VIII. At Our Best… ↑
69. We provide education.
We humans need to be taught language and values and other elements of culture, as well as skills needed for critical thinking and for useful specialization.
Such education generally continues until the age of at least sixteen, and longer for many intended professions.
Such education starts with the family, but larger groups generally contribute to the educational process as well.
Words from Others on this Topic
Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [misery by kings, nobles and priests], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.
Thomas Jefferson, 13 Aug 1786, from the letter “To George Wythe, 13 August 1786”
All of the great advances in our society have come when we have made investments in other people’s children.
Robert Putnam, as quoted in WTF: What's the Future and Why It's Up To Us
We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.
Martin Luther King Jr., 1947, from the article “The Maroon Tiger”
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.
Martin Luther King Jr., 1947, from the article “The Maroon Tiger”
But what would be the full fruitage of instruction if every child should be schooled till at least his twentieth year, and should find free access to the universities, libraries, and museums that harbor and offer the intellectual and artistic treasures of the race? Consider education not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates and reigns, nor merely the necessary preparation of the individual to earn his keep in the world, but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible to as many as possible, for the enlargement of man’s understanding, control, embellishment, and enjoyment of life.
Will Durant, 1968, from the book The Lessons of History
Education demands a certain daring, a certain independence of mind. We have to teach young people to think. And to teach young people, in order to teach young people to think, you have to teach them to think about everything. There mustn’t be something they cannot think about. If there’s something, if there’s one thing they can’t think about, then very shortly they can’t think about anything, you know.
James Baldwin, 1961, from the interview “Studs Terkel Interview”
Relevant Reference Models
Social learning and teaching - SS
- An element of The Social Suite