Intro to Learning-Education Mountain
There is a big difference between learning and education. So what exactly is the point of education?
The 7 Mind Molding Mountains of Cultural Influence are threaded through every facet of a culture and they influence our minds, behaviors, emotions, desires, expectations, and habits. I conceptualize and order them as:
Faith,
Governance,
Money-Work,
Learning-Education,
Health-Wellness-The Family,
Creativity-The Arts & Entertainment,
Media.
If you haven’t read Intro to the 7 Mountains yet, see that HERE.
Essence
Humans are designed to be learning beings. The sparks and chemical reactions that go on in our bodies when we learn are some of the most powerful and exciting reactions on the planet. The plasticity of our brain is so important and that feature of our incredible bodies is stretched and honed through the process of learning. God's creation is so cool, so vast, so infinite, that we were designed to enter into His Creation with Him and co-labor and learn side by side with Him.
Even in the technology age, the more we discover, the more we realize we don't know. Down to the tiniest cell in the human body or up to the highest heights in the Solar System and everything in between, as we get more specialized in every field, the more we realize we don't know. We are even discovering we have had a lot of things wrong.
It is my theory that if the education system can truly be about meaningful teaching and learning and plugging into the human’s true potential gifting then those places and spaces would thrive in a way that it would be tangible. My own stark contrast in recently moving from a government run public school to a thriving private school has been shocking. The difference in the two environments is palpable.
More Color
There is a big difference between learning and education.
In recent years, many have been baffled by the education system in America. Which brings me to the question: what is the point of education? Is it to prepare young people for life on their own? If that's the case, then we do an abysmal job teaching the next generation how to make a living, balance a check book, learn basic finances and economics, learn how to do taxes and pay bills, prepare them how to make a living, and navigate the big-bad-world they are headed into. We send lambs to the slaughter. What's even worse is that a brain younger than about 25 or so thinks it knows everything, so we're sending biochemically arrogant and naive lambs to the slaughter who think they know everything. Clueless. But there's no teacher better than life itself.
Additionally, there is a big difference between knowledge and wisdom and an even bigger difference between "worldly wisdom" and "God's wisdom." I know people not educated who have great wisdom. And I know people highly educated who do not have a single drop of wisdom.
As far as my own personal frustrations with the current structure of the education system in America, let me say this: it utterly failed me, yet I loved every minute of it (that part is really irrelevant). I am just now starting to truly figure some things out and it would have been really nice if the place I spent 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 20 years or so actually helped prepare me for real life. So what I do mean by "it failed me?"
One of my hardest transitions in life was from college to "real life." I knew how to be in a classroom. I did not know how to be in the workforce--and I even had jobs growing up. So what did I do? I went back to school to get an advanced degree, piled up some nice, long-term-crippling-student-loans, which by the way was the EASIEST money I've EVER obtained. Never mind that I was in no way whatsoever qualified to pay that money back. Nor do they tell you how hard it is to get a job that pays enough to actually live life AND pay back the student loans--especially for certain degrees. I am NOT working in the field I received my degrees in because I quickly realized I cannot earn the money it would have taken to help provide for my family, my future, and pay off the student loans.
For a really excellent picture of just how predatory and detrimental student loans are to our youth, please be sure to watch Borrowed Future. It is drilled into students that the only way to be "successful" is to go to a 4 year college, and then if what you want to do requires an advanced degree, then you go to grad school and take on more debt--doctors, dentists, and lawyers can pile up the most crushing debt numbers.
It is an absolute sham, a facade, and a lie. It is why we now have generations of people who are seemingly brilliant (depends on how you define that), yet totally and completely emotionally off their rocker and cannot make a living, which adds so much stress to them that they think Socialism is a good idea.
I'm going to wade into a controversial topic, so buckle your seat belt and hang with me for a minute. Child Labor. Abusive and horrific working conditions where corrupt adults are making huge profits on the backs of children? ABSOLUTELY NOT. May every single ONE of those situations have the wrath of The Living God poured out upon it and the children and adults freed and healed.
But more opportunities for young people to work, earn, and learn in their bones what it takes to make and manage a living? YES. Remember paper routes? That sort of thing was hard work. And many people who persevered through tough paper routes have these amazing testimonies of great success that they credit the paper route for. Remember the need of working on a farm? Probably not. But in agrarian societies, you had to work hard or you didn't eat. See my article on the Introduction to Work-Money where I discuss how detrimental the notion is that "if I have money I don't need to work."
