I cannot help but feel the youth today is being directed towards a false sense of knowledge. All over the world today schools are employing an attitude that seems to enforce the notion that true knowledge can only be attained through the reading of textbooks, and the learning of monotonous facts. The value of human experience is increasingly discounted in favor of rigid facts and values.As John Stuart Mill argued in his essay On Liberty, true knowledge can only be achieved through discussion, not through blind obedience to rigid unchanging values and beliefs. Religion, for example, often falls victim to individuals who tend to hold opposing beliefs. If religious peoples of opposing values opened a free discussion between each other then, perhaps, new understandings of faith might be established.
For the sake of advancement, people must allow themselves to experience life, and to develop their own opinions regarding contemporary issues. If Newton hadn't questioned an apple falling on his head then, perhaps, we would not have such a far-reaching understanding of gravity as we do today. Of course he had a strong understanding of science through academia, however, Newton also felt free to look at the world around him and to question the experiences he had within it.
Don't get me wrong, I do not mean to contend with the value of textbooks and education, rather, I believe it is pure ignorance to rely on these means as the sole manner through which knowledge can be attained. Just because it wasn't written or discovered by an academic, does not mean it is not of value. Individuals should be encouraged to challenge established social values and beliefs, for this is the only way the human race can improve. Hope should lie in the notion of change, not in a form of precautionary pessimism. Perhaps if individuals felt comfortable enough to allow their feelings and convictions to be challenged by people of opposing beliefs then the issue might be taken a step closer to its ultimate conclusion. Unfortunately, it seems far too many people take contemporary issues personally, rather than objectively.
Don't believe this is a contemporary issue? Then please explain why one of the most vehement debates in politics today is referred to as "Experience versus Change."
3 comments:
I couldn't agree more here. The old saying, "ignorance is bliss" is true for too many people. Textbooks teach students what the authors (perhaps even government in some cases) want them to learn. Ignorant people tend to get along well in life because they never have to question anything. They are okay with the status quo, and tend to lead a life that doesn't rub anybody the wrong way. What then is the purpose to their life? For myself, I like to look at my days as opportunities to learn something new, or at least look at something from a different perspective. How is it possible to live a fulfilling life without ever questioning what you're told?
I would like to hear a valid argument against this, though I think it would be difficult to support.
This would make a good argument for the paper you are currently working on. Learning should be fun, but educators kill it by killing kids' curiosity, telling them instead --here are the facts; the test is on Wednesday. Although Csikszentmihalyi doesn't directly address the problems with education in the book Finding Flow, he does discuss in other places his ideas about how education could be much different and better than it is. For one thing, though, on page 33, he says "the flow expereince acts as a magnet for learning--that is for developing new levels of challenges and skills." But then he goes on to say that the average person usually feels too bored and apathetic to move into the flow zone, and I think this is certainly true of school. This is a good post because it questions some assumptions about textbooks that need to be challenged. And Interesting Point is right--those textbooks are never pure knowledge but always biased by the writers' (or culture's) views--in whose interest it is to maintain the status quo. Questions are dangerous, so schools discourage them. The conversation here supports Csikszentmihalyi's point on the first and second page of the book about how choices about how to live are made for us by other agents to serve their purposes.
I agree. College has become a race to get myself through easy classes and do as little work as possible. We have put so much value into GPA, just a silly little number, and forgotten the real value of learning. So many teachers who teach courses which should encourage discussion turn out to be lectures.
First semester I was very excited to take a contemporary moral problems class. I expected the class to be very involved, I hoped it would be full of discussion and debate. It wasn't. The class was very straight forward, the professor wrote the notes on the board, we copied them, we left. The tests were just a regurgitation of the notes. I did very well in that class but was disappointed.
I feel that the only courses I have enjoyed in my high school and college years were the classes that engaged the student.
In college, I find myself searching for the easiest courses to take. Trying to find the easiest A, with the least amount of work. I'm taking courses like Electrical engineering. I have no idea what is going on, and I never go to class. Because I am trying so hard to get by the easiest way possible, I am missing out on taking classes I would enjoy and benefit from. I'm missing out on even knowing what I would enjoy in the first place. All this for $40,000 a year.
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