Do More than Schooling People… Help them to Be Educated
As it is said about a Confucius famous quote: if your plan is for 1 year, plant rice; if your plan is for 10 years, plant trees; if your plan is for 100 years, educate children… There is a fundamental difference between educating people and schooling them! Mass schooling kids without providing them with proper education can make a society a fabric of schooled idiots… As Diogenes used to say, the foundation of every state is the education of its youth. Yet there is a big difference between Education and schooling. A state or human society full of schooled idiots is deemed to become a man made fabric of disasters. That’s the open door to the Middle Age path.
The quote of Thomas More is still true: ‘’One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated’’. It seems like nothing has fundamentally changed since the era of Thomas More to nowadays… In his address “Keep Moving from This Mountain,” at Spelman College on April 10, 1960, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came out to the same conclusion that validates Thomas More evidence… Here is what he said: ‘’(…) I’ve found a lot of people who have been to school who are not educated.’’
What does it mean ‘’being educated’’? Montaigne has already given a very insightful response to this universal question in his famous essay… The adage ‘’mieux vaut une tête bien faite que pleine’’ well summarizes the essence of the response to this question…
In the same address I have referred to, Martin Luther King Jr. gives an answer to this question: ‘’You see, education has a two-fold function. The one is utility and the other culture. Education must give an individual efficiency, but it must also humanize the individual. On the one hand education must give us the power to concentrate, the faculty for intensive thinking; this is a basic function of education. On the other hand, education must help us to think critically. And so education helps to lift an individual from the bondage of legends and half truths to the unfettered realm of objective analysis and creative appraisal. If an individual can’t think critically he really isn’t educated.’’
To better define the full concept of education, Martin Luther King Jr describes the other functions of education, and I quote: ‘’ So many people can’t think critically. Thinking critically means that the individual must think imaginatively, creatively, originally. Originality is a basic part of education. That does not mean that you think something altogether new; if that were the case Shakespeare wasn’t original, for Shakespeare depended on Plutarch and others for many of his plots.’ Originality does not mean thinking up something totally new in the universe, but it does mean giving new validity to old form. In a real sense, education must help an individual think intensively, critically, imaginatively. But this isn’t enough. Any education that stops at this point is a dangerous education. An individual who is properly educated must have more than efficiency. The proper education will not only give the individual the power of concentration but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. It will give him not only critical faculty for precise judgment, but profound sympathies with which to temper the asperity of his judgment. It will not only quicken his imagination but kindle his enthusiasm for the objects of his imagination. True education helps us on the one hand to know truth, but more than that it helps us to love truth and sacrifice for it. It gives us not only knowledge, which is power, but wisdom, which is control. I am convinced that if we are to move forward, that if we are to face the many problems of our world, education must take on this two-fold role as it has traditionally done, and give the individual a sense of moral and ethical values along with his efficiency, so that he will go out of his college classroom knowing that there are certain moral laws in the universe just as there are basic physical laws.’’
Schooling is about learning knowledge, skills and competences for professional qualifications to experiment the objective reality. Education is about experiencing life in developing Wisdom… While schooling can help us to master critical thinking and knowledge in experimenting the objectivity; education helps us experiencing the subjectivity of our own existence and its interactions to ourselves, to other subjects and to the Universe… The outcome of education is about shaping and enhancing the character of an individual… While schooling provides the ‘’SAVOIR’’ (knowledge) and the ‘’SAVOIR-FAIRE’’ (skills, competencies and qualifications); education shapes the ‘’SAVOIR-ETRE’’ (the character that defines the essence of each human being as unique)…
Education is even more critical for those who want to lead within human societies… One of the serious problems of our time is that many have been schooled without having their character tested by a very solid education… As consequence, we are witnessing how such problem is dismantling the legacy of stable, peaceful and prosperous societies we have inherited…
In the traditions of my people, there were codified institutions to help people getting educated… My people have never restored a centralized kingdom since the destruction of their state in Luanda in Angola few centuries ago… So when they migrated to the Congo, they set up very democratic and decentralized systems of governance… Within these systems, the real power is under control of different institutions that have very precise functions as councils: legislation, justice, etc. The executive power of the chief is very limited… There are different institutions that help in educating youngsters to become tested adults with character… Some Belgian historians like Léon de Sousberghe and Jan Vansina are among those who documented some traditions of my people…
When I was a child, my grandfather used to keep me with him. He was a king maker within our communities. Usually, the successor of a chief within our communities is not a member of the Chief family… Successors are from different clans who follow an agreed order of succession… What I didn’t understand was the fact that most of young successors didn’t want their coronation when it was their turn… Most of them literally used to leave their village to escape their coronation…
