martes, 29 de junio de 2010

Educational Philosophy - Teaching Philosophy - INTERESTING QUOTES

Philosophy-Education.htm

Philosophy of Education

Educational Philosophy / Teaching Philosophy

Truth & Reality as the Foundations for Critical Thinking, Reason and Education
Quotes on Teaching Philosophy of Education from Famous Philosophers
Albert Einstein, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Michel de Montaigne, Plato, Aristotle & Confucius

Philosophy of Education / Educational Philosophy: Albert Einstein - My dear children: I rejoice to see you before me today, happy youth of a sunny and fortunate land. Bear in mind that the wonderful things that you learn in your schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labour in every country of the world.

Philosophy of Education / Educational Philosophy: Jean Jacques Rousseau - Begin then by studying your pupils better. For most assuredly you do not know them at all.

Philosophy of Education / Educational Philosophy: Michel de Montaigne - Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?

Philosophy of Education / Educational Philosophy: Plato - We shall not be properly educated ourselves, nor will the guardians whom we are training, until we can recognise the qualities of discipline, courage, generosity, greatness of mind, and others akin to them, as well as their opposites in all their manifestations.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. (Aristotle)

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? .. But in truth I know nothing about the philosophy of education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them.
(de Montaigne, On teaching Philosophy of Education)

Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.
(Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, On Philosophy of Education)

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by a educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilised in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society. (Albert Einstein, 1949, On Education)

Introduction - Albert Einstein / Philosophy of Education - Plato / Education - Jean Jacques Rousseau / Education - de Montaigne / Philosophy of Education - Educational Quotes by Famous Philosophers - Links Educational Philosophy - Top of Page

Introduction
(Philosophy of Education / Educational Philosophy / Teaching Philosophy)

My dear children: I rejoice to see you before me today, happy youth of a sunny and fortunate land. Bear in mind that the wonderful things that you learn in your schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labour in every country of the world. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honour it, and add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things which we create in common. If you always keep that in mind you will find meaning in life and work and acquire the right attitude towards other nations and ages. (Albert Einstein talking to a group of school children. 1934)

This page on Educational Philosophy has some lovely intelligent philosopher's quotes on both the importance of education, and what is a good education.

As a philosopher it is clear to me that teaching people how to think correctly and to use language carefully (to work out the truth for themselves) is a pretty good start for education (i.e. by teaching philosophy to students from a young age). However, I realise that this is an unfashionable view in our postmodern times of 'no absolute truths' - where all knowledge is incomplete, evolving, and relative to some cultural construction - thus teaching philosophy is seen as some abstract and largely useless exercise. If you browse around this website you will quickly realise that I do not support this current paradigm, which I see as being very destructive in both its affects on the individual and our collective society.

There are clearly many problems with our current education / teaching system, an evolutionary philosophy of education has important contributions to make to improving things. Below you will find a short introduction and then an excellent collection of education quotes from many of the greatest minds in human history. And as Aristotle so astutely observed;

"All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth." (Aristotle)

Geoff Haselhurst, Email
Philosopher of Science, Metaphysics, Theoretical Physics.

PS - I am currently re-writing all the main philosophy / physics pages. For these education pages I hope to write a short treatise on how we can improve our educational system, founded on one simple principle.
All things in the universe are interconnected and evolving (the dynamic unity of reality).
The central thesis is that education should be founded on truth and reality, and in particular how this relates to the interconnection of Mind (cultural knowledge and truth), Matter(biological knowledge and how our bodies are interconnected with other matter around us) andSpace (our environment, society). These three things are clearly interconnected (in physical reality), so you could call this an evolutionary / ecological approach to education, founded on a metaphysics of Space / wave structure of matter.

On Teaching, Educational Philosophy, What is a good education.

To begin, it is useful to briefly summarise my upbringing as this further explains my interest in education.

I believe I learnt more in 14 months of traveling through Europe in a van when I was ten years old, than in any other year at school. (I was most impressed by the Gothic Cathedrals of Europe, and the old ruined castles.) I was a rebellious but generally kind student. I failed first Year University Physics, largely due to non-attendance of lectures. I have a Bachelor of Education (majored in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics). I taught Science for 4 years. Both my parents were teachers/lecturers. Probably the most important reason for taking education seriously though comes from my love of philosophy, which clearly realises that Education is the most important factor in the evolution of both the individual and society.

