"The more I see, the less i know" - Red Hot Chili Peppers et al *

The more I see, the more I understand (huh?)
The more I understand, the more I see (???)
That I don't understand (ah!)
How can I judge if I don't understand?
What is there to do if i can't judge ?

The true value of education is not to cater to conformity. It is to break conformity.
Life is arbitrary at it's core. Education means to uncover that.



OK.

This can be easily rationalized. But what does it mean?

In German, the term for Education is "Bildung" which literally describes the process of forming sth. People go to the university not to learn, but to get "formed" as human beings. At least that was the idea for a long time.

But what does it mean?

What would happen if my soul would lack the vocabulary to judge a murderer ?


* Socrates, lao tse tung and other Philosophers

Lao Tzu is one of the greatest. Have you read the Tao Te Ching?

Education, instruction or indoctrination? Understanding, behaving or obeying? Social semantics, apparently.

Education has been engineered to make the student fit in society. And since society understands education as an investment in its own production machinery, education understood as a tool for questioning delivers diminishing returns and is discouraged.

The meaning is then understood as a rational interpretation. It is pragmatism, and for most people it ends up making sense. The very definition and function of "human being" is engineered to fit in the cogs.

Human development besides social development is regarded as bad investment, because the target is not the individual and his or her relationship with the world. World has become society, meaning has been bound to profitability and tribal identity, and in the best case, to social ethics.

We are so separated from essence we don't even tell the difference. And since denial of morality is often exploited by movements in social dissent (also a byproduct of society), it's difficult to find alternative meanings unless you figure them out from scratch. Nowadays that requires demolition rather than deconstruction. Deconstruction leaves too many things in the place.

Socrates was probably more successful making questions and trying to allow his students to give birth to ideas, because his students were not buried under so many conditioning layers as we are. Reaching the essence required less steps. Meanings were more open.

In spanish, "Meaning" can be translated two ways. "Sentido" is the end, the raison d'être, the reason for the existence of something. Which can be found or decided but not taught. "Significado" relates to semantics and agreement. It can be personal, but the personal will be easily overrun by the social consensus. The first is dominantly subjective and human, the second is dominantly objective and social. Maybe education the way you describe it would make that distinction clear and pay equal attention to both, instead of favoring the second for utilitarian reasons.

Then, "What does it mean?" has no real answer, and should be expressed as "What sense can you find in it?" but that gives you too much power to decide and is frowned upon. Arbitrariness is frowned upon, you cannot let the cogs turn either way or not turn at all - it makes no sense.

I think that, If your soul lacked the vocabulary to judge a murderer, you would be perfectly okay.

Very well put, Vodsel. In addition, I think that the overall goals of institutional education arrived where they have mainly by default, not necessarily as the result of a ruling elite trying to stamp out abstract inquiry. We can be a very conservative and pragmatic species, and as a whole we have a latent fear of too much innovation. The current state of our education system is largely a product of our general nature rather than a result of some dark conspiracy, IMO. Are there individuals in power who would like to suppress free thought? Of course. But I just see them as being a part of our race's conservative nature.

As far as right vs wrong goes, I believe that is a thing that is learned rather than taught. When a child experiences the good and bad consequences of how they treat others, they learn a model that allows them to exist smoothly in the world by getting along. Good parenting can help with this process. But I think it is very difficult to insert an arbitrary ethical model into a person, because our sense of ethics is bound very tightly to our life's experiences.

I remember when i was 13 or so i heard a mark twain quote that really hit the mark, something like "Never let schooling interfere with your education"

lolwut?

Education has many attributes: signaling, the formation of human capital, socialization, etc.

It seems myopic to reduce it to some form of simplistic essentialism--e.g., "indoctrination."