Here is the first part of treatise number five. I say "the first part" because I have decided that I will be publishing treatises a section at a time so as not to overwhelm readers with too much wisdom to take in at one time.
My plans for what to do with this blog have changed, and I have decided that I will work from now until the end of March to create a 6th treatise. I will publish a 7th at the end of April.
Happy Reading!
Dallin D. Shumway
P.S. Don't forget to tell your friends about this awesome blog. I want to share my ideas with anyone who is open to receive them.
There is a period of time, very near the beginning of one’s life, where crucial directions are taken. A friend of mine recently gave an object lesson about this period of time, using a yardstick to illustrate. A yardstick has 36 inches on it. If a man were to live to be 72, then his life could be represented using 36 inches, each inch representing two years.
My friend pointed to a spot on the yardstick; the 6th inch. Then, running his finger up near the 9th inch he said; “There is a period of time in every person’s life from about here, to here, which, though seemingly small, is perhaps the most crucial.”
He was talking about the importance of making wise decisions as a teenager. Today, I’m going to expand on his idea, by highlighting a few more significant years on the yardstick. I’d like to start at about 2.5 inches (five years), and move all the way up to about 12.5 (25 years). These inches, like the ones my friend pointed out, though seemingly insignificant when compared to the rest of our lives, are the most crucial, for these are years where we obtain our education.
Education is an essential part of our socioeconomic structure. Each of has (or at least should have) a vested interest in it. Even the retired 80-year-old man should have a vested interest in it because he still relies on the services needed to obtain the necessities of life, as well as everyday enjoyments. He cannot have these things if the younger generation does not have the education that will allow them to create said services. Thus the 80-year-old man has an interest in education.
If everyone has a vested interest in education, how ironic that there are many fundamental problems in the American education system that go unnoticed.
In mid-December, I published a treatise that discussed a phenomenon that is prevalent in adults in today’s society. I call this phenomenon the internal “vacuum.” It is the desire to have meaning in life. I encourage you to go and take a look at this treatise if you haven’t read it already; http://teenagephilosoper.blogspot.com/2014/12/treatise-3-making-achievements-part-i.html
Just as a review for those that have read this post, the Vacuum is best described using, as an example, what I call “Monday-Friday Syndrome.” This is the daily chore of dragging oneself out of bed Monday through Friday, at an hour earlier than we would like, getting dressed, and driving to a building where we will sit at a desk all day doing something that we absolutely hate.
The first problem with American education is this; it does not give us the ability to continually fill our Vacuum’s as we go through life. Education exists to prepare us for life as an adult. If it fails to put in our hands the tools needed to live a life of meaning, it has not adequately prepared us for life, and therefore has failed in its purpose.
To eliminate these problems there are a number of things that should be provided by education, and things that should be remembered by all people as we are seeking our education.
One of these things, which fails into the latter category is what I call, the Great Myth. The Great Myth is this;
Wake up each day during the months of September to May and go to school for 12 whole years of your life. If you do this, get passing grades, and graduate high school after years of formal schooling you will be educated.
A simplified way of saying this is; school = education.
This is a fallacy that throws many students, particularly while they are in the secondary and higher phases of education into an unhealthy pattern of going about learning.
Too many individuals have succeeded at life without a formal education, and too many individuals have failed at life with a formal education, for the Great Myth to be anything more than a fallacy.
If the Great Myth were really the Great Truth, then it would be impossible for anyone without a history of success in formal schooling to be able to achieve any kind of success.
A powerful example of this idea is the childhood of one of my personal heros, Dr. Benjamin Solomon Carson. He said of himself; “I was the worst student in my whole fifth-grade class.” He was miserably failing his studies, and his mother, who was single and very young (she married at age 13) worried greatly about him. He and his brother would spend their time in the evenings staring at what I like to call “the idiot box.” Look in the footnote if you want a dictionary definition of that term.
Wasting his time away on television, and having his grades fall dangerously low, his mother finally came up with a solution; limit her boy’s TV time firstly, but second, and perhaps most importantly, replace the lost screen time with reading. She told her boys; “From now on you can watch three television programs a week. Additionally, you will need to read two books every week and submit to me a report for each one.” The solution required her to be courageous and stand up to her two sons, who were angry and indignant about this new rule. But she carried it through.