I think there are some good things happening with the new Outcomes based curriculum that is currently being implemented in the West Australian state schools – I was involved with this at Nyindamurra Family School. What this means is that rather than prescribing a curriculum based upon certain content that must be studied, instead we prescribe the outcomes that we want. (e.g. A child can add up numbers in their head, or appreciate the importance of Nature and the interconnected ecology of life.) Now the way to teach these skills is open. You could go down the beach and count seashells by the seashore if you wanted.

And this is how I bring up my children – every day I use daily things around us to educate them to all sorts of different knowledge. For example, we recently built a giant swing - and children can learn a lot by building and playing on swings (pendulums and pendulum clocks are interesting phenomena, a very great philosopher Christiaan Huygens first studied pendulums at the time of Newton and Leibniz in the late 1600s.). They have to be creative – how do you get a rope over a branch ten meters off the ground? – how do you build a tower using materials in the bush around you, such that you have a platform to jump onto your swing from (using gravity to push you!)?

I should add that an outcomes based system also has numerous problems, as it is difficult to ensure a uniform quality of education. The real solution is to consider both the curriculum used, and the outcomes you hope to achieve - combined with intelligent use of the internet so that the best curriculums that show empirically that they work (produce desired outcomes) can be shared / adapted by teachers from all over the world (we do not need to keep re-inventing the wheel).

I certainly do not believe in just sitting in a classroom – which is unnatural, unhealthy, and should be limited. It is obvious we did not evolve to learn by sitting in classrooms, in segregated age groups - but to be active, out and about doing things, talking, watching and learning from other people and other objects around us. (This is what I would call an evolutionary approach to teaching / philosophy of education - and getting kids more active at school would also greatly help to combat the obesity epidemic of the western world.)

I particularly agree with Einstein, that education (and teaching students philosophy from a young age) has two central functions relating to the individual and their society.

i) To educate the individual as a free individual – To understand and use critical thinking skills for determining the Truth for themselves.

ii) To educate the individual as a part of Society – Virtually all our knowledge, our clothes, our food is produced by others in our society, thus we owe Society and have a responsibility to contribute back to Society (that everyone must give as well as take.) This is ultimately why I began to study Physics and Philosophy, and why I have now read most of the great philosophers, because I believe that Nature is being destroyed on this planet, and that the truth is that this is very foolish and dangerous to humanity. That we evolved from Nature, thus we depend upon Nature for survival. This is not just the obvious concern of global warming and climate change, but the very food we eat, the air we breath, the water we need, all these things are produced by Nature and are being forever changed. Of concern is the obvious fact that there are limits to our evolution as to how far we can change our environment before it starts to adversely affect us (we are well past that point now I think.)

I also strongly agree with Einstein that education should be fun rather than forced – that force and punishment play no part in a good education. Thus I detest the attitude of punishing children for not doing their homework!

I think a lot of education problems could be solved by giving everyone 100 great books to read and discuss with their children - from philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, de Montaigne, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hume, Tolstoy, Einstein … etc. There are many great minds through human history, and I largely agree with Nietzsche that education is often corrupted by educators – that we should seek the source of great knowledge, not the corrupted interpretations of it from lesser minds. (Read the original works!)
I further agree with Friedrich Nietzsche that:

There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value.
This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive?
One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived. (Nietzsche, 1890)

The fundamental principle of education is to understand the truth for oneself. The fundamental principle of philosophy is to realise that all truth comes from reality. Thus educational philosophy must be founded on the truth of what exists. Recent discoveries of the properties of Space and the Wave Structure of Matter shows that we can understand reality in a simple and sensible way.

Geoff Haselhurst

Albert Einstein on Knowledge & Philosophy of Education

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. (Albert Einstein)

Knowledge of the history and evolution of our ideas is absolutely vital for wise understanding. It is also important to read the original source (not a later interpretation which often leads to misrepresentation and error) and that these original quotes should give confidence to the truth of what we say. As Albert Einstein astutely remarks;

Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.
There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind. We owe it to a few writers of antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, etc.) that the people in the Middle Ages could slowly extricate themselves from the superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more than half a millennium. Nothing is more needed to overcome the modernist's snobbishness. (Einstein, 1954)

As Philosophers, Scientists and Educators we have a responsibility to maintain great knowledge from the past, for as Einstein beautifully writes;

... knowledge must continually be renewed by ceaseless effort, if it is not to be lost. It resembles a statue of marble which stands in the desert and is continually threatened with burial by the shifting sand. The hands of service must ever be at work, in order that the marble continue to lastingly shine in the sun. To these serving hands mine shall also belong. (Einstein, On Education, 1950)

