Money Power and Education

 

Money  is a tool used to build structures for higher purposes.  It is not the Answer, the Ultimate Power, no matter what popular opinion is at the moment.  Money/Business/Power keeps trying to devour Education.  That is a stupid thing to do.

 

Any teaching of the young is ‘teaching values’.  That is the way our human minds are built.  That is not a personal opinion but a fact of life.

In the history of societies teaching has been a function of :

·        religion  (a spiritual obligation)

·        the polis whether village, city or state  (caring for one’s neighbor and the health of one’s society)

·        a passionate individual  (devotion to belief)

 

It has also been done to gain personal power (to indoctrinate or emotionally bind people) from the beginning of time as far as we know.  This is understood as a perversion, the shadow side of an ideal.

 

Teaching as a passing of ideals – using information, reflection, experimentation, questioning and skill building-- is a spiritual function; an active presentation of adult unconditional love that builds in a human child resilience, persistence in the face of difficulty, a thirst of knowledge, discernment, hope for one’s future and deep pleasure in relationships.  This kind of love is not sentimentality, or emotional desire, but a no-strings-attached gift --- a gift that is a basic bond of adult and child.

 

The Results of true teaching are not measured in numbers, any numbers, but in the lifework of growing-up children.  Do you see creative imagination, applied energies, collaboration, civility, healthy bodies and minds, joy?  They are results that are clearly observable but not measurable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teaching the young with the prime intention of personal gain –money, personal power, commercial success—is a using of the young, their trust in adults, to benefit the adult.  That is a conditional love --  a trade.  “I’ll teach you if you pay me..”  When an adult says to another person,  “ I’ll love you if you pay me”, what do we call it?

 

True public schooling funded by a voluntary tax, open to all, based on timeless Ideals (not desire to control or have political power), offered by adults of integrity says to children,  “You are loved; you are worthy of my care; adults are trustworthy; life is good; grow into fine citizens; your community cares enough about you to educate you –not to profit ourselves.

 

Adults who defraud and claim the money meant to benefit the children, who milk the taxpayers with schemes or personal agendas, who take over the responsibilities of the polis to order to make themselves wealthy, whose reforms say,  “I’ll teach you if you pay me back with test scores,”  betray us all.

 

 

 

pcraig  May, 2010