Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
Is Education the answer to maintaining our freedoms?
I was reading the book "Education Of Little Tree" by Forrest Carter very late last night because as usual I drank too much caffeine. His Granpa says to him "If ye don't know the past, then ye will not have a future. If ye don't know where your people have been, then ye won't know where your people are going." This rang very true to me. The importance of learning history can truly help us on where we are going.
What I find interesting right now is the word Freedom can have so many meanings. Some people seem to think that freedom means anarchy and that the answer should be "yes" to everything. It is against someones constitutional right if they were told "no". How can this be? Can we not retain the right to refuse?
I live in Canada. There have been some laws past that go against my very core belief system, because it was against their rights to be told "no". At what point do we draw the line between freedom and anarchy? Why should someone else's rights be so incredibly against my beliefs?
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson
Welcome to Canada.....
So can education help? I believe it can. When we study the classics and the founding generations of our civilization we can learn much. We can learn where we have been, mistakes made, and where we want to go. I think that as a divided society we do not know where we want to go. We all have differing agendas that we are trying to further. It seems to be Left against Right, Good against Bad. Where do you turn for truth?
I believe that is where education can help. With a great liberal arts education we are able to discern truth. By standing on the shoulders of the great thinkers of history we can look further. There is a really great quote by someone on that exact topic, but I can not find it right now and my kids are getting hungry. So I will find it later.
One more quote and I will be on my way to make food for my masses. Ohh the life of a Liber Mom.....
"It is easy to see that the moral sense has been bred out of certain sections of the population, like the wings have been bred off certain chickens to produce more white meat on them. This is a generation of wingless chickens...."
Flannery O'Conner
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In terms of "freedom means anarchy and the answer should be "yes" to everything"
I defy you to find one source (online or off) of anyone who actually argues this position. Even, in its purest definition, anarchy does not argue this point. Sure, they are against central government, but they are just as concerned about domination as you are in this post (not that I am an anarchist... I have just read books about this political theory and know people who claim an "anarchist" standpoint).
Yet, the one point I want you to think about is in reference to this quote: "I believe that is where education can help. With a great liberal arts education we are able to discern truth."
What about when you have social scientific evidence that goes against your personal believe system?
I am working on a presentation for a class of Phd students tonight, on the topic of the French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. One of the things that his social science (on of the pillars of a liberal education) has verified that for success in a social world, there are three forms of capital that an individual must possess - economic capital (money, financial resources), cultural capital (which is fairly open - from education to appreciation for art) and social capital (which is your social network).
These three forms are combined, and used in accordance with ones HABITUS, which is a sense of being, of knowing how to act within the social world. In essence, ones disposition, which is developed by the social world.
This research shows that, to succeed in the social world, it isn't enough just to be "educated" per say, but that one has to have an "education" - not just in books, but from all of the other things that go on in a "one size fits all classroom." That is, it isn't just about what is being taught by the teacher that makes one more or less successful, but what is learned from other students, playing with a diverse group of kids, etc. T
The "one size fits all classroom" is a statement that I resist wholeheartedly - first of all, within a class, each student is helped according to their needs. I will never argue that the public school system is perfect, but, unfortunately, it is something that one must endure in order to learn the stakes of the social game.
As Bourdieu puts it, individuals without capital are "condemned to live in a time oriented by others (which is truly alienated). This is the fate of the dominated."
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