When, after several hours reading, I came to myself again, I asked myself what it was that had so fascinated me. The answer is simple. The results were not presented as ready-made, but scientific curiosity was first aroused by presenting contrasting possibilities of conceiving matter. Only then the attempt was made to clarify the issue by thorough argument. The intellectual honesty of the author makes us share the inner struggle in his mind. It is this which is the mark of the born teacher. Knowledge exists in two forms - lifeless, stored in books, and alive, in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position. (Einstein, 1954)

I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values. I am not thinking so much of the dangers with which technical progress has directly confronted mankind, as of the stifling of mutual human considerations by a 'matter-of-fact' habit of thought which has come to lie like a killing frost upon human relations. Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity. (Einstein, 1953)

Albert Einstein On Academic Freedom

Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers. Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young people who genuinely thirst for truth and justice. Numerous are the wares that nature produces by the dozen, but her choice products are few.
We all know that, so why complain? Was it not always thus and will it not always thus remain? Certainly, and one must take what nature gives as one finds it. But there is also such a thing as a spirit of the times, an attitude of mind characteristic of a particular generation, which is passed on from individual to individual and gives its distinctive mark to a society. Each of us has to his little bit toward transforming this spirit of the times. (Einstein, 1954)

Albert Einstein On Freedom of Thought

The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit in general requires still another kind of freedom, which may be characterised as inward freedom. It is this freedom of spirit which consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudices as well as from unphilosophical routinizing and habit in general. This inward freedom is an infrequent gift of nature and a worthy objective for the individual.
..schools may favor such freedom by encouraging independent thought. Only if outward and inner freedom are constantly and consciously pursued is there a possibility of spiritual development and perfection and thus of improving man's outward and inner life. (Einstein, 1954)

Albert Einstein on Philosophy of Education in Schools

The school has always been the most important means of transferring the wealth of tradition from one generation to the next. This applies today in an even higher degree than in former times, for through modern development of the economic life, the family as bearer of tradition and education has been weakened. The continuance and health of human society is therefore in a still higher degree dependent on the school than formerly.
Sometimes one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring a certain maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing generation. But that is not right. Knowledge is dead; the school however, serves the living. It should develop in the young individuals those qualities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the commonwealth. But that does not mean that individuality should be destroyed and the individual become a mere tool of the community, like a bee or an ant. For a community of standardised individuals without personal originality and personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development. On the contrary, the aim must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals, who, however, see in the service of the community their highest life problem.
To me the worst thing seems to be for a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity, and the self-confidence of the pupil. It produces the submissive subject. it is no wonder that such schools are the rule in Germany and Russia.
..the desire for the approval of one's fellow-man certainly is one of the most important binding powers of society. In this complex of feelings, constructive and destructive forces lie closely together. Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive; but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for the community. Therefore the school and the teacher must guard against employing the easy method of creating individual ambition, in order to induce the pupils to diligent work. (Einstein)

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little planet, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be prompted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. On the contrary, I believe that it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food handed out under such coercion were to be selected accordingly. (Albert Einstein on Education)

Plato, Quotations on Education

..for the object of education is to teach us to love beauty. (Plato)

'And once we have given our community a good start,' I pointed out, ' the process will be cumulative. By maintaining a sound system of education you produce citizens of good character, and citizens of sound character, with the advantage of a good education, produce in turn children better than themselves and better able to produce still better children in their turn, as can be seen with animals.'(Plato)

'... It is in education that bad discipline can most easily creep in unobserved,' he replied.

'Yes,' I agreed, ' because people don't treat it seriously there, and think no harm can come of it.'

'It only does harm,' he said, 'because it makes itself at home and gradually undermines morals and manners; from them it invades business dealings generally, and then spreads into the laws and constitution without any restraint, until it has made complete havoc of private and public life.'

'And when men who aren't fit to be educated get an education they don't deserve, are not the thoughts and opinions they produce fairly called sophistry, without a legitimate idea or any trace of true wisdom among them?'

'Certainly'.

'The first thing our artist must do,' I replied, ' - and it's not easy - is to take human society and human habits and wipe them clean out, to give himself a clean canvas. For our philosophic artist differs from all others in being unwilling to start work on an individual or a city, or draw out laws, until he is given, or has made himself, a clean canvas.'

'Because a free man ought not to learn anything under duress. Compulsory physical exercise does no harm to the body, but compulsory learning never sticks to the mind.'

