How did the world arrive at its current state of crises; Part 4 – Education

BY ERROL A. GIBBS

How did the world arrive at its current state of crises, despite exponential growth in the religions of the world, academia, human knowledge, scientific and technological achievements in engineering and medicines, and material and financial wealth? Can education help to manage or reverse the nature of the crises (Reference: Part 1. Paragraph 2.).

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all” — Aristotle (384BC – 322BC) (Father of Western Philosophy).

What is education? How do parents explain what education is to their children? How do individuals and nations measure the benefits of billions of dollars of investments in education? Can education be the panacea for a world in crisis?  What ought to be the strategic goals of education? The answers are more fundamental than the questions.

This writer proffers that education ought to be a “human value” proposition with the inherent capacity to lift people to great heights of humanity. Education ought to incorporate intangibles such as knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, fairness, reason, realism, integrity, prudence, and discernment to solve fundamental human problems.

More importantly, education should liberate human beings from the dominion of a largely materially driven lifestyle. The reality of our postmodern era is that we have arrived at crossroads of unquestionable material progress on the one hand, and a decline in spiritual, moral, social, intellectual, and physical development on the other hand.

Schools, as a place for formal learning, began by about 3100 BC., with the Scribes and Priests. Fast forward to 2019 AD. Post Graduate Degrees, Graduate Degrees, and Masters of Business Administration (MBA). Degrees have become fundamental requirements for people in a wide range of occupations in religion, politics, education, leadership, government, and management.

These degrees have mushroomed throughout universities, private institutions, and corporations at significant cost to both student and institution. Schools have become manufacturers of advanced knowledge, but the world needs an “educational philosophy” that can usher in a new era of “educational enlightenment” of the 21^st century.

The world’s expenditure on education in 2014 was $1,776 trillion (Reference: Stockholm International Peace Institute (SIPI)). Paradoxically, observe the human condition through the prisms of postmodern education. Observe the financial deficit of nations, the increase in mental illness, fear, anxiety, stress, depression, and loneliness among people.

Observe the distrust and apathy with political leaders, the cyclic collapse of the world economies, and the moral failure of some educated elites in high finance, politics, and religion. Observe the application of some unjust and just laws — unjustly. Observe the decline in the display of international peace and harmony, the hoarding of strategic resources, the accumulation of excessive wealth, global terrorism, and the advent of World War III.

These human conditions confirm a universal decline in the capacity of postmodern education to lift human beings to new heights of humanity. Likewise, to build and sustain great civilizations. The calculable response to problems of humankind is to call for higher expenditures in academic research, prison incarceration, underpinned by the growth in the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), and more advanced Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).

The cost of mass incarceration in the United States cost is $182.0 Billion per year (Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). Likewise, the total (federal, provincial, and municipal) public spending on criminal justice in Canada per year is about $20 billion (The John Howard Society of Canada).

The world’s expenditure to sustain its Military Industrial Complex (MIC) amounted to $1,756 trillion in 2012 (www.globalissues.org).  According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of refugees and internally displaced people have reached an unprecedented 68.5 million.

 Among the displaced peoples are nearly 25.4 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. The UNHCR annual budget rose to more than US$ 1 billion in the early 1990s and reached a new yearly high of US$ 7.7 billion in 2017.

One could hypothesize that political leaders would comprehend that the fragile world economy is incapable of sustaining these “deficit-driven” expenditures. The educated observer could conclude that these expenditures should address such critical issues as early childhood education, mental illness, emerging infectious diseases or the fifteen global challenges facing humanity depicted in The Millennium Project Global Futures Studies & Research of (2012).

What could be the solution to this postmodern educational conundrum — a Wholesome Educational Curriculum (WEC)? A WEC alone can liberate completely — spiritually, morally, socially, intellectually, and physically, with measurable outcomes that are similar to Academic Information Literacy (AIC) and numeracy. A WEC incorporates greater creativity and innovation.

The restrictive AIC prisms place an inherent limit on the enormous potential of education to transform the lives of individuals and nations. A WEC alone engenders the highest potency in leaders, followers, and nations. A WEC guides humankind along a path to a better understanding of fundamental human needs.

Follow us ―as we briefly re-explore five salient paths ― Philosophy, Religion, Education, Authority, and Leadership for new understandings and solution perspectives that can lead to a better world for future generations.