Key Issue -- Education, Again!

 From my December 28^th post: 

Education – A Primary Utility of Our Culture                    

            Pre school: getting an early start, foundation
            Inventing effective methods of learning, all ages
            Transformative high school education; turning kids on to life-long goals
            Higher education: inventive methods, full access, life-long learning
            Graduate education adaptive to new technologies, problems and careers
            Research, development and technology
            Arts and Culture: connecting the dots (synapses)

Continuing my comments on the Key Issues blog of December 28^th, I wish to address Education – again!  Yes, again. 

Some of you probably think I’m fixated on education. I suppose I am. But for good reason: education is a process by which an individual transforms self to powerful, relevant life, leading to many possible new ways of living; for self and others. 

That’s my belief. It is also my dream.  I firmly believe that each of us has within us the power to be much more than we are at any given moment. Uncovering that power, discovering who we are, what we are, what we are capable of…that is very exciting to me. Surely I am not alone in that feeling, that realization? 

Education is a process of discovery. If a kid in school is bored it means we haven’t found the magical connection that unlocks his imagination. It means we haven’t motivated her to take charge of her life. It means we have allowed many students to be complacent, to be led, to be controlled……  You finish that statement.  We have done so much, and yet we have accomplished so little with our students. 

And I use the term students in the largest sense possible. The term includes pre school children. It includes kindergarten kids, and elementary and middle school students. It embraces high school, and college students. It includes graduate education and continuing education of adults for the rest of their life span. Each of us is a student if we let it happen. Whether we are enrolled in a formal program of education or not. We are students. We are continually seeking that which we will become. Or we should be. 

Traditional views of education are stodgy. They are comfortable. They lull us into what we experienced as kids. But the times, they are changing. And for all the good reasons! 

The brain is an engine granted to each human being. Whether American or African, or Asian; whether encased in a young body or one of more seasoned experience (!). The brain is a thinking machine. It is logical. It is processional. But it does allow leaps of logic, leaps beyond our experience. Something possible that the mind sees without informing us of the root of the idea. 

When we envision new personal electronic technology, what do we see? What does it allow us to do? Here are few thoughts that may help:

• The personal electronic gadgets allow us to think freely
• The gadgets let us relate dissimilar thoughts in order to come to different realizations, different conclusions; we test new combinations of ideas
• These new realizations become building blocks; for new thinking; for new realizations; logic is getting a free pass to roam, to discover
• The gadgets allow free form communication among people of broad backgrounds and cultures; they may not even live on our continent
• This communication jumps oceans and connects the world; we are talking with one another, often in different languages but connecting ideas that build toward other ideas that begin to revolutionize our thinking
• Revolutionize how we see the world, how we live in the world, how we interconnect and live in an unfolding reality of possibility

Our kids, yes even the most young among them, are thinking fresh ideas. If we let them they will solve many of our world problems. And hopefully with compassion and respect for every living creature on the face of the globe, beginning with fellow human beings. 

We don’t do this thinking to control other people. We do it to live well on the planet. To appreciate it. To revel in the power of the human mind. It is capable of much good. 

Yes, the dark side of this discussion is apparent – evil exists and must be dealt with. 

But one wonders if the power of positive won’t serve as antidote to evil? The positive showing the cajillion souls what we can build together and share with one another. Sort of like the Arab Spring where hundreds of thousands, yea millions of Arabs realize what democracy is, what that defines them not having within their autocratic regimes; they are wanting more, and demanding it; they are making their lives better; because if they don’t, no one else will do it for them. 

Evil has limits. Possibilities don’t; they are basically good in my mind. We need to unleash our power to seek and acquire possibilities. Globally. For the good of us all. 

Education makes that happen. It empowers the self to explore, to find, to be all that it can be. In this essence of education we find its commonness, its utility, its value. 

We must make it universally available for all who want it. For our own sake.

February 6, 2012