'True'

'Then don't use compulsion,' I said to him, ' but let your children's lessons take the form of play. You will learn more about their natural abilities that way.' (Plato)

Jean Jacques Rousseau, On the Philosophy of Education

Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgement. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education. (Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile)

I will say little of the importance of a good education; nor will I stop to prove that the current one is bad. Countless others have done so before me, and I do not like to fill a book with things everybody knows. I will note that for the longest time there has been nothing but a cry against the established practice without anyone taking it upon himself to propose a better one. The literature and the learning of our age tend much more to destruction than to edification. (Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile)

Michel de Montaigne, Philosophy Quotes on Education

I would like to suggest that our minds are swamped by too much study and by too much matter just as plants are swamped by too much water or lamps by too much oil; that our minds, held fast and encumbered by so many diverse preoccupations, may well lose the means of struggling free, remaining bowed and bent under the load; except that it is quite otherwise: the more our souls are filled, the more they expand; examples drawn from far-off times show, on the contrary, that great soldiers ad statesmen were also great scholars. (de Montaigne)

I think it better to say that the evil arises from their tackling the sciences in the wrong manner and that, from the way we have been taught, it is no wonder that neither master nor pupils become more able, even though they do know more. In truth the care and fees of our parents aim only at furnishing our heads with knowledge: nobody talks about judgement or virtue. When someone passes by, try exclaiming, ‘Oh, what a learned man!’ Then, when another does, ‘Oh, what a good man!’ Our people will not fail to turn their gaze respectfully towards the first. There ought to be a third man crying, ‘Oh, what blockheads!' (de Montaigne)

We readily inquire, ‘Does he know Greek or Latin?’ ‘Can he write poetry and prose?’ But what matters most is what we put last: ‘Has he become better and wiser?’ We ought to find out not who understands most but who understands best. We work merely to fill the memory, leaving the understanding and the sense of right and wrong empty. Just as birds sometimes go in search of grain, carrying it in their beaks without tasting it to stuff it down the beaks of their young, so too do our schoolmasters go foraging for learning in their books and merely lodge it on the tip of their lips, only to spew it out and scatter it on the wind. (de Montaigne)

Their pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn: the learning is passed from hand to hand with only one end in view: to show it off, to put into our accounts to entertain others with it, as though it were merely counters, useful for totting up and producing statements, but having no other use or currency. ‘Apud alios loqui didicerunt, non ipsi secum’ [They have learned how to talk with others, not with themselves] (de Montaigne)

Whenever I ask a certain acquaintance of mine to tell me what he knows about anything, he wants to show me a book: he would not venture to tell me that he has scabs on his arse without studying his lexicon to find out the meaning of scab and arse.
All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own. We closely resemble a man who, needing a fire, goes next door to get a light, finds a great big blaze there and stays to warm himself, forgetting to take a brand back home. What use is it to us to have a belly full of meat if we do not digest it, if we do not transmute it into ourselves, if it does not make us grow in size and strength? (de Montaigne)

If our souls do not move with a better motion and if we do not have a healthier judgement, then I would just as soon that our pupil should spend his time playing tennis: at least his body would become more agile. But just look at him after he has spent some fifteen or sixteen years studying: nothing could be more unsuited for employment. The only improvement you can see is that his Latin and Greek have made him more conceited and more arrogant than when he left home. He ought to have brought back a fuller soul: he brings back a swollen one; instead of making it weightier he has merely blown wind into it. (de Montaigne)

And I loathe people who find it harder to put up with a gown askew than with a soul askew and who judge a man by his bow, his bearing and his boots. (de Montaigne)

Learning is a good medicine: but no medicine is powerful enough to preserve itself from taint and corruption independently of defects in the jar that it is kept in. One man sees clearly but does not see straight: consequently he sees what is good but fails to follow it; he sees knowledge and does not use it. (de Montaigne)

.. since it was true that study, even when done properly, can only teach us what wisdom, right conduct and determination consist in, they wanted to put their children directly in touch with actual cases, teaching them not by hearsay but by actively assaying them, vigorously molding and forming them not merely by word and precept but chiefly by deeds and examples, so that wisdom should not be something which the soul knows but the soul’s very essence and temperament, not something acquired but a natural property. (de Montaigne)

But in truth I know nothing about education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them. (de Montaigne)

Socrates and then Archesilaus used to make their pupils speak first; they spoke afterwards. ‘Obest plerumque iss discere volunt authoritas eorum qui docent.’ [For those who want to learn, the obstacle can often be the authority of those who teach] (de Montaigne)

