There is a grain of truth to our present malady namely, that our educational system has failed us!
The answer must be “yes” and this modern day education system has in fact, failed the whole world.
The world has built many colleges and universities, yet we have no peace because what we consider education is but an incomplete one.
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We failed to realize that education is not a scheduled event, but a continuing process; that the quest to develop ourselves and to refine our character does not cease even if we left the four corners of the university and enter the competitiveness atmosphere of the workforce. The duty to excel and to polish our capacities and capabilities must not wane nor slow down. It must proceed!
What kind of education is needed?
My humble contention is a Liberal Education. It is my ardent belief that this is the type of education that makes civil society possible and human relations reasonable.
Please allow me to quote Professor A. C Grayling’s elaboration on the point:
“By ‘liberal education’ is meant education that includes literature, history and appreciation of the arts, and gives them equal weight with scientific and practical subjects. Education in these pursuits opens the possibility for us to live more reflectively and knowledgeably, especially about the range of human experience and sentiment, as it exist now and here, and in the past and elsewhere. That, in turn, makes us better understand the interests, needs and desires of others, so that we can treat them with respect and sympathy is returned, rendering it mutual, the result is that the gaps which can prompt friction between people, and even war in the end, come to be bridged or at least toleratedâ€.
I concur that education must be a blend of the external and internal in order to create true humanness in a student. External education alone cannot confer human values and benefit the world.
The external factor is what our educational institution hammered us to be, while the internal substance is how our social background, our culture, our upbringing, our family raised, reared and educated us. The two elements must concur to produce a good individual! Why? If one element is missing or one requisite is lacking, there is no point of talking of any foundation at all! There is no plate in the template, it is a house of cards, because there is no foundation whatsoever to speak of!
It is my contention that, even if a person is a graduate of Harvard, yet he or she did not received a humanistic upbringing or the family is a dysfunctional one; then sad but true, it is idiotic on our part to expect the said individual to be a good soul.
We don’t come to school to be good, rather we are there to harmonize and to cultivate the goodness that is already there within us prior even to our very first day in the school. Prior to the school, our first ever school or training ground is our homes!
If we did not learnt/learned anything good in our ‘first school’, it is my firm position that the ‘second school’, the ‘third school’, etc. would all be useless.
The duty to make a student or a pupil good is not an exclusive role of the teacher; because in truth and in fact, that crucial and critical role is also incumbent and specially lodged to our ‘first teachers’ and they are no other than our mothers, fathers, our parents.
Hence, if our ‘first teachers’ are good for nothing or lazy or ignorant or apathetic; even the brightest and the most passionate teacher will have a hard time moulding a student which has no foundation of learning at all. The teacher may win and save some lost souls, but it would be definitely an uphill battle, a constant struggle.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle categorically stated in his book The Nicomachean Ethics that “ethics begins at the feet of your motherâ€. We learn ethics right from the beginning, from our family.
He gave us a strong warning that it was useless to teach ethics and morality to individuals who did not have a good upbringing.
No artificial means, like subjecting them to read voluminous moral tracts and discussing different ethical theories and lecturing to them on all the good values, would make them good persons.
They may appreciate it intellectually, but without a strong moral foundation inherited and imbibed at home; those books, lectures and moral/ethical notes would be worthless. It will be an exercise in futility.
Without a good upbringing, no school, no government, no NGO, no institution can save them and teach them how to become good individuals, and they will never live a good life.
These are the hard facts. Sad but true!
Therefore, it is an absolute element that in order for a person to become good, a moral, ethical and noble family life must always be present – at the beginning!
Hence, to squarely answer the question: What is the end of true education?
The true aim of education is virtue and wisdom!
The writer has a Master’s degree in Philosophy, a law degree and a degree in AB Political Science. He was previously teaching Philosophy, Ethics and Anthropology at an institution of higher education in the Nilai University College at Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. He is currently a lecturer at the College of Arts, Department of Philosophy at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.
As of the moment, he is preparing to publish his first book entitled “Dissidente”. It is a collection of his articles, commentaries and op-ed published by various newspapers in Southeast Asia.
Then isnt it strange that there is no education, no school for becoming a good parent? But then again: who should be the teachers at such a school?
I see a lot of parents not able and not capable to be a good parent. Should the government intervene and forbid those people to become parents?
Where do we draw the line when it comes to parenthood? It is practically the only responsibility there is no education for. And by far – so far – its the most important part of our lives.
For me it’s a matter of choice, I was born, raised and exposed in a place wherein my neighbors are shouting, fighting and even killing each other every day. My parents to be honest, don’t have a parenthood material but I chooses not to be like them even some of my friend are same like me. My point is, If you decide to be a good person you will appreciate the value of life, blessings, friendship and relationship to our God. If you don’t have these, I guess you selected the other way or the easy way for you and from that; complication of life comes to you, really.
IDK where 2 start, but “we have no peace because we have an education that is but an incomplete one”, seems like a good place.
Laughable, truly laughable. A few reasons?
there is ‘no peace’ due to the battle for the limited resources the Earth has to offer its 9 billion inhabitants. The greedy people who are hoarding every single thing the limited resources of the planet has to offer do it by force, any means necessary. Another reason? we have ‘no peace’ because of religious zealots who think they know who God is, insist that their God is the only true God, and those very same people use their God to pilfer the people that follow them,in some cases,(and in others to steal what their competitors have) and also at the same time justify their actions of the aims of their true purpose. These two, of many, reasons are more the reason why the planet has ‘no peace’ than an incomplete education, PLEASE!
As for a soul? UH, who told you you have one? AND why do you believe them? and if you have a soul, how do you know you do not have 10? or 20? or 350,000? Wow, next? the predictions, WTF? I do not have all day.
Connecting Rawlings contention to bolster the main point of the essay is ludicrous and only allows the author (who should not have called me a ‘clown’, because now I get to pick apart his essay mercilessly) to go off on a tangent that just does not bolster his point.
I do not have all day, nor care all that much about the idiocy offered in this essay but I will say the funniest part is the part about the ‘graduate of Harvard’. Ain’t it more idiotic(ain’t it?) to ascribe a more or less fictional spirit/body part (that may or may or not exist) to a fictional character (that may or may not exist) and then TRY to make a profound statement about it?and to TRY( and fail) to bolster a bankrupt argument with it…
HYSTERICAL!
IDK who let this essay get printed but a larger bag of useless gas? Hard to find.
Insults from the author are surely to follow for he is better at that, although not much, than bolstering the title of the essay, which is a delusional fantasy.
You asked for it!…DELIVERED!
What an idiotic clown! The soul that I am talking about is not in the sense of how the Judeo-Christian use the term, but of the ancient Greeks!
What to do, your an idiotes! Oh, that is another Greek concept, mr. clown!