Here is the second half of my fifth treatise, the first half of which I posted a couple weeks ago. I hope you enjoy it!
Happy Reading,
Dallin D. Shumway
P.S. Don't forget to comment if you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback that you would like to share.
Another purpose of education is to allow people to maintain their freedom. In my first treatise back in September, I used as an example the philosophy of a man whom I have grown to love for his outlook on the importance of quality education. This man is Dr. Ben Carson, whom I introduced a few paragraphs above.
Dr. Carson believes very strongly that an educated populace is essential for securing the freedom of any society.
He made this point in a speech he delivered at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, as quoted by me in my original treatise; The Intellectual Superstar. This is what he said; “...What will maintain our position in the world? The ability to [make] a 25 foot jump shot or the ability to solve a quadratic equation? We need to put the things into proper perspective.”
Dr. Carson did not mean that a nation can only maintain its freedom if its people are all mathematicians, but rather that an intellectual populace is a necessary component to liberty.
If you haven’t read this treatise, you can find it with the following link; http://teenagephilosoper.blogspot.com/2014/09/treatise-1-intellectual-superstar-sep.html
Plato understood this concept very well. He lived in a democracy; Ancient Athens. He taught the same idea that Dr. Carson teaches to the Athenians, explaining that because the citizens of the city made the laws (as is the case in a democracy), they needed to be educated. If any of them were ignorant, people who knew more than they would become tyrants and tell them what to do.
Think about it this way; Imagine a boy who is completely uneducated about property rights and ownership, and who doesn’t know what stealing is. This boy does some work around the house and earns some money. This money is his property; he earned it. He decides he wants to take it to the store to buy a LEGO set. On the way to the store, an older girl in the neighborhood, who knows the boy has never learned about stealing and ownership, decides to take advantage of his ignorance. She walks up to him and says; “Hey! Don’t you know that it’s Wednesday?” Taken aback, the boy responds, “Why is that important?” “Well,” says the girl, “on Wednesday, all younger children are suppose to give their money to older children. If you don’t give me your money you’ll go to jail because you broke the law.” This boy doesn’t have the common sense to see the preposterousness of such a statement due to his lack of education. Wanting to do the right thing, the boy hands over his money, and is now deprived of his LEGO’s and the fun that he could have had.
Truly superb education doesn’t neglect sound political principles and philosophy.
Another purpose of education, perhaps the most important, is the ability for each and everyone person to fulfill the measure of their creation.
We all want to make the world a better place, and we all have our very own unique gifts, talents and abilities with which we can work to create a better world. If our education fails to give us these abilities, or allow us to find them, then it has, as I said at the beginning, failed to fulfill its purpose.
The general consensus of today, as I have already said, is to get an education to get a job. But, could it be that there is more to being on this planet than just having a job to stay alive?
If so, then when and where should we enable ourselves to accomplish this mission? We seem to think that childhood is where we should prepare for adulthood, at least in terms of career preparation and general life skills (things like how to care for oneself, as well as good manners, how to interact with people, etc.). For the same reasons, this should also be the time that we learn the things we will need to be able to fulfill our mission here on earth.
If education is meant to prepare children for adulthood then a truly superb education will prepare students to be effective in fulfilling their purpose.
Finally, education should not neglect the development of personal character. Some would argue that the home should be the base for teaching character. I agree with this, but that does not mean that the same principles shouldn’t be instilled in school.
The system that I propose to teach personal character in academic settings comes from what I have been able to receive through completing the Leadership Education Mentoring Institute (LEMI) program; In these classes, students and mentors talk about the importance of what they call their “core”. In his book A Thomas Jefferson Education Dr. Oliver DeMille, renowned speaker and writer on education, speaks of what he calls the first phase of education. It takes place during early childhood, from about age 0 to 9ish (usually), and is called “core phase.” This is when the core of our character is developed. The core is the very center of an object. In many cases the strength of the object is determined by the strength of its core.
In LEMI classes, which students will not ideally be taking unless they are passed the core phase and presumably have built a firm core for themselves, the mentors and students honor each other’s own personal beliefs, and share what they believe with each other out of their own “core book.” A core book is the place that a person gets their core from. For religious people, it often comes in the form of scripture. For non-religious people, there are numerous texts that have been written throughout the ages that are a wonderful resource from which to derive core building principles.
