"Is Love of Learning...

...no longer enough?"  I have long forgotten where I first read that line, but it has resonated with me ever since.  And I have written about it, here and in publications.

An op-ed in the newspaper this week touched upon this subject.  It had a different angle, but the same gist.  The author called it "a warped view of education."  And I think that's accurate, much so.  It is the core of the Common Core.

Listen to both Democrats and Republicans when they talk about education, particularly higher education, but really all of it.  Do any of them talk about the intrinsic value of education or education's sake?  Do any of them talk about the absolute need for an enlightened people in a self-governing state?  Do any of them talk about the enhancement and enrichment of life itself?

Nope.  Their words always include "jobs," "workforce," etc.  It's the major selling point, for some maybe the only one, for reforms in education.  (If "reform" implies "improvement," I think it's a misnomer.)  It's a major reason why, up and down curricula, Technology has become God.  (Go ahead, even to the education establishment, try to downplay the importance of Technology.  You will be immediately dismissed as a Luddite or perhaps even a Neanderthal.)

Schools have also bought into this.  In order to procure more money, for one thing, not to mention compete for students, it's "job preparation."  How early are students asked what they want to do as adults, that is, what job(s) they want?  When are those aptitude tests given, what early grade(s)?  Isn't that an anomaly?  Schools themselves get away from stressing the intrinsic value of education?

I'm not saying preparing students for "jobs" or "the workforce" isn't important.  Of course it is.  An education is certainly required in our increasingly complex world.  I sometimes think, though, that many jobs that "require" a college degree really don't.  Still, that's not to say those holding such jobs should forgo going to college.  Not in my view.  There's immense value in a college education.  We just seem to emphasize the lesser value.

More than 200 years ago, Hamilton and Jefferson certainly disagreed on the path the young United States should have taken.  (There he goes on that history stuff again......)  Hamilton, along with many of the Founders, didn't trust the common people.  They couldn't rule themselves.  History had proven that, right?  Even Plato, in the birthplace of "democracy," opposed self-rule.  He would have agreed with Hamilton that the mob couldn't govern itself.  Hamilton preferred an aristocracy of sorts, where the wealthy, well-educated, and well-bred called the shots.  After all, he would pose, since this upper crust had the most to lose (their wealth, their standing), wouldn't they be apt to make better (and smarter) decisions?  I don't know if Jefferson saw the opening Hamilton had left him, but my guess, as intelligent as Jefferson was, he did.  "Well-educated."  Jefferson thought that, although it might take some time, we common folks could and would be educated enough so that we could govern ourselves, that we would cease being "the mob."  Further, an uneducated people, he held, were far more susceptible to tyranny by elites, demagogues, etc.

Perhaps my views have been tainted by my own experience(s).  I had some very good high school teachers (And, irony of ironies, back then and there, my high school sent far, far more graduates to the auto plants and auto suppliers than to college) who taught, not just job-training, but broader matters.  And, especially, I was very fortunate to have gone to college at Amherst, for its excellent teachers, for the demands they made upon us, for the educational experience(s).

"Is love of learning no longer enough?"