So I have a longish commute when I go into the office (something I’m hoping to not do so much even when the world stops ending– probs a post on my thoughts on work&home life in the future…). In the mornings, music and most noise and really any stimulation or reminder that I’m awake is rather overwhelming, so I drive in silence. Usually, my thoughts aren’t all that interesting, mostly lost in the dull, general lamentation that drones on until eventually it morphs into the happy buzz of strong black coffee. Once in a while, though, a mini epiphany pops out of the morning haze.
Today, it was about education, one of my favorite things to rant and ramble about.
So I had to take the way to work that I don’t like as much. I don’t like it as much because instead of a hop on the highway/hop off the highway, minimal thinking route that I prefer, this one involves a couple different exits and requires extra attention, which is always dangerous for me. (‘Okay, Sam, next exit. Okay, it’s coming up. Okaaay, like, 3 seconds and you have to exi– What should I make for dinner later? I’ll have to hit up Hy-Vee, did I eat all the mixed nuts ye– oh crap there goes exit. Just missed it.)
This morning I realized that I had taken my road-less-traveled enough times that it was really just about as easy as to navigate the other ways. I had the route securely engraved in my lil brain.
However comma, if I had gotten characteristically distracted and missed an exit, would I have had a clue where I was? Well, a clue, maybe, but probably not enough to get me to work on time. Or at all that morning.
Now, the education part. 20th/21st century public school education- let’s call it the Dewey Imbecile System– gives the step-by-step instructions to memorize how to get from A to B. It might give you a little bit of the why and a little bit of somewhat reliable trivia about the stuff along the way, but it’s ultimately very robotic. Particular, limited, programming.
The other extreme, what I would call Bastardized Montessori, would be to give a kid a map and say, “go forth! good luck!”
The traditional way of education, which is the way a lot of good HomeSchoolers and good Catholic and classical/legit Montessori schools, is to give a definite route and a map, but with guidance and context. Where the route goes, why we go this way instead of that way, what the stuff is along the way. The goal would be you could then hand them a map and say ‘go forth!” with confidence that they won’t end up in Mexico.
The current education system (which Anthony Esolen shreds in his worthwhile read Out of the Ashes. He has also been crusading against the laaame and turrible New American Bible translation at The Catholic Thing) the Dewey Imbecile System is pseudo-education. It is a program to imitate the real thing, like Artificial Intelligence. It’s a set of directions to follow rather than a comprehensive understanding of the lay of the land.
I know because I went to public school k-12 and I know it has only gotten worse, more agenda-driven and rigid and limiting than ever. That’s not to say there aren’t handy things you can pull out of it– I like having the straightforward directions from A to B programmed in my head to get me to work and back. BUT it’s not everything, and it’s definitely not what education should be.
Education should be a formation of the whole person, which is part of why federal control of it is insane; the question of how to form young people only makes sense left to families and close communities, and probably not D.C. government bureaucracy.
Wrapping the ramble up for now, to recap: my mini epiphany was the analogy of following memorized WAZE directions versus actually knowing where you are is like crappy current secular education versus true, traditional, classic education.
The End. For the moment. Really I’m going to talk about this sort of thing a lot.
Samwise the Gρεεκ. 