On the relevance of education: Gardner Campbell

On the relevance of education...

So, what’s the purpose and relevance of education?

Why is it pertinent?

I think about Jerome Bruner in his “Towards a theory of instruction”

or “The Process of Education”,

where he talks about how strange a thing education is.

Human beings are the species that educates.

We take our young, we school our young,

we transmit our culture, we transmit our values,

we transmit our beliefs,

as a way of not having to start afresh with each new life,

we can actually build over time,

and build in a way that goes beyond an individual life time.

At the same time, as we build on the past,

we also have to build in the opportunity and the necessity for innovation.

And to me, that’s where education is most interesting.

In that fundamental middle spot between

serving the past and giving every student tools and inspiration

to be able to innovate,

to be able to start afresh and come up with an idea no one has come up with before.

That to me is the glory of it;

it’s the vexation of it too,

because you never know.

Are you being too much on the cultural conservation?

Are you being too anarchic?

But finding that sweet spot in there,

where that tension is most keenly felt,

students feel respect for the past because the past has made them.

At the same time, feeling completely skeptical and wide open,

and joyously curious about boundless possibilities.

If you could do both of those, it seems to me you have a real school.