Daily Maieutic

Excerpt from Volume II of Karl Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies" (p. 275 - 278) re: his views on education, and how the aims of education differ from the aims of politics:

" [I]ndeed, our intellectual as well as our ethical education is corrupt. It is perverted by the admiration of brilliance, of the way that things are said, which takes the place of critical appreciation of the things that are said (and the things that are done). It is perverted by the romantic idea of the splendour of the stage of History on which we are the actors. We are educated to act with an eye to the gallery.

The whole problem of educating man to a sane appreciation of his own importance relative to that of other individuals is thoroughly muddled by these ethics of fame and fate...Instead of a sober combination of individualism and altruism - that is to say, instead of a position like "What really matters are human individuals, but I do not take this to mean that it is I who matter very much - a romantic combination of egoism and collectivism is taken for granted. That is to say, the importance of the self, of its emotional life and its "self-expression" is romantically exaggerated.

At the bottom of all this there is a real difficulty. While it is fairly clear that the politician should limit himself to fighting against evils, instead of fighting for "positive" or "higher" values, such as happiness, etc., the teacher in principle is in a different position. Although he should not impose his scale of "higher" values upon his pupils he certainly should try to stimulate his interest in these values. Thus there is something like a romantic or aesthetic element in education, such as should not enter politics. But though this is true in principle, it is hardly applicable to our educational system. For it presupposes a relationship of friendship between teacher and pupil, a relation which each party must be free to end. The very number of pupils makes all this impossible in our schools [and indeed the choice of schools is severely restricted]. Accordingly, attempts to impose higher values not only become unsuccessful, but it must be insisted that they lead to harm. And the principle that those who are entrusted to us must, before anything else, not be harmed, should be recognized to be just as fundamental for education as it is for medicine. "Do no harm" and "give the young what they most urgently need in order to become independent of us, and to be able to choose for themselves" would be a very worthy aim for our educational system, and one whose realization is somewhat remote although it sounds modest. Instead, "higher" aims are the fashion, aims which are typically romantic and indeed nonsensical, such as "the full development of the personality."

.. But it is not what we need. We need an ethics which defies success and reward. And such an ethics need not be invented. It is not new. It has been taught by Christianity, at least in its beginnings. It is, again, taught by the industrial as well as by the scientific co-operation of our own day. The romantic morality of fame, fortunately, seems to be on the decline. The Unknown Soldier shows it. We are beginning to realize that sacrifice may mean just as much, or even more, when it is made anonymously. Our ethical education must follow suit. We must be taught to do our work; to make our sacrifice for the sake of this work, and not for praise or the avoidance of blame. "
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Read more about Popper's philosophy of education here:

Popper on Education Popper's thoughts on education especially moral education, public education, science education and critical thinking.

The U.S. labor market is changing in interesting ways. College enrollment has declined by 15% in the last decade, while entry into apprenticeship programs has increased 50% (while also becoming increasingly exclusive in some cases - the insurance firm mentioned in this article accepted just 7% of applicants last year, making it as competitive as an Ivy League school). More students are opting for apprenticeships over a four-year university degree after they graduate high school. There are advantages and disadvantages to both routes, especially in a rapidly changing and diverse labor market, and it is important to understand and weigh these options in light of your own personal and financial circumstances as well as your short and long term goals.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

More Students Are Turning Away From College and Toward Apprenticeships Some white-collar training programs have become as selective as Ivy League universities.

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Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought Great minds shape the thinking of successive historical periods. Luther and Calvin inspired the Reformation; Locke, Leibniz, Voltaire and Rousseau, the Enlightenment. Modern thought is most dependent on the influence of Charles Darwin

W. W. Bartley III on the sociology and economics of knowledge; concluding remarks:

" To sum up the conclusions reached in the first Part of this study: what we think we know, the knowledge that we have, is unlikely to be right; even if it is right, it is autonomous, independent from us, and imperfectly known to us. /Far from being manifestly true, it is unfathomed knowledge/. And whether right or wrong, perfectly or imperfectly known, it is subject to distortion arising even from the very form in which it presents itself.

Rather than being a cause for despair, these circumstances give point to rational investigation and, especially, to education. For the fundamental task of education is /unlearning/: making ourselves, and the ideas by which we conceive and create ourselves, strange and alien, and thus transcending our old selves.

Hence it is worth recalling that theories of education today often wrongly, yet in accordance with the sociology of knowledge, characterise the educational process as little more than a good opportunity, provided by the state, for teacher and student to express themselves. But education, because of the nature of objective knowledge, is far more than organised mutual self-expression. It is at once the enactment, the reconstruction, and the creation of culture. The teacher must present a structure of knowledge that he does not fully understand to a student who also cannot hope to fully understand it. Such a relationship is perhaps the smallest social unit in the 'marketplace of ideas,' but it illustrates, once again, how - despite all distortions - such a market acts as a discovery process in a situation in which none of us knows what we are doing. "

_Unfathomed Knowledge, Unmeasured Wealth (1990), Chapter 4, p. 85

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

- Probably the most beautiful passage in Charles Darwin's _The Origin of Species_