside implicitly in the experience of knowledge provided through education. "How shall I live my life?" "Who am I and why am I here?" "Is there a meaning to existence?" The responses are not to be found in static, explicit concepts; they exist in the personal experience of world and self as one grapples with elusive understanding. The way one is introduced to the world and the world to him as well as the guidance provided to make life comprehensible is far more influential than any specific concept that can be offered. The way someone balances family, self, career, nation, and moral responsibility are more reflective of how one experiences knowledge than the content of one's education. Professor Phenix of Columbia Teachers College writes,
The essence of the curriculum - whether considered formally in schools or Informally in other agencies of education consists not of objective lessons to be learned and courses to be passed, but of the scheme of values, ideals, or life goals which are mediated through the materials of instruction. The really significant outcome of education is the set of governing commitments, the aims for hiring that the learner develops. The various subjects of study are simply means for the communication and appreciation of these values.
Such values, however, are not "held" by a person but are "of" the person; they are not kept in the mind but are effluent streams of consciousness itself. In the last analysis, education helps create the primary person - the living, breathing, person who makes the daily decisions that in the end constitute life. In Martin Buber's words, "Education worthy of the name is essentially education of character."
In more specific terms, Frank Winkler, a physician and psychologist of rare perception, explains,
Knowledge serves as a mold for the volcanic content of the growing individual, whose balance depends upon it. Knowledge of a large number of confusing and apparently unrelated facts mishaps the personality into a mental and emotional structure both bizarre and discordant. On the other hand, knowledge imparted with the understanding that every item of information is but a piece in the mosaic of an all encompassing wisdom, creates a harmonious structure promoting a sense of security as well as a feeling of freedom within the framework of purposeful necessity.
It is this subtle yet fundamental aspect of knowledge that is often missing from educational theory and practice. Education does not properly consist of each generation handling down its knowledge, in tact, as fixed and finished; rather it should be a nurturing of the next generation to create knowledge for themselves. This does not mean we should refrain from giving specific instruction but rather that instruction should respond to questions students are ready and capable of pursuing. Yet more it means that we should place more emphasis on helping students ask questions than giving answers that have no place in their hearts and minds.
The baby toying with his rattle shares the same quest for and love of knowledge as does the scientist working in his lab. The latter is an extension of the former; the scientist once wondered and delighted in the colors and sounds he sensed as he lay in his crib just as he now ponders the mysteries of quarkes and quasars. Both are at the cutting edge of knowledge; both are passionately engaged in extending their understanding into the vast unknown. It is the questing person that provides for the unity, purpose and value of knowledge. An education responsive to the inner dimension of knowledge would first and foremost harness the intellectual energies of the growing person; it would be thought provoking.
Students could be asked to find patterns and relationships in their studies. The imagination could be stimulated to find symmetries in the multiplication tables or correspondences between art and history. The student's imagination could reveal new aspects of familiar ideas or generate whole new conceptual models. It has often been the active imagination that has distinguished some of the world's greatest thinkers. Einstein wrote that he believed his imagination provided him with a greater intellectual asset than his positive knowledge, his mathematical skills.
|
Suggested Courses
HUM 209: TOWARD A NEW FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
HUM 210: THINKING ABOUT THINKING
HUM 302: THINKING WITH THE HEART
HUM 304: EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY
HUM 306: EMERSON, SPIRITUAL TEACHER
|
