Can Education Stand Today’s Trials?
Education, contributing to all aspects of humanity, is apt to be the most important dimension of every single society. As a prophet, it should teach ethics and morality; as a leader, it should seek people’s peace, prosperity, and freedom; as an educator, it should teach people how to build their intellect and character; how to learn skills, values, and manners; how to enhance other most important merits and characteristics; and how to contribute to economy, social needs, creativity, and productivity. To use the power of education as a solution will not bring about overnight results; however, proper use of education will induce striking changes as time goes by.
Education is thought to be always and everywhere positive and bright, and it seems absurd to think of it as a system of corruption. Actually, sometimes education has been used by the interest groups as a weapon of abuse. Scuh abuses have occurred in multiple forms and different times politically, socially, educationally, historically, and pschycologically. Education has been used by individuals or groups to support a certain ideology to keep their interests intact. It has been used to brainwash the people, to persuade them to achieve a certain goal, to propagandize, and to influence. Corruption in education is more dangerous because it could be disguised in a beautiful form that it is hard, or needs a lot of discretion, to ascertain its true nature and disbelieve or deny it. To display this danger, for example, a corrupt educated person will be far worse detrimental than a corrupt uneducated person, as Theodore Roosevelt says, “A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.” This is also true of the 2008 financial crisis, which was the product of highly educated minds.
To flunk students to improve them is a negative idea; to flunk them out of colleges is even a subversive idea. They feel despaired and down to fail. Unless utterly unprepared to learn, students must succeed; therefore, failure reflects more negligence of the instructors rather than that of the students. There are learning strategies even for unprepared students. Exertion will lead to success. Fairness, objectivity, and understanding are the marks of good educators, besides mastery of their curriculum.
The mission of education to moralize and edify has become a great deal complicated due to the changes and developments have happened in the course of time. In fact, as our generation has been getting smarter and smarter, the humanity’s fate has been subject to further trials; therefore, it is incumbent upon our education to get wiser and wiser
Today’s technological progress has been enchanting, and the pleasure and comfort of life have been intriguing. Having put our full trust upon technology and its ever-increasing advancement, we are expecting the best out of it, as if in good hands. Although in good hands, we have undermined our inner world: internal harmony—an equilibrium between emotional, cognitive, and volition---which is vital for our well-being. As the time has rolled by and means and instruments of comfort have augmented, fraud and corruption have multiplied. This correlation has given rise to an important aspect having taken shape alongside passage of time: character degeneration, which is a form of spiritual sickness. Spiritual sickness cannot be seen the way physical illness is spotted, because the former is invisible, the latter visible. Even so, only a prudent mind can discover such degeneration. In fact, spiritual degeneration surfaces indirectly through other phenomena. That is, the more spiritual degeneration comes to pass, the more evil things such as evil acts, evil feelings, and evil thoughts proliferate. Theodore Roosevelt prescribes the significance of morality in education: “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”
Technologically, all kinds of facilities are available to live comfortably. In fact, people are not suffering from lack of technical resources, nor are they in need of discovering more and inventing more to create more comfort. They need an education emphasizing spiritual and ethical values to create the kind of character needed to consider human values and goodness, focusing on common human needs, and seeking sensible ways of solving human problems. People suffer from the way these resources are accessed, distributed, used, and manipulated; the way human resources and abilities are spent, or the way they are left unused or misused, etc. It is ideal to aspire to further opportunities to build better relationship, to sow seed of trust to rely on each other without reservation and suspicion, to inspire and promote moral and ethical values, to establish and develop spiritual values, to leave behind all kinds of prejudices and partialities, to provide ideas and resources and possibilities to promote sense of cooperation between individuals, to teach responsibly and properly, to discover the ability and creativity of the students and furbish them, to have a complete awareness of social, economical, moral, educational, political, and psychological needs, and try to meet them,. These and many other things should be attended to and handled properly. There are important human needs that will be served by free human qualities and attributes such as good will, efforts, honesty, patience, conscience, good heart, sense of cooperation, and other mental and spiritual assets benefitting us a great deal aside from material resources.
Given what is said, today’s and prospective education not only should prepare people for jobs, careers, and opportunities to achieve economic goals, but also accomplish moral and ethical achievements. If this is put into practice, education will be the most important harbinger of a win-win situation. And thus becoming a champion, it will be led towards Solomonic wisdom, spreading its blessing, it will change, inspire, and enlighten even those who are getting street-smarts.
Today’s education motto should be epitomized as truth, integrity, cooperation, inspiration, and liberation. Education should promote abilities and skills to distinguish between right and wrong, so that we abandon what is wrong and follow what is right, no matter be it spiritual, social, political, economical, or intellectual, as far as it nourishes true feelings. Education should encourage those values that are worthy and beautiful, and, as a most credible weapon, liberate humanity from all bonds and conditions that prevent their growth mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
It should open up people’s mind to discover their true nature, to improve their shortcomings, to cultivate good relationship between individuals, to make them acquainted with their responsibilities, to evaluate their performance fairly, to give them opportunities to use their abilities, to nourish their faculties, to learn new skills, to utilize human resources appropriately, and to find ways to use those resources having been left unused.
Education should open a new chapter to prepare leaders for leadership, of course all types and ranks of leaderships, from family to political, to clergical, to financial, and to all other kinds of leaderships. Emphasis on creating sound leadership must be a crucial priority of education. The question that who should create such a standard to be modeled on by the leaders is apt to be a totality of experiences, knowledge, trials and errors that have been the legacy of centuries old. This is a tremendous experience that has been collected by international leaders during the course of history covering a myriad of historical, political, social, spiritual, intellectual, and educational experiences, including all ranks and strata.
Educators as educational leaders are bound to create the most comfortable atmosphere for teaching. Educators should be fully capable not only of whatever they teach but also be conscientious of fulfilling their job in the best possible way. Educators’ mastery of the subject is crucial, so is crucial to prepare the right teaching environment. The right environment is an important part of teaching. It is through this strategy that the students are inspired to learn and to participate for learning. This strategy consists of multiple teaching phenomena such as psychological, educational, intellectual, and behavioral perspectives. The educator must have the right behavior for teaching. Sacrifices, perseverance, patience, sense of humor, affection, tolerance, and understanding are some of the characteristics that an educator should have. Given all this, the best learning environment will be created, and the students will interact. An educator should be a hallmark of truth, humanity, and cooperation. It should be a common truth for an educator to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad. Arrogance, ostenticity, bragging, contempt, intolerance, and prejudice are some of the egregious characteristics that damage the wholesomeness of personality, proving to be the stigmas of humanity. An educator should identify them, get rid of them, and warn others against them. One of the effective teaching schemes is that the more the potential of a student be discovered and utilized, the more the teaching takes effect. Potential of the students should be fully used and discovered.
Affordability of college is another important aspect to be considered. Education should be available for all, and all barriers should be averted. Educational institutions should be morally oriented, not commercially. As long as the people depend on college, they should also be assured of its return. Let education define and specify the prejudice, and not vice versa. Let education solve not only our present dilemmas but also lead us into the future that is safe and promising.
Can education stand today’s trials? The answer will be positive only to the extent the above ideals—truth, integrity, cooperation, inspiration, and liberation—be assimilated into education and exercised.