Ignorance and Innocence

What's the purpose of Education? Is it to cure our innocence and ignorance, or just to turn the former into the latter? As I age each day, this idea has sprouted from the reality that life has offered me. I was taught that the main purpose of education is to cure the ignorance of people, to turn innocence into action, and to produce functional people for society. We can all agree with that, I hope. But what if education is just turning one's innocence into ignorance?

I once saw a poster that somehow illustrates how education shapes people, especially children. The image shows a line of pupils and a teacher who shapes the round minds of the kids into a box using scissors. It wants to convey a strong message. The way I interpreted it was rather cynical. Education limits the human mind, or it is more right to say that school does. I am not against education, I say that everyone should have one, even a little bit of it; I probably just criticize how school systems work. Are there such free-thinking minds or has school always set the limits of imagination? This might sound rubbish to some, one might counter: “In order to gain an education, one must go to school”. Now, I know I am proposing such a strong argument.


What do you think? Are we actually free to do what we want without being judged or have we just always complied with what society tells us? Are we really free to indulge ourselves with our innocence or have we already let society restrict us from doing anything we wish? As I age older, I have played by the rules, or at least I chose to. As I learn reality, we are not actually free to do everything, but we can still do something at the very least.




-TBWS


Feb 23, 2017