An Education

It’s almost the end of the year. I was trying to take advantage of the holiday break to catch up with as many friends as possible. The other day, during one of my catch up sessions, a friend of mine read an article about why kids were put in schools. The gist of the article was around “adults were not built to live among kids 24/7 and thus kids were put in school under the banner of “education” so that adults can get on with their work and be productive”. The article was written in 1930s. The discussion led me to think about: “what is an education to me?”

I told my friend that I think the article might have a point but I do think the argument is circumstantial. This is because the article was written in a period were the world was trying to recover from the great depression. So I think there might be a circumstantial agenda – to make parents feel better leaving their kids at school to go to work hard for the money and be ‘productive’. The whole concept of education was not invented in the 1930s but it was at that time that someone thought about the ‘purpose’ of education in such a way. The view of ‘putting kids away so adults can get on with their work’ might still be valid for the current time because living had become so expensive that both parents in some cases would need as much time working as possible to support the family. But to name this as a purpose of education, for me is over generalisation.

As for the real purpose of education, I think a lot of governing entities are still trying to find the answer. Some people see education as a way to indoctrinate kids to comply with the society’s values instead of developing kids into unique individuals. I personally did not see this as a huge problem. The society does need a set of core values to be maintained to continue to exist, so indoctrinating these values into kids through education is a good way to do it. However, that does not mean I support the old school communist brain washing ‘education’ campaign that turned everyone into a single-minded robot. I am just an advocate of subjects like ‘social studies’ where kids were taught their rights and obligations in the society and the school acts as the venue where these concepts are strictly enforced. This means as much as a brat a kid could be at home, when the kid goes to school, none of the parental-leniency applies and there will be consequences when rules are broken. I could be wrong but I do believe if we put context into rules, the chances of these rules being comply with could be higher.

My friend and I also discussed about curriculums being taught at school. I was not brought up in Australia, so I am in no position to make any comments on the Australian curriculum. But personally I think language skills are extremely important. For me literacy provides the power to an individual not only to express himself but also to inform and be informed of the world around him. Language proficiency also encourages critical thinking, so kids can question issues from an informed point of view. This, in my opinion, is essential for the continued growth of our society. I am also a big supporter of subjects like cultural studies, history and geography. These subjects promote mutual understand of our and other people’s societies and cultures better, and thus could help reducing political correctness and political incorrectness alike.

As for maths, well maths, I cannot deny the importance of maths in life, but I do have mixed feelings for this subject. I personally think that basic maths skills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, are very important, but beyond that I am not so sure. As a kid, I always questioned why did I need to learn algebra and simultaneous equations. Certainly I think geometry is interesting and useful to a certain extent, and also the ability to calculate time, not to mention I am able to calculate discounts in shows quickly. But I always felt that sometimes maths is teaching me things that I knew I would not be using in the future. My interest has never been in science, so maths being a compulsory subject until year 11 was a bit too much for me. I got a credit for my open exam but I never enjoyed it. Naturally it was one of the first subjects I dropped when I moved on to year 12.

It seems that I have been equating education with schooling, which is definitely not my intention. I believe education can be achieved in different formats; each party involved should find the one that best suits him or her. For me an education needs to be able to equip you both socially and intellectually. Lacking either one aspect of that makes an education incomplete for an individual. Do I have the answer to how it should be done? Well I do have my own set of philosophy but that doesn’t mean that it is the answer to everyone’s situation. Still I would like to reiterate that how education should be delivered should cater to individual needs and circumstance so that it fulfils its purpose – which is to provide knowledge and to prepare oneself as an individual and as part of the society.

The Inner Gollum

With the new “Lord of the Rings” movie coming out, it was the time to revisit the old ones. As I was watching them, I suddenly developed quite a bit of pity for Gollum. I used to hate that character – it’s ugly, scheming and annoying. “My precious” is funny simply because it was stupidly annoying and cliché. However this time round, after several years more of life experience, I suddenly feel for the character in a very different way.

Gollum was obsessed with the ring – even though it was not meant to be his. He killed his cousin to obtain it and from that point onward, he thought he found what he wanted, cling on to it and descended into obscurity. Watching his downfall in a marathon manner made me reflecting on certain things around me in my life. I began to question myself: “How different am I from Gollum?”

Looking back my life from this point, there were prominent moments that I thought I found something that was mine. And the reason? Simply because it was nice, I liked it and I had always wanted it.  Once obtained, I tried to apply all measures to hold on to it even when I knew very well that I should have moved on or let go. I myself have become the Gollum that I used to hate with a passion.

Tokkien characters are very real because they learn to live with their goods and their flaws. For these characters life is always a fine art in balancing the two sides. Gollum is an unfortunate character that eventually his flaw, which he was well aware off, took over his good. It is easy for me to judge Gollum, but am I seeing the peck in other people’s eyes without knowing the log in mine? I believe some of us did have occasions that we want to hold on to things that are no longer belonging to us. In Gollum’s case it was quite straightforward – the ring possessed him – he felt compelled that he had to keep the ring in close guard. So when he lost it and later found out Frodo had it, he went to the distance to try to re-claim it. Of course there was a period that he came to his senses briefly but his desire for the ring had completely corrupted his mind and drove him to his final demise.

As I think about some scenarios of my life so far, I must admit that I did have quite a few of these Gollum moments myself. Be it a relationship, an item or a job, there were different occasions that I wanted to hold on to something that I know very well that I should have let go. Now thinking about it I was quite “ugly” in terms of a person during those periods. At times I even resent myself as a person. Giving up or moving on sometimes is hard. This is not only because you are “losing something” you held dear but also because of the uncertainty in how you anchor that part of yourself in the future.  I guess there are always breaking points that you know you can’t do anything but comply with the situation. But complying is very different from willingly let go. For me compliance hurts much more than a free will decision to let go. But I guess as you grow older you would probably have a bit more tricks up your sleeves to deal with these situations, making it less painful maybe.

I think compared to Gollum we are a lot luckier in a way that we were not actually “possessed” (although we might sometimes want to think so just to justify our actions). The fact is no situation in our lives is absolute. We can’t even guarantee we would wake up from our sleep the next morning, let alone holding on to people we like, possessions we hold dearly to or a job we love greatly. There would always be a possibility that we need to part with them and I think learning to part with them gracefully is a life long process. Humans are emotional beings. We get attached to people and things, and sometimes that’s how we support our own existence. This inevitably makes the detaching process a lot harder. However, looking at the bright side (which I tried to remind myself to) is that you never know whether better things would come along if you don’t let go of the present. Thinking along this line provides me the token to exchange present for the future. Fool, some people might think I am, but if it works for me and provides the positive energy I need to live on, I will stick to this “philosophy” of mine. Also when you look back at a later stage, you would start to re-evaluate how “precious” actually were those “My Precious”.

I believe we all have our “Inner Gollums” but the question is how far would we let our “Inner Gollum” to take over. This is something I am still learning case by case and day by day.