Let's talk more about what we think education is about

[Deborah Konecny]

This morning I was working on a blog entry for the Toronto Development Community Institute. I got on Youtube to search for a piece on Paolo Freire on literacy and oppression. I ended up watching this piece. I think it continues on beautifully with the dialogue Daniel Shirley started yesterday. Take 5 minutes to watch it and let's start talking about what education means to us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgdVCnTTqXA

[Sheila Stewart]

Thanks for posting, Deborah! Yes, it relates well to some of the topics/questions we heard at the conference!

[Anthony Wright]

Hi Deborah,

I am new to this venue of discourse so forgive me if I am stating nothing new. My background is philosophy (ethics) and political theory. I am unfamiliar with Paolo Freire but now intend to read his book. The issue that stood out for me in the youtube video is the lack of a "political and moral imperative" in our education system. I will restrict my observations to schools in Ontario. Like Henry Gioux in the ‘60’s (in the youtube video), our political leaders seems to lack the ability to justify the need for our society to move in a direction that fosters a greater respect for individual autonomy in our education system.

What is the purpose of our education system: To create workers or to provide the tools to enable our children to become self-sufficient and self-determining (i.e., autonomous)? I support the latter view. But here is the crux of the problem: Our education system is focused on producing workers.

There has been inadequate public debate on the value of individual autonomy and this has led to a dominant utilitarian model of education. It seems to be the norm in our society to associate autonomy with an absolutist view of freedom, which social chaos and anarchy has become associated. And yet, the founding principle of a liberal-democracy is respect for individual autonomy. Within that humanistic notion of autonomy lies the importance of self-knowledge which is achieved by understanding the world in which we interact. This is the view that I support here.

Institutionalized education has helped to eliminate illiteracy but it has failed to succeed at installing a love for learning. We learn not to become a better worker but to become a better person and indirectly we and our society become wealthier for it. There can be a balanced view between utilitarian principles (i.e., support for social programs that produce the greatest good) while maintaining respect for individual autonomy. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Respect for individual autonomy does not necessarily endorse as a given an aggregate view of individuals in our society to the extent that it erodes the justification for our social institutions if we employ a principle of justice. The biggest obstacle in a multidisciplinarian approach is that it is often demands more resources. So your question is two-fold: What is the purpose of education and what value do we attach to education? More to the point: What value do we place on being autonomous?

[Sheila Stewart]

I really like what you have shared here, Anthony. I am going to mull this over some more, and as you have said/suggested, our education system is focused on producing workers. So for now, I would like to put the question "out there", why might the education system be focused on producing workers?

[Anthony Wright]

I apologize. I am eager to read other people's contributions but Sheila's question really got me thinking and I wanted to share my thoughts.

I think that Sam’s blog – “the Purpose of Education – Revised” is a valuable contribution to this discussion because he raises the question of what it is that we “need to become”.

But I would like to address Sheila’s Stewart’s question (Why might the education system be focused on producing workers?) here. I think the question is an excellent one because it helps us clarify our answer to the primary question: what is the purpose of education?

At its most basic level, ‘work’, generally speaking, I would define as the act of producing something and in an active sense is the means by which we obtain the things we need to satisfy our bodily requirements for subsistence. We need to work in order to survive. As our society has evolved so has our notion of the type of ‘work’ available but fundamentally the reason to work is still the same: to meet our basic needs. To this end, I would propose that our education might be focused on giving our students the skills they need to be able to ‘work’ in today’s society. But this raises the question: Do we work to live or do we live to work? Is it the responsibility of our education system to give our students the means to ‘live’ (i.e., the active sense of living – what we ‘need to become’)?

I would speculate that our education ‘system’ has focused on producing workers instead of fostering an environment that would provide the resources to help our students obtain what they ‘need to become’ in part due to a perception of inherent weaknesses of the welfare argument - grossly stated: each individual should have the right to advance their own welfare. The counter argument is that we cannot create programs with an aim to satisfy people’s individual ‘needs’ (i.e., welfare) because those needs can vary too dramatically and this can lead to a tragedy of the commons. Instead, our education ‘system’ proposes we accept a rationing principle that is based on achieving some universal degree of equality in our society for our students. However, now we need to define what is ‘some degree of equality’ in order to know if our education ‘system’ is achieving this purpose. This is a question I think can be addressed another day.

If we work to live and living entails more than work (i.e., the need to become), taking into consideration that people’s needs are different, are we willing to agree that the most common need amongst humans is choice: the ability to choose between various course of actions of our own creation or those of others and the ability to not choose any? Are we also willing to accept that the tool that we all need to develop (students and community members alike) in order to satisfy our ‘need to become’ is the ability to think critically? The ability to choose the correct action for ourselves requires the ability to think critically, that is, the ability to be able to weigh the merits of the various options presented to us or that we create and the ability to be able to postpone gratification in order to accomplish long term personal goals. If the ability to think ‘critically’ provides all of us with some degree of equality, is this, then, not the purpose of our education system?

If this is the purpose of our education system then the question is: Does our education system produce critical thinkers? Are the two (worker and critical thinker) not compatible?