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A DIATRIBE IN FAVOR OF EDUCATION

Silvia Osman, Magdalena Albulescu

Abstract

More than six decades ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Junior published in The Maroon Tiger, an article called The Purpose of Education in which he emphasized the need to “train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking[1]”, since “to think for one’s self is very difficult”. Could we say wholeheartedly that modern education fulfills nowadays the indispensable needs Dr. King was talking about in the nineteen-fifties? Are we able to say that the chief aims of education are being achieved, and long term visions institutionally established? Could we support that the type of education we advocate for in the twenty-first century enables one to “sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction”? The present paper reviews and analyses the general purpose of education, taking into consideration its general aims, utilitarian and moral functions, from the perspective of a more and more global society. Misconceptions of the purpose of education are dangerous and their effects long-lasting, affecting the very way in which society evolves. “Be careful, brethren! Be careful, teachers!” young Martin Luther King Junior has warned us. Are we, modern educators, careful, as he has suggested? We should better be, or else our educational systems will eventually produce groups of “close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts”. Are we, by any chance, individually, or at societal level, facing these issues of close-mindedness, immoral acts and propaganda today, in our (post)modern, pragmatic and highly technological, wonderful and imaginative twenty-first century? We should, indeed, be careful, or history will vilify us.

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