The Idea of an Education

I always knew I had something to offer my students. What I didn’t always know was what. 

What goes without saying is that there are several things going desperately wrong with the way we are educating our children in this country. With the rampant growth of technological information and data processing, what are we losing?

Thanks to the Internet, cell phones, and our First Amendment rights, teens and children have access to all of the pornography and gratuitous violence they can consume. Some parents are able to stem the flow of insidious information, while others, particularly those who are immigrants and/or have limited economic means, are unable to stop or completely unaware of the enormity of the situation and the extent of the harm that has already been done.

Bringing their sons and daughters to a new country in hopes of providing them with a “better life,” these parents could never have imagined the evils they are now subjecting their young ones to. 

While we are busy educating our children to become master data consumers and analyzers, what is left behind? Moral, religious, and philosophical education are now electives at best. We have surely learned to live better, faster, and more efficiently than ever. Perhaps longer, even, due to continuous medical breakthroughs. But have we learned to live as humans?

The animalistic priorities of food, sleep, and sex seem to predominate. We lust for money, power, and fame in order to feed our cravings and urges. We are desperate for leisure, hoping to work as little as possible in order to gain as much time as we can to do whatever we want. We lie, steal, and cheat as far as we are able in order to attain these goals.

We are selfish, and cannot grasp the idea of the impact of our actions on others and the broader community. And all of these truths we hide under a layer of whatever is considered to be the most “politically correct” way of conducting ourselves in action and in speech. We have become professionals at this skill, some of us, living a double life that continues to drive us closer and closer to insanity. 

What can stop this pace of this pernicious cycle?

Education. I’m a big believer in the elevating and cleansing effects of true education. A real education is much more than grammatical rules and calculations. If the SAT were more predictive of how good “humans” teens are becoming, it would contain a few questions about moral aptitude. 

That’s a new term that we don’t throw around often. The Scholastic Aptitude Test measures how effective an individual will be as a student in college. But once they graduate and become full-fledged citizens of our nation and our world, what then? When they become doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, and politicians, what changes will they be making? 

And yet, scholastic aptitude can teach many valuable moral traits and qualities. It is precisely those students who are motivated enough to devote hours of hard work to studying practice problems and new concepts who can begin to foresee the meaning of self-sacrifice, which is the foundation of love. Love is dearly needed in our society, our families, and within ourselves. May it begin with your love for the SAT.