What True Education Should Do

Reading/Writing Diagnostic PART A. READING Read the passage below. Some of the necessary vocabulary appears after the passage. Any other words you do not know should be guessed from context. Do not use a dictionary for this diagnostic.

What True Education Should Do

Sydney J. Harris, 19

When most people think of the word education, they think of a pupil as a sort of animate sausage casing. Into this empty casing, the teachers are supposed to stuff “education.”

But genuine education, as Socrates knew more than two thousand years ago, is not inserting the stuffings of information into a person, but rather eliciting knowledge from him; it is the drawing out of what is in the mind.

“The most important part of education,” once wrote William Ernest Hocking, the distinguished Harvard philosopher, “is this instruction of a man in what he has inside of him.”

And as Edith Hamilton has reminded us, Socrates never said, “I know, learn from me.” He said, rather, “Look into your own selves and find the spark of truth that God has put into every heart, and that only you can kindle to a flame.”

In the dialogue called the “Meno,” Socrates takes an ignorant slave boy, without a day of schooling, and proves to the amazed observers that the boy really “knows” geometry—because the principles and axioms of geometry are already in his mind, waiting to be called out.

So many of the discussions and controversies about the content of education are futile and inconclusive because they are concerned with what should “go into” the student rather than with what should be taken out, and how this can best be done.

The college student who once said to me, after a lecture, “I spend so much time studying that I don’t have a chance to learn anything” was succinctly expressing his dissatisfaction with the sausage-casing view of education.

He was being so stuffed with miscellaneous facts, with such an indigestible mass of material, that he had no time (and was given no encouragement) to draw on his own resources, to use his own mind for analyzing and synthesizing and evaluating this material.

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Reading/Writing Diagnostic

Education, to have any meaning beyond the purpose of creating well-informed dunces, must elicit from the pupil what is latent in every human being—the rules of reason, the inner knowledge of what is proper for men to be and do, the ability to sift evidence and come to conclusions that can generally be agreed to by all open minds and warm hearts.

Pupils are more like oysters than sausages. The job of teaching is not to stuff them and then seal them up, but to help them open and reveal the riches within. There are pearls in each of us, if only we knew how to cultivate them with ardor and persistence.

VOCABULARY

animate: living; alive; capable of movement

sausage casings: empty tubes which are to be filled with sausage meat (the “stuffing”)

to elicit: to ask for; to draw out

distinguished: well-known and respected, especially within a particular field or area of study

to kindle: to start (a fire)

an axiom: a basic rule

futile: useless; unsuccessful

inconclusive: undecided; uncertain; unclear

succinctly: briefly; in a short, concise manner

indigestible: cannot be broken down into nutrients by the body

to synthesize: to put or bring ideas together creatively to form a new idea or process

a dunce: a stupid person; a fool

latent: unused but present in someone

to sift (evidence): to go through (the evidence) carefully; to examine closely

to seal up: to close permanently

to cultivate: to plant, protect, nourish and grow

oyster: a sea creature living in a two-part shell, which may grow a pearl

ardor: passion; enthusiasm

persistence: dedication; continuing without giving up

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Reading/Writing Diagnostic PART B. WRITING

Now respond to Harris’ ideas by writing a well-organized essay of at least 2 paragraphs. In the first paragraph, summarize the key points of the Harris article. Be careful to paraphrase, using your own words. In the following paragraph/s, answer the question below, providing clear explanations and examples. Take time to plan and to check your writing.

QUESTION: Do you agree or disagree with the view of education that Harris develops?

Explain your point of view and give specific evidence from your own experiences as a student to support your reasoning. Consider, for example, how particular teachers or courses you have taken reveal what education should or should not be.

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