Those who follow our French practice and undertake to act as schoolmaster for several minds diverse in kind and capacity, using the same teaching and the same degree of guidance for them all, not surprisingly can scarcely find in a whole tribe of children more than one or two who bear fruit from their education.
Let the tutor not merely require a verbal account of what the boy has been taught but the meaning and substance of it: let him judge how the boy has profited from it not from the evidence of his memory but from that of his life. Let him take what the boy has just learned and make him show him dozens of different aspects of it and then apply it to just as many different subjects, in order to find out whether he has really grasped it and made it part of himself, judging the boy’s progress by what Plato taught about education. Spewing food up exactly as you have swallows it is evidence of a failure to digest and assimilate it; the stomach has not done its job if, during concoction, it fails to change the substance and the form of what it is given. (de Montaigne)

The profit we possess after study is to have become better and wiser. (de Montaigne)

Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul; you must also toughen up his muscles. (de Montaigne)

Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival’s doing or within himself from some change in his ideas. (de Montaigne)

As for our pupils talk, let his virtue and his sense of right and wrong shine through it and have no guide but reason. Make him understand that confessing an error which he discovers in his own argument even when he alone has noticed it is an act of justice and integrity, which are the main qualities he pursues; stubbornness and rancour are vulgar qualities, visible in common souls whereas to think again, to change one’s mind and to give up a bad case on the heat of the argument are rare qualities showing strength and wisdom. (de Montaigne)

In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who live only in the memory of books. By means of history he will frequent those great souls of former years. If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time; it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price. (de Montaigne)

The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die … and to live. (de Montaigne)

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? (de Montaigne)

Any time and any place can be used to study: his room, a garden, is table, his bed; when alone or in company; morning and evening. His chief study will be Philosophy, that Former of good judgement and character who is privileged to be concerned with everything.
(de Montaigne)

For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom. (de Montaigne)

Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her. (de Montaigne)

Educational Quotes by Famous Philosophers

Quotations from Confucius, Aristotle, Euripides, Seneca, Cicero, Horace, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, John Fowles, George Bernard Shaw

Study the past if you would define the future.
I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. (Confucius, Analects)

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these gave only life, those the art of living well. (Aristotle, In Education)

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead. (Aristotle, In Education)

All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth. (Aristotle)

Learned we may be with another man’s learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own:
[I hate a sage who is not wise for himself] (Euripides)

What use is knowledge if there is no understanding? (Stobaeus)

‘non vitae sed scholae discimus’. [We are taught for the schoolroom not for life] (Seneca)

Now we are not merely to stick knowledge on to the soul: we must incorporate it into her; the soul should not be sprinkled with knowledge but steeped in it. (Seneca)

And if knowledge does not change her and make her imperfect state better then it is preferable just to leave it alone. Knowledge is a dangerous sword; in a weak hand which does not know how to wield it it gets in its master’s way and wounds him, ‘ut fuerit melius non didicisse’ [so that it would have been better not to have studied at all] (de Montaigne quoting Cicero)

She (philosophy) is equally helpful to the rich and poor: neglect her, and she equally harms the young and old. (Horace)

‘As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off; who can control himself and obey his own principles.’ The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives. (de Montaigne quoting Cicero)

THE TEACHER AS A NECESSARY EVIL. Let us have as few people as possible between the productive minds and the hungry and recipient minds! The middlemen almost unconsciously adulterate the food which they supply. It is because of teachers that so little is learned, and that so badly. (Nietzsche, 1880)

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. (Sigmund Freud)

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it. (Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy)

To begin with our knowledge grows in spots. ..What you first gain, ... is probably a small amount of new information, a few new definitions, or distinctions, or points of view. But while these special ideas are being added, the rest of your knowledge stands still, and only gradually will you line up your previous opinions with the novelties I am trying to instill, and to modify to some slight degree their mass. ..Your mind in such processes is strained, and sometimes painfully so, between its older beliefs and the novelties which experience brings along. (William James, Pragmatism)

Chess permits freedom of permutations within a framework of set rules and prescribed movements. Because a chess player cannot move absolutely as he likes, either in terms of the rules or in terms of the exigencies of the particular game, has he no freedom of move? The separate games of chess I play with existence has different rules from your and every other game; the only similarity is that each of our games always has rules. The gifts, inherited and acquired, that are special to me are the rules of the game; and the situation I am in at any given moment is the situation of the game. My freedom is the choice of action and the power of enactment I have within the rules and situation of the game. (Fowles, 1964. The Aristos)

Our present educational systems are all paramilitary. Their aim is to produce servants or soldiers who obey without question and who accepts their training as the best possible training. Those who are most successful in the state are those who have the most interest in prolonging the state as it is; they are also those who have the most say in the educational system, and in particular by ensuring that the educational product they want is the most highly rewarded. (Fowles, 1964. The Aristos)

