Education is often seen as an important instrument for civilization and for the building of human capital for development. But there is also criticism. Bryan Kaplan has written a book called ‘The case against Education’ (2018) in which he states that the function of education is to signal good qualities of students and certify one’s intelligence and that it is not to enhance one’s skills. Is that what education really does? Are there other claims against education or are the pro’s much greater?
Are there other sources or books where claims are made against education?
I recently made a video attempting to answer precisely this question. Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbZMgjgewQU
I hope you find it useful and that it sparks a few ideas! The video focuses on what I see as the four central problems of education:
- Hundreds of millions of children are going to school but not receiving even a basic education.
- Others get an education at the cost of the joy of childhood.
- Still others do not achieve their full potential for financial reasons.
- Education often fails to adapt to the needs of a changing world.
The video also cites a few resources which you may find helpful.
Overall, we have evolved as a species to the point where it is very difficult to imagine life without certain things. What would life be like without money, for example?
Education is like that. It is almost impossible to conceive of human society with *no* education. What would that even mean? Would children no longer learn the language of their parents, or how to boil an egg?! Education is so bound up with the socializing process, and the passing on of skills from one generation to another, that it is almost meaningless to think in terms of getting rid of it.
So we end up, not with "education" vs. "no education", but rather with "one kind of education" vs. "another kind of education". Even Caplan is writing, not against education as such, but against the current *system* of education.
I hope this helps!
Dear John R. Yamamoto-Wilson ,
You have indeed made some wonderful points about the negative effects of education. The environment, authoritarian teachers not having the right knowledge and thereby causing irreparable damage to the psyche of students. Misguided policies. Lant Pritchett (1996), the World Bank economist, in his famous article ‘Where has all the education gone?’ has struggled with this subject. Schooling doesn’t always have the effect it is pretended.
But are there cases in history where education had the intention to damage or to blindside people of stop them to make any progress? Because is it not true that in most education policies the goal is to uplift people. Or is that not the case?
And can you come up with some solution how to improve the situation dramatically? And how can you train people for a future we do not know because of the rapid changes in society and the changing demands? Is according to you education in itself bad?
Well, I've been a teacher all my life, so clearly I can't think it is in itself bad!
As I say, it is almost impossible to imagine a world in which older members of society do not transmit, in some form or another, their learning and experience to younger members. In that sense, education is inevitable.
The problem is not education in itself, but the content and manner of implementation of education. Inappropriate education that is not fit for purpose is damaging. The challenge is to figure out what constitutes appropriate education and what are the appropriate means to deliver it.
What an important and completely unpopular question! I am sure most people would simply say: "Education is important for everyone.” As someone who grew up in Germany, I know that education can open your eyes or close them to certain aspects. Especially I see arguments on the level of "what" and on the level of "why".
What? This is the question of what content is taught. Is it education that makes people independent or dependent? That builds and stabilizes society or contributes to destabilization and division of the population?
And why? I work in an NGO that is responsible for school education, among other things. Here someone told me that the construction of a school in Haiti has led to educated children leaving their village. However, the older generation that was left behind was dependent on their support. Worse still, some used their knowledge to join the drug scene. A sad story that made me very thoughtful.
I am fully aware that this is a far too short answer and maybe just a personal point of view to such a complex question.
Many Greetings
Melanie
Dear Melanie Stephan , education can be seen as a knife: you can use it as a weapon or as a kitchen tool. Atomic bomb has also been created by scientists. Just like these students you are pointing to.
It is indeed a question that can be viewed and answered looking at many different aspects.
Dear John R. Yamamoto-Wilson , you have said that it is not education itself but the way education is implemented. But some books are implying that it is certain education itself, e.g. the book 'The Miseducation of the Negro' (1933) of Cater G. Woodson. And in the writing of the history of Africa by Africanist, information has been left out or changed purposefully to create a different reality. What is your opinion about that?
I think we need to make a clear distinction between "software" and "hardware".
Education is hardware. The *content* of education is software.
Take a book, for example. You can think of a book as "hardware", and the arrangement of print, images, etc., inside the book as "software".
Or a television set. That's the hardware, and the movie it's screening is the software.
If a book contains lies (wilful or otherwise), or a television set is screening a third-rate movie, it's not the hardware that's at fault, any more than it's a road's fault if there's a bad driver on it.
