Posts Tagged Pain

Education Explored

Posted by MMGoode in Education on March 6, 2011

“Education”  is the accumulation of what one learns, remembers, and applies.  Three steps.  It’s not good enough just to know something — although one could arguably win Jeopardy with just an accumulation of remembered facts.  But it’s knowing what to do with those facts and applying that knowledge to make things better that is the mark of a well educated man — or woman.  It’s like planting a seed (learning something), nourishing that seed  (trying it out in real life), and harvesting the fruit (the resulting pleasure or pain). Those three steps combined is the essence of education.

Wait a minute, you shout at me.  Did I read pain in the paragraph above?

Yes you did.  Why do you ask?

Because I don’t like pain.  You see, it’s . . . well, . . . painful.

Ah!  You want to avoid the pain.  Hmmm.  I’m not sure that is possible.  But if you insist on trying, then you’ll have to think about what you’ve done.  You’ll have to discover if you brought the pain upon yourself or if it was unavoidable, no matter what you thought or how you behaved.  So think about it.  Examine it.

For  example, I just returned from choir practice.  I am the accompanist,  not an exceptional one.  I didn’t practice the music since the last rehearsal  because, first, I couldn’t remember which songs we were learning and, second and more importantly, I didn’t actually think about choir from the time I walked out the door the last time until I sat down at the piano before the rehearsal began this morning.

So.  I could play most of the music reasonably well,  but every time the choir came to one particular measure, I massacred it.  It was scratches on the chalkboard painful.  After I suffered the pain 4 times, (I can be a slow learner) I actually looked at the notes one by one.  That’s when I discovered an #A accidental in the first of the measure which I missed the second time it appeared.  Every time I missed it.  Painful mistake after mistake.

For you non-music people, an accidental is only marked the first time the need appears in a measure.  Every other incident of that note in the remainder of the measure is unmarked.  It must be observed without a reminder.   An easy solution would have been for me to write in that second #A.  But I had no pencil.  Though I made a mental note to bring a pencil with me next time, it didn’t help me play better immediately.  If I don’t want to repeat the mistake  next week during the performance, I’ll have to change.  Learn the music.  If I don’t, the pain is already there waiting for me with his cousin, embarrassment.

Now expand the above example to include all of  life experience.   If you don’t like where you are at the moment, if — let’s say — you’re in too much pain, then it’s time to examine your pain and see from whence it came,  learn from it, and change what you have the power to change.  I have some vague memory about something to do with an unexamined life.   I think John Milton said something about it.  No!  Milton talked about virtue and innocence.   It was  . . . think  . . . think . . . think . . . Socrates.

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

That’s what we’ve been discussing.  Right?  Well then, if “examine”  means to probe, appraise, analyze, review, or study — just to mention a few– then Socrates is saying that even apart from practicing the piano, the experiences of life must be examined — or why have them?  It’s in the examination that the real learning begins.  In that light, examination is the home of education.

So we’ve discovered one purpose of education!  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it nicely, “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.  The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.”

Good.  Think critically.  But is that enough? Actually, if you think about it critically, a criminal could do that.  And Dr. King knew that.  His next sentence states, “But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.”  Gregory Louie, a science teacher who loves 7th Graders speaks to this issue when he says, “What is education?  It is a life-long process of recognizing one’s gifts and talents, of putting those gifts and talents to good use in service of the greater good. Education leads a person to find their place in society with all the attending rights and responsibilities of adulthood.”

In Mr. Louie’s statement above I noticed a few important things.  The first is that three step process we talked about in the beginning.  In recognizing our gifts and talents we take the first step (plant the seed).  Next we use those gifts and talents to make life better for those around us (nourish the seed).  That’s how  we find our rightful place in society with all the rights and privileges that entails (harvest the fruit).  Secondly,  his words, to use our gifts and talents in service of the greater good, implies high moral conduct, a sense of right and wrong, a standard of behavior above any individual’s private needs and desires.

It must be so,  for if we live in communities of any sort and reap the myriad benefits of that association, then we share a primary responsibility  to act for the betterment of the community as a whole, even if we must sacrifice some of our own personal pleasure to do so.  If we know enough — are well enough educated — to be willing to sacrifice our time and talents in the service of others — and do it consistently — then our education has become  a crown upon our head, a sheild of protection girding our loins, and a sword of valor in our hands.  Education has become the most important single achievement of our lifetime,  one sure thing that raises our consciousness and propels us forward — even “to infinity and beyond,” to quote Buzz Lightyear.

Related Articles

, , , , , , , , ,

4 Comments