An Inconvenient Truth: Education and Evil

           What is the point of an education system; not just in the United States, but worldwide? Most people would answer that it’s to make intelligent, enlightened, insightful, and just all around better human beings. The optimal result, the perfect specimen of a fully educated person, is a genius who applies their knowledge and skills towards something that benefits the entire human race, of course. So what happens when that genius, that perfect product of a complex and time-tested education system, decides to do the opposite? What does it mean when the well-educated prodigy uses his skills to inflict pain on the human race instead of helping it? What do we do when our education system creates a monster?

            

             To help shed light on this enigma, it helps to study some examples. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, we are introduced to Kurtz, the talented genius who set off into Africa with the intention of civilizing the poor, helpless savages.  At first he seems like the ideal product of the educational system: a highly intelligent, talented human being who wants nothing more than to aid his fellow (albeit distant and less fortunate) human beings in Africa. However, it is soon revealed that Kurtz actually succumbed to the darkness in the Congo and ended up killing many of the “savages” that he set out to help in the first place. Kurtz eventually did things like cut off the heads of "rebel" Africans, displaying them spiked atop poles in front of his hut; needless to say, it was hard to wrap my head around the fact that this well-educated, talented man could end up committing such horrific atrocities in the Congo.

            

               However, outside of Heart of Darkness there are more (real life) examples of this kind of occurrence. Adolf Hitler was an intelligent product of the German education system. However, he used his intelligence not to aid the human race, but to cause one of the most horrific atrocities in human history. Hitler turned out to be one the most terrifying monsters ever created, even though he was among some of the best educated in Germany.

           

              The sad, terrifying truth is this: educating people doesn’t automatically make them good or altruistic. Although everyone would like to think that the most educated people in the world want to benefit the human race, this is not always the case. Some of the most abominable acts of cruelty in history have been inflicted by perfectly well-educated human beings.

In fact, it could be argued that because these monsters were well-educated, they were even more dangerous. As horrible as it is to think about: Hitler was smart. He had to have been highly, highly intelligent to have attained as much power, convinced as many people, and inflicted as much damage as he did during the Holocaust. The same applies to Kurtz; a stupider person would not have been able to attain such a position of power over the native Africans like he did. Looking at it this way, not only does the education system not guarantee more altruistic or better people, it has the potential to make monsters even more terrible and dangerous

As a student, this truth petrifies me. I am being molded by the education system into what I would hope is a better human being than what I started as. I work hard in school to make myself more intelligent with the goal of doing whatever I can to benefit the people around me and around the world if I am able. The idea that some of the worst criminals in history went through some of the same things I have done in the education system is alarming, and it makes me wonder what will happen to me when I finally emerge on the other end of this educational journey. How can I deal with the idea that even though I am working hard to better myself, it doesn’t automatically mean I will be a better person? Or that people being educated around me might turn out to be monsters?

The only way to confront this fear is to realize that while the education system does not guarantee better people, it also does not guarantee monsters.  The goal of the education system is still to mold students into better human beings, and even though it doesn’t always do this, most of the people who make it though the education system are better because of the journey. I shouldn’t be afraid to work hard to better myself through education or be afraid that anyone that I know will end up being the one in a billion well-educated people that end up committing acts of cruelty. All I can do right now, educationally, is my best, and hopefully that will allow me to become my best as a human being. 

Blogging Around: Similar Struggles

The two posts I read for this assignment were Hannah’s Semester One: A Perfectionist Can’t Be a Great Writer and Cormac’s New Beginnings. I was surprised to see that both of them had struggled with almost exactly the same obstacles this semester as I had. It was enlightening to see how they both had gone about overcoming these setbacks, because we had done and realized a lot of the same things in the process.

 Hannah’s original post was for the Metacognition prompt and discussed how she had struggled with her perfectionist tendencies which interfered with her ability to write at her full potential. It talked about how she had eventually realized that her perfectionism was counter-productive and even touched a bit on how she had learned to let go of ideas in order to move forward with her learning.

Hannah:

                I’m glad I’m not the only one who had to deal with managing her perfectionism this semester. Just like you, I had a lot of trouble (especially at the beginning of the year) with writing assignments because I was afraid to type a single word that wasn’t immediately and exactly what I wanted to say.  I would start to edit my own work before it had even left my brain, and what I was left with was a fragmented, disjointed, and badly-written assignment, which only continued to agitate the perfectionist side of me. It was a frustrating and exhausting way to go about writing.

 It took me a while to reach the same realization you did: that I needed to put all of my thoughts out there before I even started to think about picking out the perfect words and phrases. Writing first and refining later did not come easily at all, but when I finally reached a point where I could do this my writing improved dramatically, as did my outlook on writing. I’ve found that this strategy is highly applicable to subjects besides English as well; starting a math problem is much easier for me if I’m not immediately afraid to take a chance and experiment a little with the equations. Since I’m not afraid of temporary imperfection, I can allow myself to investigate ideas and explore possibilities a little more in my work; and it’s a very free feeling. I’m glad we were both able to reach this point this year!

               Cormac’s original post was about how he had learned to let go of ideas that were important to him, and how doing that had allowed him to move forward in his work and his learning. He brought up writing the poem as an example of how his initial struggle with letting go had held him back, which is actually very similar to my own experience.

Cormac:

                I was surprised to see that your reflection on first semester was actually really similar to my own. This semester also taught me how to let go of initial ideas in order to reach more developed and interesting ones.

                

             Like you, I had a huge struggle with this lesson at first.  I was turning in work that was acceptable, but nothing I was truly proud of. I was getting fairly good grades in return for my work, but it was an unsatisfying way to go about writing for me. One of my biggest turning points, which I can see you struggled with as well, was when we had to write poems for English. I am not a poet and my poetry skills leave a lot to be desired, so right from the get-go I wasn’t expecting anything amazing, but it turned out to be even harder than I expected. Not only could I not write anything good, I was having trouble coming up with ideas to write about at all. I had come up with an idea I was happy with, and spent days trying to develop it and pursue it further. Eventually, I had put myself into such a rut that I didn’t even want to finish the poem anymore, even if I did like my idea. I had been trying to push through the brick wall at the end of a cognitive alley, and I couldn’t get myself to turn around because it felt like starting over.  It was very difficult for me to start backing away from my idea; to start letting go of content that I had worked hard on. However, this is eventually the only thing that allowed me to reach the final draft of my poem, which while still not perfect is greatly improved and greatly altered in comparison to my original.

               

                 I didn’t think other people would have had the same problem as I had, and I’m glad that I’m not the only one who struggled with this idea. Thanks for the post!