We don’t need no education!

Last week I wrote about the destruction of childhood in our culture.  What is a cause of this destruction?  I believe it’s our weak education system.  Sadly, both public and private curricula, and with common core implementation, even homeschooling will all be “fact based” and lack the imagination children need.

Let me explain.   Of course, facts are not inherently bad.  They are necessary but must be kept in the proper place and should not stand alone.  For instance, the storied Battle of Thermopylae between the powerful Persian emperor, Xerxes, and the Spartan king, Leonidas, occurred on August 20, 480 B.C.  In a history class, this and a few more facts about the battle would be all a student would receive.

Yet there are many more questions the basic “facts” may not be able to answer.

Such as: why was Xerxes all the way in Greece?  Why did the weaker Greek city states think they could fend off the Persian Empire?  Why do we care about this battle over 2000 years later?

All of these questions are logical questions to ask and the answers inform the moral imagination of a child.  With parents and teachers alike calling for “just the facts” to be taught in the classroom, it is easy to see how this one dimensional approach degrades the imagination of a child.  Anthony Esolen in Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (http://isibooks.org/ten-ways-to-destroy-the-imagination-of-your-child.html) talks about how long ago, battles were once viewed as stories to be explored, not just material to be memorized and stored for later regurgitation.

True education is training the mind to think.  It is not a checklist of accomplishments but rather a constant exercise over many years.  Just because a student completes Biology 101, it does not mean they truly learned it.  With standardized testing, common core and other one-size-fits-all policies such as “No Child Left Behind,” a bare bones fact-based education cannot fully inform a child’s moral imagination.

How can we combat this?  A classical education helps provide a solid foundation for achieving a moral imagination.  However, this problem has been going on for so long, it will require retraining for teachers, parents and students.  We have a lot of ground to make up.

This is part two of four in the series on children and imagination.