so in Nietzsche “Untimely Meditations”…
“Schopenhauer as Educator”
what was the role of Schopenhauer in Nietzsche’s education?
was Schopenhauer, a teacher as Nietzsche claimed or did Nietzsche
simply began with Schopenhauer thoughts and built his own philosophy
upon what Schopenhauer wrote?
This question of education is a fundamental one in every society…
The Greeks were obsessed by it…much of Plato
and Socrates thought was dedicated toward education…
as shown by Werner Jaeger in his groundbreaking work,
“Paideia” The ideals of Greek Culture
How does the process of education work?
how do we transmit information from one generation to another?
as I have noted before, when we are born, we are instantly placed into
a situation where we are educated. I have called this “indoctrinations”
we are indoctrinated with the values, beliefs, hopes and dreams of
our parents and our society/state and culture…
we are taught their biases, their prejudices, their habits, their
superstitions, their ism’s and ideologies……
this is education…
so I ask, is Christianity, an education?
is Buddhism an education?
if we teach our children these ism’s as the basis for how to live life,
then yes, we are using Christianity as the basis of an education…
and yes, then we are using Buddhism as the basis of an education…
what is the value of an education? we use education as a means
to be an example… education is an example…
If I walk down the street and see a person lying on the ground
after being beaten, should I intervene? The parable of the good
Samaritan tells us that we should intervene and help that person…
education is meant to tell us what to do in any given situation…
as an example…
so is democracy, an education?
is democracy, an example?
we have historical examples of thinkers using education as
an example, Kant, Spinoza, Hume for example…
take Kant for example, his Categorical imperative,
“act only according to that maxim, whereby you can,
at the same time, will it should become a universal law”
that is an example, which is education…
but who was the philosophical educator, par excellence?
why Socrates, of course…
think of what Socrates brought to the table?
and no, I am not going to help you figure that out…
now, is a scientist, an educator?
can we use a scientist, such as Newton, as an educator?
Now as a hearing impaired person, I am very aware of communication…
the steps of what happens in communication…
and the steps of education follows the exact same path as communication…
in communication, we have three steps, we have the person who communicates,
we have the message and we have the receiver of the message…
a failure at any of these three parts will prevent communication from
being successful…
and in education, we have the exact same three parts, we have
the educator, we have the message and we have the student…
and failure in education can come at any of the three parts…
so, for example, we have Jesus, he is the educator… and his message
is of love and we have the final aspect, which is the receiver,
the person who receives the message…
the failure of this communication can come at any one of the three points…
the sender, the message, the receiver…….
Now both Iambiguous and myself have both publicly stated that one of our
formative books we have read, is William Barrett, “Irrational Man”…
I list that book as one of the 5 most formative books I have ever read…
and so we have our three aspects of communication…
we have the sender, William Barrett, we have the message, the book,
and we have the receiver, the reader of said book…
what is the education we received from that book?
but I must say, I had some friends read this exact same book
and they said, so, what, the book meant nothing to them…
it was nothing more then a dry boring read to them…
and yet it changed my entire intellectual life…
how does a book that has dramatically changed both iam
and myself, not change other readers?
the role of education can only come within a certain context
within the reader, the person who reads the book…
I was ready to hear the message of Barrett, my prior education
and life, was in preparation to hear Barrett’s message…
the communication of the book, “Irrational Man” had a willing
receiver in me… I was ready to hear that message…
but we are not always ready to hear a message given,
we are not always ready to be educated……
which leads us to another point, those who think they have all the
answers given by an ism or an ideology… in other words, those
who believe that the bible is the one and only answer to every question,
will not be ready to hear the message of Barrett’s because they believe
that they already have the answer…… at no point have I felt I had the
one and only answer to the questions of life… this uncertainty that
I didn’t already have the answers worked for me because that made
me ready to hear the message of the “Irrational Man”
if I already thought I had the answers to the questions, the book
wouldn’t have meant a thing to me… communication requires
the willingness to admit that we don’t have the answers already…
Barrett’s books isn’t about answers, it is about the possibilities…
it is possible that we don’t have the answers already…
and Barrett’s book addresses those possibilities…
not the answers, the possibilities ………
to continue on…
in a society rife with alienation and discontentment, what education
or examples should we reach for?
