Thread: Love in Education, an essay.

Love in Education

Love is a powerful emotion, it drives us to become better then who we are, to learn, understand, and become knowledgeable, to make proud the person you love, or for who loves you. Socrates was famous for loving his students, and used this to drive them forward and inspired them to become the best they can be. Socrates said "the love I bore... [allowed me to] draw honey and milk in places where others cannot even draw water from wells." Here Socrates display's how powerful love is, that allowed him to see the goodness, and beauty in students that others would only see a common, ordinary man.

Patrick Carmack says in his essay 'Clas sical Vs. Modern Education.', "Indeed, education did not mean for Socrates the cultivation of the intellect alone - to the neglect of all else - but since man is attracted to the good first by what is beautiful, education must first begin with the sense, proceed on to the memory, imagination, intuition, and intellect, spurred on to all by love.'(Pg. 2) Carmack says here that education should first begin in a number of steps to fully drag out the beauty and goodness of man, and to win the students attention so he will take to heart learning subjects, and doing his best.

All too often students are told "Do your best!", or "Try your hardest!" But why should they? There's no inspiration, no motivation for them to "do their best", no need to try and liberate and expand their minds. Their own parents sent them away at age 4, even 2 to begin public education, and never try to connect with them. "Adults should face the fact that they don't like adolescents and that they have used highschool to isolate the pubescent and hormonally active adolescent away from both the picture-book idealized innocence of childhood and the more accountable world of adulthood."(Pg 2) States Leon Botstein in his essay 'Let Teenagers Try Adulthood'. Botstein threw down the bare, raw facts that parents have been using the public education system to raise their children for them, in a place where love does not grow, or is encouraged to grow.

Public schools view of education is more often then not the views an assembly factory has, mass-produce thousands of little parts at once, do not cater to an individual's needs, but pound it until it gives and forms the shape you want it to. Public school's only concern is to create productive members of society, which the public schools have a firm, ridge plan for the process, called a curriculum. It will not bend to the teaching needs for the individual; the individual will bend to the curriculum. Public school is viewed by students as adults would view a job, necessary and ultimately boring.
And if the public schools are the assembly factory, then teachers are the assembly line workers. They do not try to understand, love, or care about their students. They dish out the will of the curriculum, and use it to keep their cla-ss together. Botstein even says that "Given the poor quality of recruitment and training for high school teachers, it is no wonder that the curriculum and the enterprise of learning hold so little sway over young people." Here Botstein says that the teachers of public education are usually poorly trained, sometimes not even qualified for the work they do. And also says that due to the poor delivery of the curriculum, it's not surprising why students are often bored and don't take it seriously.

You often hear of teenage depression is a "fact-of-life", and cannot be prevented. But what if the root of teenage depression is actually the way public school teaches them? "The Littleton killers, above and beyond the psychological demons that drove them to violence, felt trapped in the artificiality of the high school world and believed it to be real."(Pg 2) Says Botstein. If what is driving more and more psychological issues with children now-a-days is the lack of inspiration, love, and motivation from public school, or more importantly their parents, why do public education administrators just ignore this and go along their way? "So 'successful' are our public schools that they imagine more of the same will solve the very problems they have created."(Pg 4) Says Carmack. Here Carmack shows us that the public education system believes that the way to fix their problems, is just by continuing with what they are doing, and hope it gets better, while ignoring the sign's that the very ground beneath their feet is giving away.

Since it's obvious that "beating the dead horse" will not improve our education system, and will not heal our students, then what can help? Carmack believes that "Home schooling is so successful relative to public and private school education, despite many obstacles and disadvantages, because children have souls and thrive - in every way - in the loving environment of their families (however small that family may be - two can make a very loving family)."(Pg 3) Here I believe is the best way to motivate, and inspire our children to 'be the best they want to be.' home schooling is where parents raise, and educate their own children, giving them the love, support, and the supplies to craft themselves into who, and what they want to be. Though of course if your children do not adapt well to home schooling, and wish to become public schoolers, then you should let them. If any student truly wants to learn, then they will find the best way they think they should learn, and the family, and we as a society should help them find that way. But it's obvious that if we continue the path which the sign says "Self-Destruction", then our children may never truly wish to learn, or forget everything they know.

Our children will one day be the future leaders when our generation steps down. And do we want the horror of the public education system to mess with the minds of our children, without love beside them to guide them in their pursuit of knowledge, and without the very want to learn and to become cultured, then how can we knowing let them take the reigns of the world when they are unmotivated to do so, or have no love to make it a better place then when we gave it to them?

The tree of education, which is tended to mostly by the public education system, is yielding more and more rotten and useless fruit. Their ultimate mission of programming productive members of society is quickly becoming more and more of a joke as the number of crimes being committed by youth are growing higher year after year, and with the recent tests showing us what our children know, with the overall grades descending quickly over the years. For Socrates it was easy to teach with love for his students in his heart, and truly care for their progress and do everything in his power to help them succeed, when there was only a few he had to teach, and when they had all the time in the world. But is it a viable way of teaching now, with education put into overdrive, teachers having to teach hundreds of students, and with so much trying to be programmed into their head? I believe so. But action must be taken now to save our children, before it is truly too late.

This article was awesome! I am a huge opponent to public schools and think that parents would do their kids, themselves and the world by taking their kids out and letting them live in the world what an idea!

I do not know if you have sent this or are planning on sending this to any magazine or something, but I hope you do well. This is an article that more people need to read. Although, I did spot a couple writing mistakes, but that is just what checking it over again is for.

Good work and good luck!