Education: Two outlooks

“Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe.” The accuracy of this H.G Wells maxim depends on how ‘education’ is defined, and for whom it is developed. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin have often been shimmeringly quoted to convey how an educated public would fortify the American republic, and how only literate minds can resist oppressive ideologies. The shimmer is never dulled by bothersome truths of the oppressive design of the American republic itself, and even more bothersome questions about the true role of education in such a design.

Broadly, after all the theories are churned, and all the seminar lights are turned off, we are left with two opinions on education, as described below. Today, the blind exaltation of education without factoring in these conflicting opinions is setting the stage for catastrophe to win the race.

Plato vs. Cicero

Cultural critic and author Neil Postman summarized the opposing viewpoints on education in Defending Against the Indefensible by noting that “the idea that schooling should make the young compliant and easily accessible to the prejudices of their society is an old and venerable tradition. This function of education was clearly advocated by our two earliest and greatest curriculum specialists, Confucius and Plato. Their writings created the tradition that requires educators to condition the young to believe what they are told, in the way they are told it.”

Postman continues by noting the intellectual antithesis to this view, “But the matter does not rest there. We are fortunate to have available an alternative tradition that gives us the authority to educate our students to disbelieve or at least be skeptical of the prejudices of their elders. We can locate the origins of this tradition in some fragments from Cicero, who remarked that the purpose of education is to free the student from the tyranny of the present.”