One day finally my grandfather explained to me why many didn’t want any process of their coronation… It could literally lead to the death if the individual was not mentally and physically strong enough to pass the tests of their initiation, which is the process of education before being made chief… Initiation was a ritual of education for all youngsters, with the difference that those who were on the lists of succession had to go through the process many times, even once they are made chiefs (the same ritual since the pharaonic Egypt, which was repeated after coronation)… In my traditions, being tested through education to develop the character was the matter of life or death… When someone survived his or her education, it was the evidence of a strong character that nothing in life could overcome…
One of the major problems of our time is that people are getting massively schooled without having the opportunity to be educated for developing their character… One of the consequences of such deficiency is a ‘’high sense’’ of irresponsibility and recklessness in the way nations and organizations are being led… We are the era of manmade disasters that threaten not only nations but also the sustainability of the existence of the mankind as species on this planet…
President Xi of China, a very tested leader, said something very important during his address for the 95th anniversary of the foundation of the Communist Party of China (CPC). He warned his comrades to avoid that History swamps them as the governing party if they cannot deliver for the people of China and if they cannot overcome corruption and other setbacks that can undermine the trust and credibility the party has won with its achievement… This warning of President Xi is a self evidence for each governing party and for any public organization in any country of this planet… Those of organizations that don’t ensure a proper education of their leadership are set up to be cleaned up by the forces of History…
In Africa particularly, education is an essential tool. “To our generation, education became a key to unlock the gates of oppression, a tool against the warped logic of the slave-master (quote from Nelson Mandela upon receiving an Honorary Doctorate from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, 6 July 1995).
African nations should avoid reckless and failed experiments of mass schooling of our kids with dubious ideologies and fake substance, which provide no education to kids. Such bankrupt experiments will worsen issues and challenges Africa has been dealing with instead of bringing efficient solutions for the social fabric of our communities and the nation building of countries and societies. Each kid in Africa, regardless of their background, should have equal rights and equal opportunities to get educated beyond being schooled. We should not make the gender segregation of kids the base of access to education. Outside reckless and failed experiments should not be imposed to our poor communities just to school kids with disastrous societal outcomes as consequences.
Many North African countries have been mass schooling youths without setting up an efficient economy that provides jobs and income to these schooled youths. As consequence, their schooling has not even bringing an efficient solution in solving economic problems. Equally mass schooling girls at the expense of boys will not bring solutions for Africa. The Soviet Union Empire was the most successful experiment of gender equality in schooling girls and women and in promoting equality of genders in the entire human history. Such mass schooling of girls and women and the gender equality didn’t avoid the collapsing of the Soviet Empire… We need more than having our girls in schools and all women at work. Africa needs to educate all of our kids, boys and girls, without either any discrimination or any reversal discrimination promoting one group at the détriment of another…
While we should be focussing on efficient systems that provide proper knowledge, skills, competences and qualifications we need to innovate in technologies, in the economy and in different institutions of the social fabric for finding efficient solutions that improve the standards of living in our communities; we need to make sure that our kids have equal chance and equal opportunities to express their talents and shape their respective characters within societies that set up the reward and recognition of each talent… As I used to say, equality should be the base of the process, not the mesure of the outcome; the mesure of the outcome is equity that recognizes fairness in rewarding talents and characters… This is why having a proper education system ensures societal fairness…
Jack Ma made a very interesting point about education in saying, I quote: “So I think we have to change from now on, the education system. In the future, it’s not about the competition of knowledge, it’s the competition of creativity, it’s the competition of imagination, it’s a competition of learning, it’s a competition of independent thinking. If you think like a machine, the problem will come. In the past twenty years, we make people like the machine, in the next twenty years, machine will look like people. So in the future, it’s not knowledge driven, it’s the wisdom driven, it’s the experience driven. So in the past, it’s the manufacturing driven, and in the future it’s the creativity driven. So this is what we think the world should be focusing on. Not only the IQ, EQ, but also focus on LQ, the Q of love. Because only when you care the others, only you care the others that succeed, are more successful than you are, you have the chance.”
There is a big difference between mass schooling people and educating them. The today world is full of well schooled engineers, economists, physicians, medical professionals, law professionals and many other very well trained professionals. However the number of well educated people among these very skilled, experienced and well schooled professionals is drastically declining. Maybe it is time to think about how to make sure that next generations benefit from the « savoir », the « savoir-faire » and the « savoir-être ». This means that it is time to make sure that people will get both the needed schooling for their respective skills and qualifications and the needed education for their respective characters.