Every serious student of the subject knows that the stability of a civilisation depends finally on the wisdom with which it distributes its wealth and allots its burdens of labour, and on the veracity of the instruction it provides for its children. We do not distribute the wealth at all: we throw it into the streets to be scrambled for by the strongest and the greediest who will stoop to such scrambling, after handing the lion’s share to the professional robbers politely called owners. We cram our children with lies, and punish anyone who tries to enlighten them. Our remedies for the consequences of our folly are tariffs, inflation, wars, vivisections and inoculations – vengeance, violences, black magic. (George Bernard Shaw)

Education Links / Educational Philosophy

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Education which is Open to Society - Mary Kibera

Education which is Open to Society

Mary Kibera

Tags: Citizenship, Education, Children, Opus Dei
I would like to consider the influence that saint Josemaría Escrivá has had in my life as an educator in Kenya. I will begin by talking about my childhood experiences because I am amazed that while they are so different from saint Josemaría Escrivá’s, I have for the last quarter of a century made his teachings an integral part of my life and have communicated them to others through my professional work.

My parents were baptized Anglicans. My father did not practise at all but my mother went to church fairly often on Sundays. Like the rest of my brothers and sisters, I was baptized in the Anglican Church at the age of nine after learning the catechism. We had no pious practices in my home that I can remember. The most ‘religious’ thing I recall doing was singing hymns at the house of my grandmother who lived next to us.

My mother was a virtuous woman who had her own deeply religious sense. It was from her that I learned that if you really want to give, you should give generously. If you are going to give in a half-hearted manner, it is better not to give at all. With regard to her children, my mother could tell merely by looking at our faces what was going on. She would prudently wait for a suitable moment to discuss things. How well I understand what saint Josemaría used to say that we owe 90% of our vocation to our parents!

When I look back, I am moved to see how the spirit of Opus Dei has helped me to appreciate all that was positive in my family and upbringing, while at the same time creating a hunger in me to fill in what was missing. I came into contact with the message of saint Josemaría when I began my studies at Kianda Secretarial College in Nairobi, a school started by faithful of Opus Dei. At this time, it had only been three years since I had been received into the Catholic Church, and I was still struggling to see how my newly found faith fitted in with my ordinary life.

1. The Richness of Diversity
While Kianda Secretarial College started in 1961, Kianda Residence opened its doors on 29th January 1967. I was admitted to live in Kianda Residence after an interview with Olga Marlin, one of the first eight women that saint Josemaría sent to Kenya to start Opus Dei. I must confess that I might never have decided to study at Kianda Secretarial College had it not been for the very genuine smile with which Olga welcomed me. That smile attracted me, and I felt that it communicated something I was not able to understand at the time, but which I later understood when I heard Olga say: “I do not recall making an effort to love Africans. When I came to Kenya, I felt I was carrying the Father’s love [of saint Josemaría] for them in my heart”.

I appreciated the deep respect with which we were treated in Kianda Residence irrespective of our backgrounds. There were over 90 of us in Kianda Residence from 16 different countries — Africans, Europeans, and Asians from different religious and cultural backgrounds. This was only three years after the country’s Independence, which had been preceded by severe racial discrimination. It was because of discrimination that Kianda Secretarial College had had to move to the outskirts of the city, from the residential zone in which it had initially been located. At that time, racial segregation was still obligatory in such neighbourhoods, and the founders of Kianda wanted their college to be open to people of all races and nationalities from the very beginning.

A mixture of young people from different races, colours, creeds and cultures lived together harmoniously in this Residence, very conscious of the richness created by this diversity. We had so much to give and to receive from each other. We learned song and dance from different parts of the world: Tanzania, Greece, Egypt, Uganda, Botswana, Malawi, Ireland, France, Kenya... The teachers too came from different countries: United States, Spain, Mexico and Ireland. We were really a family.

The Founder of Opus Dei gave those first women a special message when they came to Kenya. I have witnessed it lived both by them and by those who came after them. This is recounted in To Africa With a Dream, a book written by Olga Marlin, which will be published soon. I want to quote and briefly comment on three pieces of advice that they received from Josemaría Escrivá.

In the first place, saint Josemaría encouraged them to integrate themselves completely into the country, without any traces of paternalism. The author of the book writes: “The Father insisted on the importance of our identifying with the mentality and customs of our new countries. ‘When we begin our work in a country’, he said ‘we cannot isolate ourselves, but must form roots in it”. The founder of Opus Dei explained to them that they should not form a cist but should melt in with the people of the country. “It wasn’t easy to meet Africans because in Nairobi the races were segregated”, Olga continues. “Buses were divided into two sections — the front for Europeans — and residential areas were also divided according to race”. Despite the difficulties faced by the new secretarial college, by 1965 the Mayor of Nairobi could already say: “If Kianda is now at the forefront of teaching institutions dedicated to the education of women, it is because it has worked with all and for all”.

