Chris Herrington, Contributing Writer
Why go to school at all? What is the purpose of our going to school versus our simply staying home and waiting until we are old enough to be hired out to work? Some people obviously can begin work sooner than others, and then again some people will never be fit for work because of their medical conditions. Some people never make any connection to the concept of work on any level, whether to take care of themselves, to gain autonomy, or to realize a gain in capital to be able to use the money to advance themselves or to aid others. They simply see no reason to work. In just the same way, many people never make a substantial step towards seeing any reason to attend school or to read a book, or to have a cultural experience. The question has always been whether or not it was the duty of citizens to advance their knowledge of their culture, to gain operational awareness of the world around them, or to learn any further skills that would allow them better control over their lives. What if we do not go to school and we never work? Who cares? What are the consequences?
Presently it is against the law for students of school age not to attend public or private/home school until a certain age. Many people believe the entire educational system has been flawed from the beginning. (http://www.covenantnews.com/selbrede090215.htm) Some countries do not force students to school at all, while others have a much more limited system of only requiring a few years, maybe 4 to 5. America wants its youth to attend school of some kind until late middle teens, but why? What is the point? Many believe that the ideology behind public compulsory education is indoctrination. Whatever!
I have known left-wing and right-wing school teachers and administrators. Some teachers only provide the sheerest of information about the academic facts while others go to great lengths to research and provide in-depth and wide-based information pathways completely suited to individual students. If there is an over-riding force, any single conspiracy of ideology on a state or federal level, it may have to do with funding or some particular series of textbooks, laws that are passed to meet some political agenda, or perhaps some overtone that the country is listening to in the era in question, but I have not found that there is any specific anti- or pro-anything within the field of education other than perhaps the notion that all children are worthy of being given the opportunity to earn an education.
Still, what in the world is the point of our being given an opportunity? What are we supposed to learn at school that we may not learn elsewhere? Certainly the homeschoolers have proven that a quality education can be gotten at home by those who are provided the proper tools to gain one. The point seems to be that , regardless of where a student gets it, there must be sufficient mental, emotional, cultural, physical, and even spiritual stimulation in order to encourage and tease out the inner-wisdom that all humans seem to possess, having been endowed with certain inalienable rights and certain internal understanding that each person has as a part of his or her personal heritage as a human being. However people are nurtured, they need to have sufficient stimulation to reach some sort of event horizon beyond which they are then able to communicate their own individual and special truth. This is an America value, that each person is individually important and that given the chance, the tools, and emotional support, they will each add to the collective whole a necessary key element or part that will assist the whole in operating better. No child can be allowed, if possible, to go through life without being given this very essential opportunity.
In this vein, we believe that, in some essential way, America is a cultural collection plate for the ideas of the world, the depository of human wisdom. It is a hallmark of traditional Americanism that we, as a nation, are one of the prime educational and idea-centered vessels of all of history. One of the difficult concepts that we have had to come to grips with is that not all present Americans share this very essential value. Some people do not see themselves as needing to learn how to communicate what wisdom they might otherwise share if substantially stimulated; after all, if they do not want to become a part of the whole, add to the collective integrity, and there can be no law to force them to do so. This is their argument against their going to school. They simply don’t want to.
The argument for their going is that if they have no other way to access that stimulation, they may by whatever process withhold from us all the potentially very important, indeed critical, wisdom they themselves carry. At best, their 2 cents may not have mattered anyway. At worst, their missing piece of the puzzle may be what would have led us to discoveries that might have changed history or even have saved the human race from extinction. Since we have no way of knowing where we might expect the most needed answers to come from, no kids can be seen as throw aways. On the other hand, if the invitation to learn how to communicate their inner wisdom is passed by, then we are dependent on some other person to learn how to communicate that exact same truth, and the chances are potentially decreased that this will happen.
The process then is one of our actively and assertively harvesting wisdom from our own children by assisting them in learning how to speak or communicate intelligibly enough for us to be able to make use of their inner wisdom. This collective growth from the wheel to the computer has been the process of technologization since the very beginning of human recorded time. The very words we use, the thoughts we have, the expansiveness of our ability to conceptualize these ideas are all a part of the same process of our evolving our species, if not biologically, certainly in terms of the technologies we use to process and expand on our very lives.
Today we project that somewhere down the historical road our sun will go supernova, 5 billion years into the future. If one of our progeny does not discover how to get us off of this rock, out of this solar system, and off to another world to live, then we are doomed to die here and with us the entirety of everything we have ever known, thought, or felt. We need to produce a thinker or series of thinkers who can solve that problem, among many others. Does this occasion us to promote or even force education? “Gee, I don’t want to bother you, but is it possible you might be encouraged to think a little harder to see if you can save us all from total destruction?” The question alone is on a high school level. If no one were capable of thinking passed the 3rd grade level, then we would have been doomed from the start.
Granted, some families are thinking in that deeper way on their own. Some students will think this way in spite of their parents. A million monkeys typing for a million years may in fact produce a Shakespeare play on accident, but are we willing to lay the fate of humanity on pure accident? Would it not be more likely that if we raised the chances by educating every child that we would find at least someone who could answer these questions? This totally goes without saying actually.
What are we to think then of the number of people who feel so put upon when asked to learn for their own benefit and the benefit of all of mankind? And what are we to think of those who say that unless the students want and will work for their educations from the very beginning right through that they should be kicked out and denied that opportunity? Are we to risk everything on the very few who are motivated from the beginning? Is it also not the case that many of the past questions have been answered by those who formerly might not have been seen as having been the best candidates for the job? From the ranks of those who did not have them earlier many times the answers have evolved!
Why not widen our chances and lower our risks with such horrendous stakes? The question might be asked, “To what extent can we be asked to continue to support and encourage those who will not have it, those who reject at all turns the need for an education?” I will remind us all of our own lives. How many of us have faced moments when we might have given up and been given up on?
What is it that is being asked here then? For those who are academically and socially beyond public education’s realizable grasp, let there then be a concerted effort to re-enfranchise them, not merely for branding for their commercialization by the corporations and increase of the tax base, but for the purpose of including them in the grand league of those who might work collectively for the resolution of these largest of problems facing humanity. In this way, the TransAmerican spirit of cooperation, going beyond the borders of our geopolitical boundaries, rising above the mere motive for capital resources, reaching upwards towards a freedom for all as we attain advancing understanding of our interdependence as a species on a planet that is not unlike a fish bowl, may reach out to the world, not as a conquering power to assimilate other cultures but rather to be included with them in the quest to help human kind not only to survive but to thrive.
We might then use every available space in every advertising arena to provide challenging material to be used for the purpose of raising consciousness. Every bus, every cab, with bumper stickers, and on public spaces, just as does commercial advertising to raise awareness of their products. Math, science, logic, history, language, and psychology, these are areas we can begin in. There is no reason not to use the ineffective moments of our days to create an effective use of our collective time. Let’s begin right here, right now, to explore ways to nurture and create pathways towards this New Mythology of engaging in our own best interests.
runningturtle87
Having completed 32 years of public school service, Chris Herrington lives, with his wife, in Appleby, Texas, and his writing consists of blogging and essay writing concerning an array of topics including education, mediation, self-development, and human interests. He teaches at the Martin School of Choice, plays racquetball, and enjoys his job.
Chris Herrington can be reached at herrington@everythingnac.com
