Commentary: Join me in crafting a definition of `an education’

I was teaching language arts to five classes at a local middle school several years ago (classes of 36 to 39 students).

I had given the classes one month to write a screenplay. Some parents who lived in the same zone were critical of the assignment, saying that they wanted “benchmarks,” which was code for homework every night.

The screenplay project included working every day on their screenplay, creating a story, creating believable characters, creating a location, organizing the placement of cameras, writing dialogue, following the format, and sharing with their group.

I thought it was a good project, and frankly fun, memorable and sometimes revealing. These parents, apart from their proclivity for criticism as a form of socialization, clearly believed in a very different kind of education.

So what is education? We talk about it all the time. It is a continual topic among politicians and corporations, but what the heck is it?

“An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know,” according to Anatole France, a French poet. “It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.”

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire,” according to William Butler Yeats.

And my personal favorite is attributed to Malcolm Forbes: “Education is to replace an empty mind with an open one”

NMUSD is offering the new “Signature Academies” in which each zone has chosen what they want to specialize in. To that I say, great!

Unfortunately these programs are expensive and not really perfected at this point. Only ninth-grade students will be admitted to the school of their choice, currently. They must apply, and there are limited slots. It’s complicated.

I digress. What does education actually mean? Is it to create adults who can compete in this changing world? To create lifelong learners? To create emotionally healthy adults who have meaningful lives?

All of the above.

We need kids to understand the world around them, the skills and knowledge to be able to not just compete in the world but add to it, improve it, and be able to contribute to the world community. I’m not sure we can afford to educate students to simply “get ahead.”

James Harvey, a senior fellow at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, says, “Schools have always been about developing students for life and work, and life is much more than earning a living. It’s also living a life.”

We want and expect a lot from schools, mostly without really being clear about what we actually want.

Adam Burk, of Cooperative Catalyst, had a Ted Talk in which he asked, “What should be the purpose of education?”

Out of 365 comments there were 365 completely different answers. Harvey agrees with the “whole child” theory of past years, saying “The most significant skill young people can develop in the 21st Century is the same skill that served them well in prior centuries: A mind equipped to think — the most important work skill of all.”

So I ask all of you, what do you think education should be?

SANDY ASPER lives in Newport Beach.