given our alienation and discontentment, should we use Darwin or Freud
or perhaps Shakespeare as educators?
can anyone really speak about the question “to be or not to be” with the
same commitment that Hamlet spoke of?
is Hamlet an example or an educator?
this is the function of Art… to be an example or to be used
as an educator………we can see from Hamlet the question of
continued existence, as an example for us to emulate…
Art gives us possibilities, gives us examples and can be used
as education……….
so we have other ism’s and ideologies that can be used
as examples, education……
for example, is capitalism education?
let us understand the message of capitalism…
capitalism promotes as part of its message,
greed, lust, selfishness, self-indulgence,
self-centeredness………
is that really the education we want to deliver to
our children or grand-children?
is that our example of human existence that we want to
continue as our legacy?
We engage in education today and what do we learn in trying to understand
education today?
we seek to make people little and small……. for example
we don’t teach grand and big examples, like history or literature anymore…
why not?
look at the point of education today… it isn’t to build up better people
or to make us cultured human beings… the point of, the example of
education is to create workers and producers and “good citizens”…
and we don’t need the examples of great human beings in becoming
workers and producers and “good citizens”… the state goal in education
is to create better workers, not better human beings… and that goal makes
all the difference in the world…
in my job in a factory lite existence, what values do I need?
is knowing history or literature or the potential greatness in
human beings, going to make me a better worker?
nope… and that is the point of education today…
not to create human beings engaged in values and rising to become
human beings…
no, the society wants and engages in education of making people
drones and better workers and “good citizens”… society doesn’t want nor
is engaged in improving the soul of its members…it wants workers
and those high minded ideals interferes with the stated goal of
our American society to create profits/money……
thus we constantly promote specific American idea’s like
the soldier as educator… and what does a soldier do?
they follow orders and they are willing to sacrifice their lives
for society… this martial example gives us what America
wants from its education of its citizens…to be a good worker
who is willing to sacrifice for the betterment of the society,
the state…….
and if I am not willing to follow these example, then I
am declared to be a traitor, Un-American, a bad citizen,
an anarchist, a liberal…
I reject such educators as examples such as soldiers
and “good citizens” who only exists to be
workers and producers and “good citizens”…
within society, within a state…
I don’t believe such examples, such education helps the society
nor does it help the state nor does it help the individual finding
his/her place within society…….
the only people such examples/such education helps are those
who own the means of production… the 1% that own America…
for everyone else, such education fails to bring about what is
most important which is the journey to become human…
not just animal/human, but to become fully human…
we praise as the highest example of education business leaders
and soldiers and “good citizens”
we should no longer praise such examples…we should in fact,
despise and ridicule such examples of educators…
for they don’t help us in our journey to become who we are…
for those educators as examples don’t aid us in finding out our
true possibilities… what is truly possible for us…
if we are only acceptable to society as workers and producers,
then there is no need for education to be about literature
or science or even philosophy because those skills don’t make
us better workers or better producers or better “citizens” willing
to sacrifice ourselves in the name of capitalism…
all that is required is job skills and that is exactly what
education is about today… getting job skills to be able to
make a living… which doesn’t promote us as human beings
or as beings with possibilities…
the point of education today is to make us good workers,
good producers and “good citizens”… and that education
has failed us and our society……
we can tell this by the amount of alienation and discontentment
we see in our society/state today…
our education/our education doesn’t fill our soul…
we are simply trained to be workers
and not to be human beings…
so, what is your need for an education?
what are you becoming, a good worker or a good human being?
Kropotkin