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The Road to Learning: The Power to Change

1974; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00193089.1974.10533587

2329-7158

Richard K. Morton,

Education Systems and Policy

Education should empower the individual to persist or to change?and to discern which policy is to be preferred in any given situ ation. The little miracles of change, expansion, and development are continual, as the possession and use of knowledge, experience, interper sonal relationships, and environ mental conditions allow or dictate. An unchanged individual is neces sarily an uneducated person. An in dividual without adequate interper sonal connections is also basically uneducated. An unmoving and un moved individual is hardly likely to achieve any fundamental educational goal. The power to be ought to be come increasingly the power and will to become, to change, to ad vance, to confront the basic prob lems and needs found in the envi ronment. Education should multiply the situations in which something or someone is about to become differ ent. But this is really based on the power and insight to determine wisely whether to change, to move, or to stand pat. Certainly it is not the desire and flair for wearing la bels, symbols, or decorations. Nor can it be simply the policy of seeking to gild or decorate the present, or more specially, the past. It is not the mechanical process of implementing a machine, but rather one of trans forming and activating a human being. The power to change is vital to education because it is of the essence of human life to survey and evaluate itself and its surroundings and to come to appreciate what it possesses and what it lacks. And also the power to recognize, evaluate values is equally vital because man has al ready learned to sense the realm be yond that of the statistical and the quantitative. The computer can nev er come to evaluate the spirit, enter prise, and ingenuity which brought about the creation of the computer? and much more. The pow?r to decide whether or not to change involves man's recog nition of his position in a continuum and in a realm of change and rela tionships as well as of tremendous worth and potential. In his position it is necessary for him to work out a system of training and gaining ex perience in order that he may exe cute certain types of duties and open up many types of opportunity. Too many individuals have succeeded in completing the technical require ments for an education and yet have been unable to achieve in life those goals which that education sought to create and satisfy. Education has sought to develop in the student orientation to the past, but then has often failed to give him judgments about the present and blueprints or concepts for the fu ture. He has thus come to see more treasures in the celebrated ruins and mummies of the past than in the liv ing powers of the present and the projects for the future. The student likewise has been oc cupied much with the great achieve ments and celebrated spirits of the past, but not sufficiently dedicated to the confrontation and possible elim ination of the grave and aggressive weaknesses and evils which were part of their world. Social progress has been proclaimed, and social evils too much ignored. Social stability and interpersonal, intergroup, and inter national communication and cooper ation likewise are not just topics for a seminar or a course, but are a vital part of what would verify and glor ify the aims of education. They would be the seal of man's serious attempt at transcending his own limitations and of assuring to him, his fellow men, and those of the future a life situation in which peace, opportunity for all, and a concern for all living things could prevail. Any system of education which pays little attention to the cause of peace, to human inter communication, and to the establish ment of a psychological and social situation in which knowledge and intelligence have freedom to operate, must ultimately fail. In many ways we are pursuing education today in a period of tran sition where ther are opening up new modes of travel, new scientific worlds to investigate, new problems in urban and industrial living and development, and where we are just beginning to probe through psychi atry and other disciplines the re sources and operations of the human mind. We are developing new modes for child care and training and con tending with new and varied prob lems of marriage, old age, types of disablement, the study of crime (its prevention and punishment), new theories of learning, critical crises in economics and social planning, food production, interracial adjustments, political catharsis, and many, many more interests of grave import. These must be part of every learn er's intake of information, whatever may be his trade or professional goals. Likewise his sense of commu nity, his sharing with it and con tributions to it, must be more devel oped. All this is to say that we should stress more the power of education and in education as well