Education is an Old World and a New World, Both

I know it’s liable to drive tribalists crazy, but the truth is that education is both conservative and liberal, both traditionalist and progressive.

Education is conservative and traditionalist at its core, and to pretend otherwise is silly. The point of teaching content—any content—and not simply skills—is to connect our children to their cultural history and allow them to continue the story that our forebears started and that we have been a part of. 

Education allows each of us to be smarter than any of us; it allows us to access the history of thought, of experimentation, of discovery. The ability to access a wide and deep world of other brains is the superpower that has made humans what we are. 

But education is also progressive. Maybe not in every time and in every place, but certainly here in our country. Our Founders read history to find out how other people in other places had solved problems similar to the ones they were facing, and they used what they learned to forge a new path for themselves. 

We have students read novels about problems and conflicts and sadness and pain—not to bum them out and make them feel the world is terrible, but to help them develop empathy beyond what they can see and hear, and to build within them a desire to help others and improve the world. Yes—improve the world. Because the desire to make the world anew is our birthright as Americans (and sometimes our tragic flaw). 

A med school professor who made a speech to my freshman class, the first day of college, spoke of the early European explorers and the importance of finding a point on the horizon past which you know nothing, and sailing straight for it. That—he said—is what education is all about. That—he said—is what this country is all about.  

And yes, those explorers did terrible things when they reached what they thought was a new world, because they brought their traditions with them, which included all their limitations and ignorance and bigotry. And that part needs to be taught, too. The blessings and the curses. 

Never stop asking. Never stop learning. Never be satisfied that you know everything you need to know. Never assume the land you stand on is the promised land, or that you are its savior. The real promise is the fire that drives you forward. But don’t go forward empty-handed…or empty-headed. Learn the past. Learn from the past. And build on it. Conserve…and progress.