There's a great essay by Yehudi Menuhin in which he refers to 'Education' and 'Conditioning' as opposites. Conditioning "attempts to transform a living human being into a predictable automaton, conditioned to react in a particular way to a given set of situations".
Whereas Education "should enable us to meet any free circumstance with a sporting chance of success".
Menuhin was an idealist to say the least… so much of today's 'education' isn't education at all, it's just conditioning. Today's less effective education systems go all the way back to pioneers of conditioning such as Henry Ford. Automate the behaviour of man, and you have a remarkably powerful machine — one that you control totally, for it cannot think for itself.
But a machine that cannot think cannot last for ever…
I think you’ve missed the point; surely a machine exists to do a specific job: a bicycle, lever, car…. An education, technically, should be a multifaceted skillset: learning to write script isn’t only useful for novelists, nor is a D major scale useful only for a Beethoven Sonata in the same key.
Education and mechanical processes aren’t the same, even supposing an unfortunate education might feel like rote learning, it has a more holistic approach.. either that, or you have some seriously sentient machines
David -
Great comment, thank you. I like ‘multifaceted skillset’ as a description for the ‘technical’ or ‘skill acquisition’ element of education. I love your comment ‘even supposing an unfortunate education might feel like rote learning, it has a more holistic approach’.
My contention is that this is sometimes not the case: too many education systems still emphasise the acquisition and application of specific skills in ways that are so abstract, that learners cannot translate that rote learning to realize it’s broader value. The ‘jumping through hoops’ curricula of many examination boards come to mind…
Also, I have seen so much music teaching where the acquisition of skill (such as a D major scale) is abstracted to such a degree that it is hard for the learner to make the mental leap to the many different values that that scale has as a tool. It’s common sense once you realise it of course, but how often do we neglect to see the obvious first time around…?
Am I wrong?