So, in the end, do we feel guilt or shame in getting something for nothing? Guilt is a powerful motivator. — Posty McPostface

Don’t know. Children, I believe, just feel the vanity to it without knowing how to articulate it. Adults, sometimes, learn to believe that getting everything for nothing is the best way to go. And I somehow doubt these adults feel shame or guilt about it—but I do believe they yet feel empty inside.

Adults, sometimes, learn to believe that getting everything for nothing is the best way to go. And I somehow doubt these adults feel shame or guilt about it—but I do believe they yet feel empty inside. — javra

This seems to be an issue of finding meaning in one's life. I suspect it is an issue of not knowing what one wants. So, part of the aim of education should be to identify what a person wants and needs, and try to have them achieve that, within reasonable circumstances.

What do you think?

I suspect also, that there's a deeper issue here. We are no longer treated as subjects in academic settings. Instead, we're a bundle of potential utility to the economy, which schools have to realize.

Is that something you would agree with?

This seems to be an issue of finding meaning in one's life. I suspect it is an issue of not knowing what one wants. So, part of the aim of education should be to identify what a person wants and needs, and try to have them achieve that, within reasonable circumstances. — Posty McPostface

Well, to me that sounds more like the role of a counselor. Good teachers however can wear many hats. Thing is, shoot … I think the best way I can express this is via the parable of the person who teaches the famished other how to fish rather than giving him/her food. Does this make sense?

I think it was Aristotle that I’m now paraphrasing: A good teacher is to be admired more than a parent, for the parent only gives the gift of live, whereas the good teacher gives the gift of living life well.

But, as others have said, this won’t happen by “telling”.

I suspect also, that there's a deeper issue here. We are no longer treated as subjects in academic settings. Instead, we're a bundle of potential utility to the economy, which schools have to realize. — Posty McPostface

Definitely.

--------

I'll be out for a while.

I'll be out for a while. — javra

Cheers, thanks for posting! :smile:

I want to shift the discussion slightly and talk about wants and needs. We all have needs that are either expressed and inferred. The role of education thus should be the ability to create a situation or state of affairs, through education to express and realize those needs. After that ordeal has been realized, then we can look at trying to realize wants.

Yet, wants are tricky because they are temporal and changing. We also face a society where almost all wants can be realized. Nobody cares about positive liberty/freedom or doing what we ought to do. What only matters to an individual and to our consumerist society is the gratification of negative liberties.

Hence, should an aim of education be the entertainment of moral or positive liberties? So, how do we attain an equilibrium of mediating positive freedoms with negative freedoms?

To admit that the fulfillment of some of our ideas may in principle make the fulfillment of others impossible is to say that the notion of total human fulfillment is a formal contradiction, a metaphysical chimera. — Isaiah Berlin

What about character education? Or learning about homemaking or parenting. Are these things teachable? Given how important they are to the attainment of happiness, then I think they are worthy subjects to include in school.

Would that be impossible to implement?

I ask myself often why we do so little in schools to promote spiritual well-being.

There was nothing spiritual about going to school in my earlier years. College was mostly devoid of spirituality in my experience also. Given our affinity for Puritanism and Western Christianity, there should be more of an emphasis on this aspect of education, or not?

Should happiness be the main aim of education? — Wallows

Happiness. That's an interesting take on education. :smile: I think there's an obvious answer here: education should prepare us to take part in the grown-up world as well as it can. These preparations could and should take many forms, ways to achieve happiness not being the least of them. :wink:

Education, in practice, and in the present day, is about teaching us to pass tests that should indicate we've learned something. But it's not the 'something' we concentrate on, it's the tests, and the test results. This surely cannot be optimal?