Education: A Response

BleedingHeartCommunist: “What you attempt is not educational if it is not difficult.”

Kabri: No

BHC: No?

Kabri: No . . . some things are terribly easy and educational too, like leaning against a tree and watching the clouds . . . making pictures out of them . . . daydreaming is another educational endeavor that is quite delightful.

BHC: But if it is easy then it comes naturally to you - therefore, you are not learning you are simply engaging in activities that stimulate you mentally or physically.

Kabri: Is not education supposed to stimulate you entirely?

BHC: Who says? I always thought that education was supposed to acclimate you to things you would not normally do, thereby widening your horizons.

Kabri: I always thought that the basis of an education was to let you know there were other options to explore . . . and where to go looking for information.

BHC: To me a truly educating experience is one that changes you forever – maybe not drastically, but in some way. In this way, education is the beginning of maturity.

Kabri: I know a few educated, pathetic, pitiful, persons that I wouldn't consider mature in any circumstance.

BHC: Then I would assert that they haven't really been educated. Education is not the memorization of data, but the taking of action that is for a greater good.

Kabri: A greater good for whom?

BHC: Oneself or another . . . some would consider greater good for another to be more mature, but I think that the greatest good affects both self and the object, if the object is available to be acted upon.

Kabri: Thinking about that statement.
I would have to disagree with you on that point . . . an education is the way we find out how little we really know. It isn't for the good - greater or not - it is to force us to use our minds for our own purposes.

BHC: But forcing our minds to do something is forcing them towards something they are not accustomed to, thereby causing some manner of friction. If the mind is not already tuned to that frequency then the experience is, by my reasoning, educational.

Kabri: You can learn something that you are not interested in and it will last only until the final test - then it will be relegated to the back of the brain where it becomes covered with cobwebs and totally useless junk. Learn something you are interested in, and it will stay with you for life . . . so forcing your mind to do something it doesn't want to do is not educational . . . it is torture.

BHC: You are correct in a sense . . . torture is a life-changing, mind-altering experience . . . it is educating.

Kabri: Educating? I suppose (I'll never have to do that again!) kind of educating.

BHC: I agree, and this is why to me there is a difference between temporary memorization and actual "learning.”

Do you agree?

Kabri: Yes, I agree