PDF What Does It Mean to Be Well Educated? by Alfie Kohn

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE WELL EDUCATED? BY ALFIE KOHN

Alfie Kohn considers his wife to be an enigma of the US Education System. She is an accomplished doctor and student of twenty nine years. However her overshadowing success hides her inability to do simple math or even the most basic of grammar is the spur that stabs at Kohn to question the definition of an individual considered well educated. His question leads to more questions. What is the point of schooling? Is it an investment in democratic society or corporate profits? Does education have to do with the quality of schooling you received? Does it depend on what you were taught or what you remembered?

The inability to place a definition to the term "Well Educated" leads Kohn's to attack the question from a different angle. He defines the attributes that are insufficient or unnecessary for one to be well educated. He notes four attributes that carry a common notion of a "Well-educated" individual. The length of education, spending hours sitting in a class room, test scores, and memorizing facts, all of which in no way shape or form denote a person's ability to think and apply process. Second noted is job skills; a secondary education received to fit the demands of a financially driven employer does not make one well educated.

If a decision is ever reached on what it means to be well educated Kohn asks where should that decision be made and who gets to decide it? He argues that even if a consensus is ever reached it is unjust to impose an education system with rule of law. There is no mass definition of education for everyone, and to do so would cause a slew of predictable effects ranging from racial and income bias to a failure based on using English as a second language.

Regardless of the definition of a well-educated individual, Kohn looks at the qualities of a school that may create well educated people. In his opinion he has determined that the best sort of schooling is organized around problems, projects, and questions. Through this method of schooling, purpose gives reason to acquiring knowledge. Quotes

-"A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth...scraps of information are only worth something if they are put to use, or at least "thrown into fresh combinations".'... -"The deadly notion that the schools' first priority should be intellectual development,...the main aim of education should be to produce competent, caring, loving, and lovable people." ... 5 Abstract Concepts 1. How race and economics contribute to receiving an education 2. Different cultures value different skills and knowledge 3. Education has been different throughout the span of history 4. Is education the priority of the student or the teacher? 5. The 5 good habits and how those make someone a well-educated person. Connections with "Against School" 1. Both authors acknowledge that much of what students learn in school are things that not everyone will use. Gatto observes the boredom of students is driven from the memorization of useless facts and Kohn then clarifies that the memorization of said facts does not make one well educated. Both Kohn and Gatto points out that students who are only being disciplined through school and not learning anything of particular interest to them cannot be considered well educated as Kohn picks it up from there and says those particular students will only go on to be ideal workers in the future without the strong ability to reason and rationalize in the real world. As schools push for their class rooms to be "well educated" students lose sight of their interest and start memorizing facts under the illusion that it is the only way to be well educated and therefore successful. 2. Kohn and Gatto's essays also seem to complement one another as they both offer the different sides of having a successful education. Gatto list reasons why the education system does not work, he explains how certain students are singled out and only those who are obedient and academically gifted get the chance to succeed. Kohn then follows up in his essay by giving a list of reasons why those students that are obedient are not in fact well educated and will have a much more difficult time succeeding in life after school. So while both essays don't discuss exactly the same thing one picks up where the other left off and offer reasons to why the school systems are not successful in giving a real example of success and being well educated. Questions to Ponder 1. Do you think you have been institutionalized? Through all of your years of education would you consider yourself a relatively well-educated person for someone your age? 2. Who is someone you consider to be well educated? Who is someone you do not? How are these two people alike and different? 3. It has been made clear through the text and talks we have so far that many people find severe flaws in the educational system. If this is the case why do you think that nothing has been done to fix it? How would you fix the education system if you had the chance?

Recommendation "What does it mean to be Well Educated" is an excellent article as it raises the question of not only what is education but how much does one have to have. There are those who are very well educated and are average in their success versus those who maybe never went to college but are just as successful if not more. Kohn demonstrates in his article that the education system is very successful in teaching its students to memorize facts but not always making them better learners and if society wishes to make their students better learners how should schools go about doing so. Then to take it to a much bigger scale, how would this technique be applied across the world? Do different cultures value different knowledge? How can one be considered well educated across the world? "What does it mean to be Well Educated" helps the reader understand that someone does not need to know everything about everything to be considered well educated, it is a matter of how they go about educating themselves and continuing learning even after school is over.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download