The basic idea being that humans are designed to work hard and there are a myriad of benefits from hard work that our youth are being robbed of. Manual labor is character building. They can eventually be a genius programmer sitting at a computer all day. But first, they need to feel in their bones what it takes to build the structure they're sitting in. There is absolutely a connection between hard work and learning that is crucial to human development. The two are also connected to physical hard work, which we'll get into under the Health and Wellness and Family Mountain!
So then, back to: what's the point of education? It depends on who you are in terms of how you answer that. For me, I was under the impression that education is about learning and preparing me for life and what I found in reality was something very different. That's why it's so confusing--the PR says one thing and the reality with the fallout is so very different. That's why you have so many youth bitter, angry, and lost. They feel screwed. And they feel that because in a lot of ways, they kind of were.
The truth is, for many, education is big business and big money. Similar to government, The People think the government exists to serve The People and that's what the PR says. However, when you get into government and take a look under the hood, you find it's about big business and big money. That totally changes the game. Similarly, the government uses "education" to move around large amounts of money and resources. That's a ball of black-stinky-wax to dive into another day, but let's just say the "children" are NOT the beneficiaries of this long-held practice.
So then what's the answer to all of this? Personal responsibility. Any education is what YOU make of it. Don't stick your head in the sand. Be willing to wrestle with difficult, challenging topics and read a LOT Use the Library, not just online. Read authors you don't agree with and ask questions of the text. Read history and understand what has happened to great civilizations of the past. Talk with people who infuriate you and really listen to them. Listening to someone does not mean that you will necessarily agree with them. But you will learn something.
As a parent, be willing to make some personal sacrifices for the good of your children. You only have them in your house for so long. Different people and situations will have different levels of bandwidth for this type of thing and many are just trying to survive. HOWEVER, we have available to us incredible resources that every household can take advantage of like Prager U, Udemy, and so on. Harvard and MIT even have online, free classes available. The sheer access we have today is mind-blowing. Observe your children. When humans are young, that's the best time to discover their temperament and what they're truly drawn to.
If you have a whole swath of children and can hardly keep up, research shows that if you can spend 45 minutes a week of uninterrupted, focused time with each child, you are pouring into them greatly. This means no screens, no distractions, no judgment, no criticism, no "teaching," just entering into their world for a hot minute and truly seeing them.
Another thing we can start doing as a society is supporting the trades. Being in real estate, I'm confronted with our dire need for skilled labor daily. I don't know when and where electricians, carpenters, and plumbers got a bad wrap as a profession, but they are some of the coolest, hard-working people I come across.
The desperate need for quality trades people is just that: desperate. Young people right out of high school can make 6 figures in those professions and then save up and go get whatever education they want and not be in the snare of debt and a slave their whole lives. For the borrower is a slave to the lender. Let's not teach our young people to be slaves. Let's teach them to be FREE! A hard-working, well-read, clear thinker is harder to oppress or ensnare.
There are so many issues with the system of education that our children grow up in, it would take me days to line them out. But here is the most significant: when humans are unfulfilled, bored, operating out of their giftedness, they turn to drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, and other unhelpful anesthetizations to numb, distract, and fill those black holes of pain and disillusionment. Then it creates a market for those items and there will always be someone, somewhere who is willing to capitalize on the dark side of human desire. Therefore, we come back to personal responsibility: we must be willing to contend for our own healing. We must be willing to get to the root of our own desires that drive our maladaptive behaviors and not choose these things, even when they're right in front of us and wildly available.
As much as I'm beating up on education, at the time, I loved mine. In general, I loved my teachers and I absolutely love learning. It's number one on my StrengthsFinder list. If I could, I'd be in school my whole life.
What I would REALLY love to see is an education system that was designed to draw out of individuals their true giftedness and then help them participate in them in a meaningful way and even learn how to make a living through them. If their gifts and abilities can't achieve their financial goals they would like, then they can have some time to wrestle through that and develop hobbies that fulfill them yet they can choose a job path that is as close to that as possible.
Folded in would absolutely still be history and literature and the such, but what IF we were setting the next generation up for great success in life instead of weighting them down with all sorts of chaos and confusion?
And please realize, there are lots of people who get just what they want out of the education system and are doing great. Wonderful! But there is also an entire subset of society who are actually harmed by the education system when they don't have to be. Those are the people I'd like to reach and be able to serve.