The Founder of Opus Dei also spoke to them about the necessity of learning from the people of the country. Olga Marlin writes: “The Father reminded us that we were going to learn. Our role, he said, was to be like that of the stick placed beside a young tree to help it grow strong and upright until it can stand on its own. The deepest work would be done by the people we formed in the countries we went to”. And this is what has happened: Kianda and all the other educational institutions started by faithful of Opus Dei are now almost fully run by people of the country.

Finally, saint Josemaría also trusted these women to start activities that would improve the condition of African women. “The condition that the African women were in was of great concern to the Father”, continues Olga Marlin, “Our job was to help change this through education and by upholding the Christian view of the dignity of women”.

Soon after arriving, the first faithfuls of Opus Dei met a lady relative of the soon-to-be President, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta who told them: “You have arrived at a very good time to open a school for girls. Our women need education in order to become self-reliant, respect themselves, and make themselves respected. This can only happen when they are financially independent. Your school should provide them with the necessary skills”.

As Olga Marlin said, African women were in a vicious circle. They needed ‘education for freedom’ and ‘freedom to be educated’. In those days, fathers educated their sons while their daughters got married at an early age.

Within a year of opening, Kianda Secretarial College was already turning out young women who were competent and well educated, and who had many employment opportunities. The first to benefit from this education were their families, because being a secretary meant there would be an immediate rise in the standard of living, and further educational opportunities for the rest of the siblings. I can truly say that Kianda Secretarial College is one of the institutions that has had the greatest impact in the transformation of our society by giving women the dignity to fully participate in the social and economic development of our country. The name Kianda is known in every corner of the country.

2. Education and Social Development
On the socio-cultural level, I have seen many changes over the years that I have worked at Kianda. In traditional African culture, children and wives did not discuss anything with the father or spouse. It is a reality that many families who have passed through Kianda have changed their way of relating to each other. There is a lot more communication and a lot more respect.

The mothers we worked with in the early years admitted that African men had certain difficult attitudes because of the way that mothers brought up their small boys. For example, boys were supposed to be ‘manly’ in the sense that they did not cry or show any emotions and they were not supposed to do any job in the house. On the contrary, their mothers and sisters were to serve them in every way. Without being too conscious of it, mothers often taught their sons to be hard and unaffectionate with women, and consequently, with their future wives and children.

When we started Family Development activities with mothers in 1984, we heard comments such as: “The African man does not discuss things with his wife. They are the bosses. They decide what has to be done and they give the orders”. With regard to the education of children they said: “Men pay the school fees and women do the rest: attend school meetings, look after children’s homework, timetables, and their whole upbringing”. Husbands tended to refer to “your children” when the children failed or did something wrong.

These two attitudes show how difficult family life was, especially for wives and mothers. They found the teachings of the Founder of Opus Dei to be both welcome and innovative. One such idea is as follows: “I always advise parents to try to be friends with their children. The parental authority that the rearing of children requires can be perfectly harmonised with friendship, which means putting themselves, in some way, on the same level as their children. Children — even those who seem intractable and unresponsive — always want this closeness, this fraternity, with their parents” (Conversations, 100).

Another recent testimony manifests the transformation that is taking place in our society due in part to this method of education. One of our senior students wrote the following in a magazine article entitled “Parent-teenager Relationships”: “Both parents and teenagers need to discuss why they feel the way they do. When was the last time that you had a serious discussion with your parent or child? How can you build a relationship when there is no communication? That is why I feel that parents and teenagers can really benefit from the occasional family meeting”.

“One of the things I found hardest”, one father of a Kianda student said, “was the number of meetings I had to attend at this school, but now I realize that this greater commitment pays off. We now come to the school out of interest in the education of our children — not just to find out their grades”.

Another father, whose daughter finished school last year, is a lecturer in the university. Recently, he came to tell me that he had agreed to be on the Parent- Teacher Association of another school because he wanted to pass on to other parents what he had gained in Kianda. “What you have is unique, and I am also proposing to help draw up a curriculum on parenting to make it a university programme”.
In order for things really to function properly, there has to be an inner transformation of the person. The spiritual ideal communicated by st Josemaría is a deeply transforming spirit because it leads one to a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. It elevates all noble human realities to the supernatural plane. “There is no other way. Either we learn to find our Lord in ordinary, everyday life, or else we shall never find Him. That is why I can tell you that our age needs to give back to matter and to the most trivial occurrences and situations their noble and original meaning. It needs to restore them to the service of the Kingdom of God, to spiritualize them, turning them into a means and an occasion for a continuous meeting with Jesus Christ” (Conversations, 114).

