Conscious Evolution

[janos]

Change starts with consciousness and education shapes consciousness.

Education can be used to impart knowledge and develop wisdom, or it can be a means of training minds to accept things as they are.
When the world is so much poorer a place than it need be, education is surely being misused to maintain the status quo.
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The purpose of education according to conventional wisdom
It is to set up a youngster for a successful working life. Being equipped for getting and holding good jobs seems to be the main desire of most parents for their children.
Even higher education, where subjects like philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc., are finally available, the emphasis is on assuring that the outcome enables the recipients to find a good job after finishing their studies.

Alongside this, there may be a vague hope and assumption that on the way to becoming "job worthy", young people also turn out to be responsible and and decent citizens by the end of the school years.

However, when the time and effort to acquire competency in the "three Rs" is considered, little of these resources is left for acquiring moral grounding, social skills and sound political awareness, and other "civic virtues".

The evidence is juvenile crime, teenage pregnancies and a general despondency leading to apathy about the future and fate of society.

[janos]

[hazel]

Dear Janos,
Thanks for the quote on Education, I like what you wrote, but I think you are perhaps making an assumption that teachers want to indoctrinate children, all teachers are just people with various opinions and they probably cannot help but impart their own ideas. The other thing I think you have to be careful of is something I have only recently thought about . I think children do need to have knowledge about the world before they can start getting into the idea that they can have opinions on anything, It really annoys me sometimes when you hear people with no knowledge of a subject giving strongly held opionions without being properly informed. I am sure you will agree with me having experienced people expressing opinions based on air.
I think now that education is really quite limited in what it can do to help children think about values etc. It seems to me that the messages children get from TV and the general environment in which they are immersed are so powerful that it is a problem to stimulate their natural curiosity.
I hope you will find these ideas of interest, I fear I am getting rather disillusioned in my old age. I think it is that the tide of materialistic values feels so strong that I cannot see how parents and teachers can have much effect on the young. Anyway, it is always good to think about what is right and good.
Love,
Hazel

[janos]

[janos]

[janos]