The Fire Within: Quotes on the True Purpose of Education
For a long time, the traditional educational model has been designed around the industrial factory system. Students were subjected to a standardized series of tests, and their performance in memorizing facts was used to assess their quality.Students were put on an assembly line of standardized tests, expected to come out efficient and obedient workers. Ask the world’s greatest thinkers, philosophers and leaders and they will tell you that this is a very big miss of the mark.
We at Quotenestify believe that words can be a compass that helps us to navigate back to what is important. Not memorizing is the highest form of learning. It is the art of teaching a human being to watch the world, to doubt its absolutes and to ultimately change it.
Here are four profound quotes that break down the institutionalized forms of classroom learning and expose the philosophical reason for education.
1. Plutarch: The Spark of Curiosity
The mind is not a container that can be filled, but a fire that must be lighted.
— Plutarch
The Context:
Plutarch was a Greek philosopher and biographer of the first century AD. In ancient times, education was a privilege and many times concentrated on memorizing the great epic tales and learning from the knowledge of old people. However, Plutarch realized that the passively received information was not learning.
This is an exercise in the philosophy of practice:
This is an old saying, but it’s an apt rebuke to today’s “rote memorization. The mind is a vessel; the teacher’s role is to load it up with facts, formulas, and vocabulary words until it overflows the student’s head. However, ships don’t proceed to make something new. Plutarch likened the mind to fire, changing the emphasis from the teacher to the student. Education should be the kindling that starts a fire in the mind that will keep burning for a lifetime. A fired mind will find its own kindling after the lesson has ended.
2. Albert Einstein: The Mechanics of Thought
Education is not instruction of facts, it is training of the mind to think.
— Albert Einstein
The Context:
The German educational system, in which discipline and routine were paramount and in which little regard was given to the creative ability of the students, was what Albert Einstein hated most about school as a child. He would often say that his formal education had actually fostered his lack of creativity, and that his major scientific achievements were the result of his “thought experiments” rather than his ability to regurgitate material from textbooks.
The Philosophy in Practice:
The quote by Einstein is as relevant as ever in the digital age. In our pocket we have a smartphone to know any fact, historical date, or any mathematical constant, with a single click. So, if a human is valuable or not is no longer defined by the amount of data they can hold in their head. Good education is more about what you do with the data. The ability to break down a problem, to combine various opinions and identify a new solution. Critical thinking is a muscle and education is the gymnasium of that muscle.
3. This is Martin Luther King Jr.: The Moral Compass.
The object of true education is “intelligence plus character.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The Context:
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an essay in the campus newspaper with the title The Purpose of Education when he was a student at Morehouse College in 1947. He knew that some of the most brutal of regime have been led by very intelligent and very educated people who have no moral compass.
The Way of the Person:
King’s wisdom is a warning to all of us to not be dangerous when there will be no empathy in the raw intellect. If we can only make our students brilliant engineers, sharp lawyers, clever politicians and fail to inculcate in them a sense of justice, equity and compassion, then our education has failed the society. True education requires that we make our character as well as our brains smarter, and that our best ideas are used to elevate mankind, and not to exploit it.
4. Nelson Mandela: The Instrument of Liberation
Education is the greatest force that you can use to change the world.
— Nelson Mandela
The Context:
Under the harsh apartheid regime of South Africa, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison for a purpose: the systematic under-education of black South Africans so that they would remain segregated and compliant. Mandela knew that ignorance can be an oppressor’s best weapon and knowledge the greatest key to liberation.
The Philosophy in Practice:
While people tend to make weapons symbols of destruction, Mandela put education on the other side as a weapon of creation and liberation. A person who is marginalised is educated and learns how to speak up for their rights, take part in community organisation and challenge systemic injustice. Education, personally, is the weapon that we use to overcome poverty in our own families. It is the greatest equaliser of which man has ever invented.
Schooling and True Education: A Quick Reference
The wisdom of these thinkers needs to be internalized, and this requires that the physical institution of schooling be differentiated from the lifelong philosophy of learning.
For example:For instance: | For instance: |
| — | — | — |
To develop a critical and independent thinking process. |
A student who is taking in information (the ship). | A student who is looking for information (the fire). |
To enforce compliance and dictate facts | To guide, challenge, and spark inspiration |
Creating productive employees on the labor market. | Creating free and caring citizens for the society. |
The classroom is not the starting point, it is just physical. These powerful statements will remind us that we have not finished learning when we are awarded a degree; we will carry the fire with us for our whole lives.
