Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Halil Džubran
Imagine a child. A smile appears on your face, and in your mind, pictures of carefree laughter, innocence, and abundance of energy. Look at the child, look Look into his eyes! Don’t you see the life waiting to be expressed? A child embodies the human potential waiting to flow and express itself in its uniqueness. It wants to know, understand, discover secrets with a sense of wonder, admiration, and joy.
Like children, we can also have that same sense of wonder and admiration, intuitive understanding that helps us connect seemingly different things. Do we still have that ability? Or have we sacrificed it to adopt the school curriculum, lost in the pursuit of securing a “bright future” for ourselves?
The education system is shaped by the principle of assess – prepare – categorize. Is the child ready for school? Does it know the alphabet by heart even before crossing the school’s threshold? Does it have what it takes to become a lawyer or a computer engineer?
Doesn’t that sound like we are assessing whether a child can fit into a specific mold, instead of awakening the potential in every child? After surviving the school experience stege, the race for the “best” college or engineering study begins. Every year, a multitude of doctors, lawyers, and programmers graduate from our academic institutions. There is no doubt that society needs all of them, but one wonders: is that the goal of upbringing and education?
With the increasing number of specializations in the educational system, it is believed that every individual has the opportunity to become what they want to be. The question arises, who decides what is good for each young person? Parents? The educational system? Or perhaps the young person themselves? Additionally, does the existing system provide the right incentives to allow students to truly express their unique potential? And where does that potential lead? Only towards a profession or calling with which we were born to identify? Or maybe it has a deeper meaning?
According to the definition of educere, the Latin origin of the word education, it means to bring out or extract. This means that the original intention of education is to bring to life the potential that has always existed. In every child, in every individual, the goal is to awaken the best that resides within us. The focus is on what exists within us, rather than what we receive from the outside.
The modern academic system has its merits, but also many limitations. Recognizing this, several alternative systems have emerged. The Montessori approach, for example, emphasizes the following goal of education: not to “bombard” children with facts, but to nurture their natural desire to learn. Maria Montessori, an Italian physician and educator from the 19th century, recognized children’s ability to guide their own learning. The Montessori approach allows children to choose their activities and engage in tasks that correspond to their needs on all levels – physical, social, mental, and emotional.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Rudolf Steiner founded the Waldorf school, highlighting that Waldorf education is not just a pedagogical system, but an art – the art of awakening what already exists within us. The essence of a human being is crucial.
Therefore, what exists within us is crucial.
In Plato’s The Republic, education and upbringing are given special importance: If the state (politeia) is well-founded, then everything will progress and strengthen in a circular manner: proper education and upbringing will shape good character; and these virtuous characters, in turn, will be able to create a generation even better than the previous one through education…
He states that the function of education is to determine each citizen’s place in the state according to their natural abilities and inclinations and to become a good human being:
…our laws do not aim for one class in the state to be particularly happy, but to create the well-being of the whole state, bringing citizens into harmony through persuasion or force, giving them a share in the tasks that each individual can do for the state based on their abilities. Laws precisely create such individuals in the state, not to allow everyone to do as they please, but to make the state unique in this way.
The highest goal of education for Plato is knowledge of the Good. This transcends the paradigm of education as a means of acquiring knowledge, skills, or abilities, and points to its function connected to shaping a person’s character, so that they can comprehend what can be, rather than what they can do or achieve.
Readers may wonder why I propose a return to the past alongside such advancements in educational methods, tools, and aids, such as mobile learning and virtual laboratories. It is because our society and academic system are paying a high price for the progress we have made.
India has recorded the highest rate of youth suicides aged between 15 and 29 in the world, with failure in exams being cited as one of the top ten reasons. Academic success (or failure) is considered a cause of depression among teenagers, and even five-year-olds suffer from anxiety. This clearly suggests that not everything is as it should be in upbringing and education.
Of course, it would be dogmatic to deny that the same educational system has produced internationally recognized laureates, scientists, and writers. However, when we look at those highly educated, successful, and exhausted from frequent travel, we wonder if they have found what they were looking for.
So, what are we really searching for? Greek understanding of the human being can shed light on the problem. Greek philosophers observed humans on three levels: soma (body), psyche (mind), and nous (spirit). Plato suggests that comprehensive education should satisfy a person on each of these levels.
• Soma represents the physical domain, the tangible body.
• Psyche refers to the emotional and mental dimension that determines what we love and dislike, houses our feelings and desires, and reflects our beliefs.
• Nous (Spirit), our highest self, is the spiritual dimension, the eternal soul that reflects the ideals and principles of the universe.
For the body, Plato proposes exercise and proper nutrition. Plato himself was skilled in wrestling. For the The education system recommended studying nine branches of art and science, which were protected by the muses: astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, history, theater, poetry, music, rhetoric, and allegory. The curriculum was designed to help students experience the order and beauty that exist in the universe, in life. And for Nous, the Spirit, Plato points to philosophy, as he writes that through philosophy we can find truth and realize who we truly are.
Plato emphasized that education must meet the needs of young individuals according to their life stages. In order to quickly identify what each individual is naturally capable of, children should be educated through play, and not by force.
For children under the age of 7, who are in a receptive phase, interaction with nature was recommended in order to learn the basic principles of life and understand their connection to the world. By observing the diversity and vastness of nature, deep respect can develop from childhood. In a larger reality and a sense of humility. By exploring the world around them, children also develop the most important tool – imagination, which according to Plato is the only way to connect with reality. In the pre-teenage years, when energy levels are at their peak, it is necessary to inspire and direct that boundless energy. Plato therefore proposes tales of heroes, legends that emphasize lasting values and inner life; children can be encouraged to participate in performances, for example, to play Arjuna rather than Pokemon or Batman. Finally, in adolescence, upbringing and education must focus on facilitating the transition from recipient to executor, from someone who contributes, in which the seed of a true citizen is planted.
Today, it seems that education and upbringing focus more on memorizing prescribed knowledge, rather than enabling children to acquire knowledge through exploration. This results in so much of children’s energy being confined to desks, instead of being encouraged to Oh to play outside, to explore, observe, and learn biology and physics from the book of nature. Children are taught to write even before their muscles develop, so why do we wonder why children don’t like writing and why they are restless, have attention disorders, and become hyperactive?
Furthermore, according to Plato, the aim of education is not only personal development but also service to the state. In fact, for him, individual growth is inseparably linked to progress in the state. There lies the crux of the problem: as long as education is seen as a means for personal gain, the process of upbringing and education is compromised and limiting. When its purpose is to rise above ourselves, it is not limited to individual achievement but calls for contribution to the common good. It shifts the focus from “me” to “we”. In a world that is increasingly polarized in many areas, education that unites humans with other people, connects humans with nature, and harmonizes body and spirit, may be the answer to the initial question. What is the aim of education?