The "software" of education can be at fault in all kinds of ways. For example, education can be used as a conduit to spread false information, just as a book or a web page can. But we don't blame education as such, any more than we blame books for their content or computers for the web pages we view through them.
The title of Woodson's work is revealing. He is not attacking education. He is attacking *mis*education. That suggests that he is not opposed to education as such, merely to the wrong implementation of education.
We wouldn't assume that someone who is opposed to disinformation is opposed to information. On the contrary. In the same way, Woodson's opposition to miseducation implies that he has a high regard for education.
If education is being misused to spread false information then the solution (in theory, at least) is simple; take out the fake information, replace it with reliable information and you're good to go! The "hardware" - the teachers, the classrooms, etc. - doesn't have to be rejected. Just replace the software, the content of what is taught.
At least, that will sort out one bug in the system; there may be others.
Another way of putting it might be to think of education as a tool which can be put to multiple purposes. Education can be used to broaden horizons, to give the next generation greater control over their destiny, or it can be used as a control mechanism, to keep people in "their place" and discourage them from trying to change their lot.
In that case, you could compare education to, say, a frying pan, which could be used to cook delicious food, or revolting food, or to knock someone on the head and hospitalize them. You can't blame education for the use to which it is put, any more than you can blame a frying pan!
To me, Woodson is not blaming education itself; he's not saying "education is a terrible thing". He is saying, "education is being wrongly used". Hence he calls it "miseducation".
Having said all that, I still think it is possible to defend the position that education as we know it is fundamentally flawed.
Schools and universities around the world are mainly based on the premise that if students study hard and get good grades all will be well. It's fairly clear that this is a false assumption. Students working hard and getting good grades will not in themselves prevent climate change, mass extinction and the spread of viruses like the current pandemic.
Insofar as education is a tool of capitalism it is flawed. By making money and economic growth the be-all and end-all of our lives we have created a monster. An educational system that merely serves to pump young lives into the bloodstream of that monster is negative, destructive and doomed.
It's no accident that Greta Thunberg stopped attending school and starting organizing school strikes for climate change. Until and unless the schools themselves change their approach radically her future, and the future of her generation is at stake.
I have just read the jubilant account of a colleague at the Department of Global Innovation at Toyo University, here in Japan, describing how the department - quite independently of the university as a whole - has declared a "Climate and Ecological Emergency". From now on, it is not just "business as usual" for that department. Rather than socializing students, it will be radicalizing them, making them aware that the system as we know it cannot go on and must be stopped.
Until and unless that becomes the norm for educational establishments around the world - until education rejects its role of providing fodder for the capitalist machine, then, yes, we can say that education is part of the problem.
Even then, though, we are not rejecting education in itself, or denying that it cannot play a potentially positive role in shaping our future. We are not saying that there should be no education, simply that it is propping up an unsustainable system and needs to change.
Dear John R. Yamamoto-Wilson , I think that the premise of working hard and that everything will be alright is indeed false. There is a structure of domination in education in schools and in universities. Education is an instrument for the transfer of objective facts and of subjective dominant ideas, even false ideas (intended and unintended). The natural sciences have a different effect on people than the social and human sciences. In the male dominated world the approach to knowledge in the social sciences is mostly male and but also western-dominated. Who decides what to research, to finance and to print and what to use in schools and institutions of higher learning? Who decides what to transfer as knowledge and what to make available? Government, big corporations and the dominant powers in universities and in the publishing world have vested interests. And knowledge paradigms are not easy to be shifted, there are professors defending them and according to Thomas Kuhn they can only be changed through scientific revolutions.
On the other hand education is not only to serve business, it is also for developing societies and individuals, to uplift them and to build caoacities. Education is working in and for developing countries. Reading and writing, developing the mind makes it able to communicate and understand each other better. But also those dominant powers if they stick to outdated knowledge, it will hurt them. So they too need revolutionary elements that must be built in into their own structure to rapidly change the content of their knowledge. Knowledge is also power and it can provide those people on the other side (underprivileged) the opportunity to profit from them and take advantage of them, only if knowledge is equally open to all. And that's not the case. That is also due to the structure of domination.
Certainly education is the nucleus of society and building civilizations. Culture is important in any society. That is why we can judge any person through his culture. Of course, culture sometimes does not relate to the level of education. There are intellectuals who are not educated and vice versa.
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