Redefining Education

What is education? Is it test prep? Mastery of some standardized curriculum that might lead to promotion in the bureaucracy that created that very curriculum? Is education simply a tool for increased wealth, a fancier car and bigger house? The key to a “more successful” life?

I have asked my students this question. Most who study within the institutions have answered that yes, that is what education means to them.

The problem with this mentality is that with it, we reduce ourselves and our children to the status of tools. If we think this way, then all there is to life is degrees of comfort and privilege, which are doled out primarily according to how well one slaves oneself to standardized systems in education and later in the workforce.

So I ask my students: Are we tools, or tool-users?

To be a tool-user means to be human. This means to be self-conscious and world-conscious. This is the genuine meaning of “global citizenship.” It is, in fact, radical and humanistic. It carries the essence of creativity, critical-thinking, and the liberal arts.

This is my commitment: education as genuine self-knowing, empowerment, and creative engagement with the past, present, and future. Helping our children to craft their futures should be about more than getting a better job to afford a bigger car. It should about how they are able to think and who they are able to become.

Let’s redefine education together.