In this way, the student’s cores are first cultivated outside of class, studying their core books in a home environment. This is, no doubt, the right place to start, but there is no reason why education systems can’t encourage students to share their core values in an academic life, and encourage them to keep developing them.
On a societal level, core development is truly the key element to prevent world tragedies from occurring.
Remember the vacuum? Imagine the kind of life that someone with this kind of education would be able to live.
A life like this would fill any vacuum. It would be full of purpose and meaning, enlightenment and intelligence, and would make for a very satisfying existence here on earth.
Sadly, too many of today’s adults are unable to fill their vacuums because their education was inept. Despite these failures, there are several things that, if implemented into any education system, will begin to eliminate these shortcomings.
To begin with, society should never assume that there is a one-size-fits-all education system. Let us take a bird’s eye view of our modern public, and even private, education systems in America to more fully explore this idea;
The student learns by having information spewed forth to them by a teacher/professor at the front of the room, and by fulfilling homework outside of class that the teacher/professor assigns.
During the class time, they are surrounded by fellow students, who may or may not be contributing to their learning. Once they learn the information, they are expected to remember it until the end of the semester, at which time a test is taken. The purpose of this test is to see that the students have learned the material. If they pass the test, they have learned the material, and they are prepared to face the storms of life, forever remembering what they learned from the class. If they don’t pass the test, they have not mastered the material and will suffer later in life because of it.
Perhaps this philosophy is the best way for some people to learn, maybe even most people. But, this method of regurgitation will not work for all students. How can it? Human’s are diverse in their way of thinking and learning from person to person. While some students may learn best surrounded by peers, some might learn best when they are on their own. And while some might learn best in a rigid, structured environment where the teacher’s lesson is taught unhindered, some might learn best in a more relaxed creative environment (I have discovered for myself that I learn best in a more rigid environment, but I have also worked with students that do much better when they are free to be more creative). And while some might learn best doing what a teacher tells them, some might learn best working with their parents to find the best education for them personally.
Therefore a serious problem is created when legislatures attempt to confine students to one kind of education system. Therefore, the first thing to be done is to insure that students are not confined to one system.
Here is another very fundamental tool that may always be relied on when all else fails; reading. Read, read, read, and read some more.
Reading is the thing that both L’Amour and Dr. Carson had in common. Reading develops our brain’s, giving us the capacity to form conclusions. Reading enlightens us and teaches us. It gives us the opportunity to examine other cultures and people, learning from their mistakes and successes. Finally, it teaches us fundamental truths that will lead us to live purposeful virtuous lives, fulfilling the mission that has been given us.
The next tool; offer breadth in education.Consider the great difficulty that a person would have in discovering what their mission is if they are denied the opportunity to examine a smorgasbord of different subjects. “Breadth” was a word that L’Amour used to describe what a truly great education should look like in the first chapter of Education of a Wandering Man.
Going off of that, offer depth to education. Once a student, having breadth, has found a subject that they are particularly fond off, they should have the opportunity to explore that subject, enlightening their minds with their findings and discovering if perhaps the subject they are studying has any bearing on their unique mission in life.
And never forget, the development of one’s own personal character and integrity, or core.
An education like the one I have outlined gives great power to its recipient. Consider the unhappy state of those subject to the individual whose education contained everything I have outlined, with the exception of the core development aspect. The power of this kind of education will be used for good or for ill, all depending on the individual’s core strength.
I will even go so far as to say that this kind of education, minus the core development aspect, will raise up students that will shape history in a redundancy of the 20th Century, only it will be much more catastrophic. An education like this without core development will create another generation of hitlers, stalins, and moas. These men had power. People that get the education that I have outlined will also have power. These men had weak cores, but people who follow my education module will have strong ones.
I hope that this work has broadened your perspective. If you’re still a student, take advantage of the opportunities placed before to implement the suggestions I’ve made. If you’re no longer a student, remember this; when you stop learning, you stop growing. So don’t let your consumption of knowledge stop. Develop and maintain a strong core, enlighten yourself with the abundance of knowledge around you, train yourself to be a good citizen who knows how to maintain freedom, and find a purpose for your existence.
I promise anyone you decides to take this path a journey of pure delight.
Thank you for reading,
Dallin D. Shumay
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