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.