This reading program that Dr. Carson’s mother set up, was a very important component to his education. Yet, it was not part of his formal schooling. And it was precisely the new way in which he began to spend his time after his mother’s new rule that saved his education.
His grades began to steadily improve and he was at the top of his class in just a few years time. Graduating from Yale and The University of Michigan’s health program, Dr. Carson has achieved very high levels of success, including being a best-selling author, successful speaker, political activist and a world renowned neurosurgeon.
For the latter, Dr. Carson was the first neurosurgeon to find a way to remove an entire hemisphere of a human brain without killing, or even severely inhibiting the life of his patient. More importantly, he was the first neurosurgeon to successfully separate siamese twins, conjoined at the head. He is also a renowned thought leader on education and politics in America.
Had his mother insisted on just leaving things as they were and hoping that the standardized education system that he was in would eventually take care of his inability to learn, it is very likely that he never would have made the contributions to society that he is so beloved for.
On the other hand, consider all of the many people who complete the full, standard, all-American education module, and fail miserably at life.
If this is a hard concept for you to grasp, then go to your local prison and talk to the inmates about their educational background. Yes, you will certainly find high school dropouts, but I guarantee that you will also talk to many people that at least started college, as well as people who finished college, and perhaps even a few who went on to earn a doctorate degree.
A college degree does not guarantee that you’ll succeed, nor does the lack of a high school diploma doom you to failure.
The second thing that should be remembered is the true purpose of education.
For many Americans, the years that they spend obtaining their education can be very grueling. The main incentive that pushes them through these first roughly 12.5 inches on the yardstick is the belief that they won’t be able to support themselves and a family without a decent education. While this is true in many cases, this idea usually goes even farther than that to say that this is the only reason to get an education. This is a gross misconception, and it’s one of the biggest reasons why so many adults feel an emptiness inside.
Louis L'Amour, who dropped out of high school during his sophomore year at age 15, received one of the best educations out of all the people that I’ve had the opportunity to study. His education was found through reading books, and living and working all over the world, and reading books, and rubbing shoulders with all kinds of different people in his various work environments, and reading more books.
Eventually, his reading allowed him to develop an outstanding skill in creative writing, and thus have a means of livelihood. He has become one of America’s most beloved novelists. Readers all over the world love his books. But, this wasn’t the biggest blessing that came from his education. His biggest blessing was the enlightenment that he received. In his novel Fair Blows the Wind (one that I thoroughly enjoyed), he said; “The well of learning is one that never ceases to flow and we have only to drink of its waters.”
L’Amour, most assuredly, could have easily given up on his education when financial hardships hit his family during the early 1900’s, at which time he chose to leave school. But, interestingly enough, the most important reason for why he left school when he was only 15 was because he didn’t want the education it was giving him. In the first chapter of his memoir Education of a Wandering Man, he explains why he made the decision to leave the standardized education system; “I left for two reasons, economic necessity being the first of them. More importantly was that school was interfering with my education.”
Wow! What a statement to make! School interfering with education? For L’Amour personally, he felt incomplete in the public school system. He left it, and became a hobo which, at the time, did not refer to a beggar who did no work as it often does today, but rather to a person who had no home, but traveled all over the place and worked, helping people that needed extra hands to get a job done. Farming is a good example of the work that hobos did. Whereas now many people view homeless people as a strain on our economy, the hobos back then were essential to it.
As L’Amour was going about the country, and sailing to places beyond, he took advantage of the resources around him; books! And he enlightened his mind in an amazing way, going on to become wildly successful as a writer.
No one who gets a truly great education will turn around and say; “Gee, I wish I hadn’t received that enlightenment. I should have just remained in the dark.” Granted, people who complete graduate school and then don’t use their degree might feel bad that they went to so much work to get a certification that they aren’t using, but that’s for practical reasons (like having a pile of student loan debt and not having the job they were counting on to pay it off quickly), not necessarily because they don’t like what they learned.
To be continued on February 25th. Thanks for reading...........
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