Thursday, September 1, 2011

EDUCATION AND PURPOSE

EDUCATION AND PURPOSE.

To educate is to give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to an individual or to train or give information about a particular subject.

Education, according history seems to have a different meaning from what we have now. From the Greek word educare, education meant “leading out”. In essence education was a means of driving an innate capability into activity from its long hibernation. The knowledge is therefore accepted as a latent skill that needs to be awakened for its use. Education therefore served as means of arising from unawareness to the awareness of ones innate capabilities known as talents in order to serve a purpose in social development.


As education was mainly evolving from the Greek society, there was a reason for its practice. According to history the Spartans educated their young men by leading out the fighting skill that was innate to its physical manifestation. Their purpose was to keep their town safe and strong from enemies… no need for walls but the strong young men who could rip out the hearts of three men at a time. So the Spartans had a social reason for educating their young men; they needed security. The purpose of education is therefore realized by finding the true sole aim of a society. Whether being security, economical improvement, cultural heritage and so forth… there is a purpose for every student and every teacher. A teacher and his student were always connected by this purpose, this aim, this idea.



The giant aim for education in a society is made up of the integration of diverse purposes of the individuals in the society. Every individual has a drop of importance he adds to the society, and these drops merge into an ocean of purposes to serve for social development.

In the case of the Spartans, they couldn’t be better soldiers without the women who instilled the courage and fearlessness in them when they were infants, neither could they live without the help from the farmers who cultivated crops to feed the society, and the blacksmith whose work was to forge the legendary spears and sword of the Spartans.

Though the aim is geared towards solving problems and exploring more to keep the society, individuals had their personal purposes for going through education.


The individual purpose if rightly educated is realized during infancy, and then explored till there is no more to know, or perhaps enough could be made out of the knowledge acquired. There is a strong force that keeps the students on the urge, putting all energy, material, focus, and all there is in reaching the full fulfillment of the innate yearning. This force is what I call passion. Passion is a strong and barely controllable emotion that keeps one in an endless journey of exploration, drowned in the idea that there is more to know, and as knowing grows; the depth of ignorance is also felt. Due to this, only few people in our schools are currently having education, most are just as specks of sand carried by the wind, and not identified by any purpose… failure seems to be smiling in the future. Most people do not excel as they expect, and little is done to find the reason. If only as students we can reminisce why we failed in the past, and may be still scared of another failure, we would realize there hasn’t been any purpose for being in school. We have not identified what we are really in school for, and no passion drives us to know more and to apply the little we know.


I know I will sound quite perceptual here, but the true identity of a purposeful education in passionate students is self education. When you know what you really want, you would keep searching if you are not served as expected; this is what self education is all about. Though trained together by the same master, each fighter had a particular stunt he discovers in trying to be better…and good skills are developed in attempting to fulfill passions (As I once put it: skill is developed in passion’s try).

In fact all true knowledge is acquired by self education (note: still being perceptual).

I still remember telling my science students that I had never shared knowledge with them, that all I gave was information and all they could make out of my junks into meaningful ideas is their true knowledge. In essence I was only giving my opinions of what they could educate themselves with…and their purpose as I made clear to them was to better themselves by pondering over and over.


Passion is a flame that keeps rekindling and never dies out. I will be factual here using my own experience with education. At the age of about eight I already knew I was a mechanical engineer (a physicist as I now know), and had entire focus for my science. I went through smoothly with no complain of difficulties. After graduating the SHS, I realized the science taught in the schools was in a way not what I expected. This desire to know more put me on a path called self education along with two others. We searched for books that satisfied our search. We read, read and read. Each book posed a threat by leading to another question; hence another book…exploration was all we experienced.

Today I find a profound use of my scientific knowledge, of what our world is, and that science is not filling ones brain with the knowledge of others; but to find the meaning of our observations of the dances that nature puts our mind and if necessary depend on the old knowledge (theories) of others.


I know my two friends have discovered a lot as well. The beauty of self education is like buying from a warehouse, the information is full and not subjected to the choices of the school called syllabus. The team of three guys has now formed the Eselfone organization to give talks in schools about self education and facilitating the building of community libraries to help self-reading. The team is not preaching the idea of students leaving the schools to join the path, but making known the essence of fulfilling our passions by reaching the books…since books are flooded with perceptions, ideas, lessons, lectures and experiences other had in their lifetime.


As simple as it sounds, self education is leading out the innate ability in you by making the most effort by yourself. The Eselfonedefines self educations as: pick up a passion and pick up a book. If self education is practiced well, students will realize that vacations are the best moments to make the best of themselves. Apart from helping one reach the very depth of understanding a subject, it also enhances exploring other talents as the journey lengthens.

One gift we all got in our journey was the attainment of our writing skill and the courage to talk to our audience. To my audience on this page, the best you can as students educate yourselves is not only depending solely on discussions in class, but going beyond that in finding the unrefined information in the books and make them your knowledge.

And why do we need knowledge at all? Let me borrow someone’s saying onto this page.

We need knowledge, for if you know questions become answers and when you don’t know answers become questions.eaching out to the nation one community at a time with libraries.

2 comments:

  1. I believe the root comes from Latin and not Greek. Please clarify.

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  2. Thank you. You know these two languages are so alike.

    ReplyDelete