People who have clear ideas about What Education Should Be don’t always have clear ideas about What Education Is For.
We keep people tucked into classrooms for a lot of years. We should know why. We should know what it means for them to have spent the time well. It’s an important question because the way we answer it controls the choices we make.
Charlotte Mason, my favorite educational philosopher, said, “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”
I like that.
Learning is a means and an end. We learn in order to live well. We learn so that we can lean toward life.
And it doesn’t stop as long as you’re breathing.
It’s a purpose of generous proportion. It’s impossible to measure, but it is possible to go about it badly. What kind of learning is most life-giving? What kind of teaching? Those are the kind of things I’m thinking about. Lets keep chewing on them together, shall we?
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CC image courtesy of CaptPiper on Flickr.
A good way to start.