Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the goal of any education system should be to produce educated human beings, rational maximizers capable of participating in the market system, the political system and navigating the turmoils of life itself. That requires, as a self evident fact, the teaching of math, reading, science, philosophy, history, and religion. Because, for a person to be educated, he or she must know… the religions of the world, where we came from, really understand human nature, be able to reason, comprehend science to the level it is in at the time, and the most arithmetic possible. Any other motivation is opposed to that goal. If we really want our children to be educated then, and there is not one among us who doesn’t, we must strive to our utmost to make our schools produce educated people.
Every major religion should be taught in our schools. The biographies should be taught, as understood by the religions themselves, of Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Confucius, Krishna, Moses, David, Abraham, Issac, Ishmael and Mohamed. They should be understood by every student graduating school. The system of worship should have less attention than the foundational ethos. Not just Western and Middle Eastern religions, but Eastern ones too. A well educated student must understand where so many of our expressions come from. How can anyone understand what a Prodigal Son is, without knowing the parable? The basics of Shinto and other Eastern religions must be taught as well. Religion provides us with a moral code, that code is like the laws of physics under which a machine works, alter or ignore those laws, and the machine of civilization ceases to function. When the machine of civilization fails humanity falls into barbarism.
Our history teaches us what has been done. That which has succeeded and that which has failed is the provender of the history teacher. Those who do not know history, are damned to repeat every bloody, violent second of it, personally and in living color. Human history, all human history, is bloody, violent and plague ridden. It is the tragic story of violent men, marshalling great forces, to subdue other violent men, who have marshaled great forces to subdue nations and peoples. The reason Athens and Rome are so singular in human history is they had liberty. Albeit for the citizen and denied to the slave. History shows, slavery and tyranny are the persistent lot of the individual… not liberty. The lessons of the past teach, unambiguously, that liberty begets prosperity and tyranny begets poverty. Those lessons should be well understood by every student.
Philosophy is ignored by schools today as outmoded, which shows the ignorance, or sinister motives of those who set the curriculum today. Philosophy at the most basic level is grammar. Call grammar class philosophy 101. Language is one of the primary topics of philosophy. Think about Kung Sun Lung’s White horse paradox, showing the insufficiency of language to accurate reflect human thought or the world. Once grammar is understood, the well educated student would be taught epistemology, the study of knowledge. To be truly self aware is to look at ourselves with the eye of another. Just looking into what is knowledge, if what we think is true, really is true, etc… gives us perspective and enhances our self awareness in a positive way. To debate existence itself is to reach for enlightenment. Each area of philosophy should be taught from both the Eastern and Western perspective. Because a thing cannot be understood unless it is looked at from different angles.
Science must be taught to the level it is in the society. To flick a switch, and have no concept of how the electricity that excites the ionized gas in a florescent lamp, was made, transported to the switch, or that there even is such a thing as ionized gas, is to be uneducated, it is to be enslaved by technology. How things work is more important in a technological society than any other. To that end, the education system has to teach the dirty part of science, plumbing, electronics, mechanics, etc… as well as the inspirational flights of physics, astronomy, geology and biology.
Unless a person is able to read, they are unable to interact with the mass of information available to all of us, thus making them ignorant in the most villainous fashion, because it enforces that ignorance. Reading not only opens up highways of information it helps standardize the mind to the rest of humanity. Reading gives us a reference point. The ability to read provides a framework in which we are able to apply the lessons of religion, history, philosophy, science, and math. The student who graduates unable to read has been embezzled from. Without reading, the acquisition of future knowledge is made much harder, and verification of what has been taught becomes impossible.
Those who cannot do basic math are lost in any society and are especially hobbled in the market system. Even the most basic market interaction requires a knowledge of math. Further, math is pure logic, and is the only area where truth can be deduced from pure reason. In no other aspect of human existence can pure reason be applied to get a result consistent with reality. Therefore, math and the logical structure it imparts to the mind, is critical for a person to be able to reason. A person without math skills cannot be called educated in even the broadest sense of the term.
Most of all the love of knowledge must be taught. It is that thirst for knowledge that differentiates human beings from animals. A dog is self aware, experiences love and is able to reason, but has no thirst for knowledge. Humanity advances along with our knowledge. The advance of our knowledge is limited by our philosophy and morality. To be an educated human being, is to have insatiable curiosity, never to be satisfied with what is known, it is to be always seeking to know the unknown. Without curiosity we stagnate, individually as well as a society. Since all knowledge is impossible to have, the thirst for knowledge is one that is impossible to slake. That is the advantage of curiosity, it drives the advancement of the person, society and the culture.
A system that graduates a large portion of students unable to read, make change, or find their own nation on a globe, is one that has failed spectacularly. Where students leave school without a sense of the moral code, that humanity has spent thousands of years and oceans of blood constructing, is to have failed society itself, and condemns those graduates to retrod that ground, with all the blood, violence and human suffering that went along with the first and every subsequent pass. To further the insult by graduating students who are unable to reason, have no curiosity and cannot interact with others, is to betray on the most basic level. That schools, colleges and universities in the US and elsewhere, are graduating students lacking some or all of these fundamental attributes, shows an utter, total and complete failure of the entire education system, from top to bottom. Such a system doesn’t need more money, or power, it needs to be replaced, with a system that creates educated human beings, not politically indoctrinated, entitled, egoistic, new class, morons.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
