Education can free our minds

 An excerpt from the Introduction:

The subject of education is ghettoized. People are unaware not only of the substance of what is happening in the schools but of relevance to trends elsewhere in society. For example, we do not talk about how the expectations of the federal educational reforms are right in line with our failing economic model of continuous growth in the face of depleting reserves. In the case of education, it is the test scores which are expected to grow continuously, and it is the teachers' energy and resilience, along with the resilience of children and families, which is being depleted. The narrowing down of things like ownership of news media (and of news coverage, which tends to leave out history and context) is mirrored by a narrowing focus in the educational field.

It makes sense that the same government which has succumbed to corporate rule would manage the schools in a way that supported the status quo. Manipulative, incompetent leadership is propped up by a severe lack of emphasis on the subjects and teaching methods which support Higher Order thinking. Yet a population that is spoon-fed what to think by the news at the same time that it is taught in school to swallow ideas whole is quite a scary prospect.

Learning, in the Big Picture view, is in large part learning about what is most important. This is a question we are struggling with, whether out loud or not, in all areas of our social structure and economy. The answer is not always so obvious, and is not always so easy to follow through on either. We may know, for example, that spending more time with our children should be a priority, but still it may be very hard to make the time. This question of what really matters in society and in education—beyond the supposed “bottom line” of numbers games—is the elephant in the middle of the room.

If we want liberation, if we want revolution, if we want any kind of real cultural or economic change, we need to free our minds. We need to slow down and step back from the Rat Race, and to start talking about the schools in a larger-minded way. We need to open ourselves to a whole breadth of humanity which dwells within ourselves and within others. We need to let much more information in than we have been allowing, including that provided by the natural world, by the poets and muses.

If we want good schools, we need to shift the discussion towards nourishing our public
schoolchildren, rather than merely making demands of them. If we want a truly intelligent society, we need to seek not merely mental mastery, but a mind balanced with the body and with the heart. If we want to be instruments of change, we need to be willing to work, learn and grow together. We need to realize how much learning—and creation—is alive, not dead: an open, not a closed, subject.