What is the result that education seeks?
Is it social control?
Providing information and habits as a basis to later play a certain role in society?
A certain “floor” that “equals the circumstances and allows competition to “succeed” or achieve any goal you set for yourself? – In that case, is there an education that makes you part of an “elite”? Or an education that allows you to be a “star”?
Is there an education that allows you to find a “goal” for your life?
Obviously there are many ramifications and specialised studies about education. But in a general or global way, the education we receive is essentially what is necessary to find a place in a production line – on the line, as a foreman – or manager – or “owner”…
Or employee- or “associate”- supervisor, “partner”, and banker… or student, researcher, director and rector and “secretary of education”… or crew, sound engineer, star, businessman, corporate director, corporate partner and head of the family that founded it… or director, secretary and president… or representative, prime minister, king… etc.
Of all of them, the only ones who received a different education were royalty. Going to school to submit to an authority that teaches you languages and mathematics is not the same as being under the authority of your parents and the function they fulfil, in a house that represents the entire kingdom to which you belong, and whoever teaches mathematics to come to your house to “assist you”, it must give you another image and attitude towards others and yourself – but these ways have also changed.
But we could continue asking: What objective does it have? Or put another way: What results has it produced?
If we review history, we could say that in societies with more experience or more developed, it has clearly offered as a global result the “serial production of murders” – at one extreme this is what happened in Nazi Germany:
If you educate to comply with a schedule and follow an authority that approves or disapproves of what you do with no other objective than to “please him”, establishing a “hierarchy” of functions to produce “serial”, then when society is “advanced” and includes the majority of its members in its general scheme, and the system is under pressure, the majorities will elect “authorities” that represent their degree of “education” – or their main interests and forms.
In this way, Germany in the 1930s, faced with a global and local crisis, ended up “following” those who represented the most basic calculations of the masses of always demanding an immediate and strictly personal reward, without planning for the future and without planning the preservation of the society in which they sustain themselves – even if it is to be able to continue exploiting the majorities, as the aristocracy did. Furthermore, many aristocrats showed sympathies for Nazism and its leader – obviously there was a “special” ingredient for it to happen, which has to do with education.
In this way, the education that inserted into the majorities the search for approval from an authority figure took the form of a Führer who was one of the majority. The bullies in the hallways with a tendency toward sadism had approval and even outfits to exercise their sadism openly and feel proud, the “foremen” of the production lines or managers had honour and security by simply “accommodating” and “obeying” efficiently without questioning and those who obtained good “grades” for being “likeable” for the authority and “maneuvering” with their tongues behind the backs of their classmates, even without perhaps being competent, had great opportunities to belong to “circles” around high authorities or other figures with a tendency and objectives of adulation… etc.
The examples could continue but the point is to point out that an education with no other objective than the production and consumption of what is produced, without attending to and shaping the attitude and feelings that people have towards others, will end up in a production line where exploitation will be “extreme” – that is, a total indifference towards the existence of the “other” to extract the “pleasure” even from “killing” him, when you can no longer extract anything else, but in a “serial” way…like in Auschwitz .
In fact, when you look at least a little bit at the minutes of the Wannsee conference – where the Nazis decided on the final solution – and you don’t know that by “units” they mean people, and by “processing” they mean murder, you would think that those are the minutes of any German corporate meeting – it could also be English or North American.
The question of whether this could be repeated is equivalent to another question: have our natural inclinations towards others changed? And has the way we “educate” or “form” those inclinations – the goals and aspirations we give them – essentially changed?
We can see that if anything is going to change the direction towards “the abyss”, it will take the form of a type of education. If there will be people who truly influence the future, they will be “educators” of sorts. If there will be “bravery” and “heroics”, they will be related to a certain type of education…
The search that will become more urgent will be for an education that not only prevents us from not having a “future”, but also creates a future and “saves” time.
After all, changing a person’s inclination to exploit others – through, say, shouting or violence or rumours and lies or any form of the inclination present in all people – through a process of education that modifies that inclination and make it become “benevolent” towards others, it may seem like a very slow “process” compared to simply “subduing” or “deceiving” him on his own terms and getting an immediate gain in feelings of “power” or “money” or “superiority.” But we know that by “subduing” or deceiving them, these inclinations do not disappear but rather they are hidden and then return with more force. Modifying it through education may take “thirty years” or more… but it is less time than three generations and three global wars…
Even if we found an education that trained people to be able to “simply” “listen,” we would almost immediately see a huge change in our opportunities and quality of life – whatever that means for each of us.
We cannot even imagine the height of a society that was truly educated to “read.”
Obviously, those destined to set an example of this type of education are the usual suspects, and will always be “in the spotlight.”
Snakeeskin 