主頁→專題：其他

On Education

文：Timmid

Education has gone too far from its original objective, that is, to free the mind and the spirit. It seems that the more we are educated, the more we are caged and the worst of all, we are educated to get used to be caged, either consciously because this is the only rational choice or unconsciously because we have not seen its negative function- education does a great job in this sense, not only by what it offers to our mind but also the way it puts in the stuff.

The current education is to replace an empty mind not with an open one, but a conservative one. Formal education is always manipulated to perpetuate the values and ideas it favors and police those it discredits. Conventions are naturally, the first to be saved. In china, “Carry forward good traditions” is much more than just a mere slogan; it is embedded in education and has educational functions at all levels of schools. It lacks a vision for the future, fancying that tradition will still work then. Thus, confusicum is a must for students, not so much because of the sagacity and rightness on its own account as because of our blind worship of tradition. Students such educated, have little opportunity to get to know other alternatives, or even they have, they are slow to take them, fearing the possible punishment from the censorious world. In such case, timidity is enjoined with the name of morality and worldly wisdom, with the result that adventurousness’ is greatly discouraged when it is most necessary.

Secondly, the way conventional education works also restrains the minds and spirits. Firstly, it treats students as sausage to be stuffed and sealed up. Thus, the student is stuffed with numerous information, so much that he has little chance to draw on his own resources, analyzing, evaluating and synthesizing the input. This is quite against what Duwey insisted, that is, to develop the natural growth of the student’s facilities, to treat students as oysters to be helped to open up and reveal the riches in it. What is more, in conventional classroom, the teacher is always being or a position of authority with the student having no choice but to absorb passively the information provided by the teacher. Such unbalanced relationship is disastrous to the formation of personality, as Russell said, the authoritative education produce slave type as well as despotic type since it leads to a feeling that the relationship between two humans is that in which one issues orders and the other obeys. In this case, both the slave and the despotic are far from free in that they are too much tied to power and its relevant, which dominates their mind and deprives them other possibilities, more humane and reciprocal.

A remedy for the conventional education, is to turn back to what it has virtually turned its back to, that is, its original purpose to set the minds and spirits free. To achieve this, it should be more responsive to future changes and equip the students for those changes, if they are good and inevitable, by deliberate improvement of the stuff it offers and the way it offers.