Saturday, September 15, 2012

"Learning as Freedom" Précis (English 110, Section 10)

In “Learning as Freedom”—an editorial published on September 5, 2012 in The New York Times—Michael Roth argues that rather than structuring education around specific vocations, “making the grade,” and turning people into “robots” designed to complete certain tasks, education should allow individuals to be free to grow and learn while gaining necessary skills and finding their purpose as well as significance in life and work. Roth points out that the modern day education system does not allow for individuals to grow individually as intellectuals, but instead indoctrinates scores of people with the same information that is considered by those who manage the educational system to be required knowledge. The schools of today do not teach valuable information in a way that the method of teaching that is in place can be considered to be providing an education; the schools of the modern-day education system are structured to “teach” large masses of students at a time to such a high degree that they cannot be considered “schools” so much as “informational factories” mass-producing informed people and not educated individuals. In “Learning as Freedom,” the author, Michael Roth, shows that he is a firm believer in the original concept behind receiving an education: to better one’s own life by acquiring a new set of practical and applicable skills, and by improving his or her own understanding of the world.

No comments:

Post a Comment