3. The Experience of Kianda High School
Kianda High School was born from the experience of Kianda Secretarial College, and it continues trying to apply the pastoral message of st Josemaría. In 1973, an alumna of Kianda Secretarial College said; “My daughter is in primary school now, but I would so much like her to benefit from the personal attention given at Kianda, as I did. Couldn’t you start a secondary school?” By that time, a good number of past Kianda Secretarial College students had daughters old enough for high school.

It was in 1976, two years after I finished university when the Steering Committee for the incipient Kianda High School asked me if I would like to help to start the school the following year. I was teaching in Kianda Secretarial College and the only working experience in secondary schools that I had were two teaching practices I undertook when I was doing my degree course. I had so often listened to stories about the beginnings of Kianda Secretarial College and even witnessed some of those beginnings myself, that the idea that God makes use of us as instruments was very clear to me. The eight women who arrived to start Opus Dei in 1960 realized on their arrival that what women in Kenya needed was not a finishing school which they had planned to set up, but a secretarial college. Although only one of them had secretarial skills, the college started the following year, and soon became the most famous college in English-speaking Africa. It was thus that I started working on this new project.

Kianda High School has become a catalyst for new initiatives for the family and society at large. Currently, it is rated academically as the top girls’ day school in Kenya, and overall it is among the top ten out of over 4,000 schools. We have just received a letter from the Provincial Education Board congratulating the “students, staff and the entire school community”. It says: “Your continued good performance over the years is a clear indication of a well focused effort towards imparting positive attributes to the Youth of this nation as we mould them to be responsible citizens”.

Because of the outstanding success Kianda High School has attained both academically and in giving an all-round education, we are now having frequent visits and enquiries from parents and educators. Many of our past students are studying in universities all over the world: in Australia, in the United States of America, in Britain, in Canada, etc. Quite often, we get reports praising them in their achievements. From a university in the United States, we received a letter from which I quote the following:
“I am writing to thank you for your past recommendations of fine young students to our University and to invite you to nominate 5 students for the Scholarship Program [...] We seek candidates who have exhibited a capacity for service and leadership, as well as academic excellence, and who will embrace the challenges of a rigorous curriculum. We are especially interested in students who stand out among their peers for their maturity, strong moral character, selflessness, and commitment to community”.

We are happy to note that in these letters, there are words such as responsible citizens, capacity to serve, maturity, moral principles, commitment to the good of the community and academic excellence because they simply reflect our desire to put into practice the spirit of st Josemaría in each situation.

Linda, an Ugandan past student writes from the United States to her “Dear Alma Mater”. She says, “I graduated in Biochemistry and I am currently teaching at a high school here in Los Angeles. I am quite surprised at my employment. I am forever grateful to all the teachers I had during my time at Kianda. Your instruction and example have stayed with me and return to my mind as I attempt to walk in your footsteps”.

The Chairperson of the Past Students’ Association who is also a Professor of Molecular Biology gave a speech on the School’s 20th Anniversary: “I’m proud to be a Kianda graduate. What I appreciate most is the training we were given. We were helped to grow in self-confidence. Each one was treated as an individual and encouraged to be herself. We learned to be independent, to do things because we wanted to and not because we were forced to. You don’t know how it is out there. We Kianda alumnae want to change that”.

We are glad to see that our past students have assimilated and personalized the message of st Josemaría with a sense of freedom and a readiness to communicate it to others wherever they go. Finally, I would like to mention that in January 2002, we started the Institute for Family Development with a group of parents, some of whom are past students. The Institute is currently training couples to be trainers for other parents in family education. Parents in general are coming together to study and share experiences on different aspects of family life.

As time goes by, I am more and more convinced of the need to start family education early when virtues can be cultivated with greater facility. With the demand made on modern parents that both mother and father work outside the home, coupled with the ever increasing external influences which are often negative, families need help as early as possible. Our next project is a nursery school to be run by parents. It would be a wonderful present on saint Josemaría’s centenary as well as Kianda High School’s 25th anniversary.

Mary Kibera, Director of Institute for Family Development, Kianda School, Nairobi, Kenya.

Published in the acts of the international congress “The Grandeur of Ordinary Life”, vol. VI: Work and Education.

Kianda School website: www.kiandaschool.org

Original posting @http://www.josemariaescriva.info/article/education-which-is-open-to-society