True Education Essay

389 Words2 Pages
Thuan Phan Professor Fong ESL089 A True Education True education isn’t about how much information you remember, it’s rather how well you understand them, so that you can make use of them in proper situations. In other words, it’s not how much stuffing you insert into your sausage casing; it’s more about selecting the best ingredients for it so that it fits your appetite. That’s Socrates’s idea of genuine education from more than two thousand years ago; the idea that inspires Sydney J. Harris’s to write his article “What True Education Should Do” in 1994. Socrates once said, “Look into your own selves and find the spark of truth that God has put into every heart and that only you can kindle to a flame.” A true educator’s responsibility is not to stuff their students with loads of information; their job is to help students find their passion and embrace what they already have, that is to “find the spark of truth that God has put into every heart and that only you can kindle to a flame.” Harris argues that genuine education should be concern with “what “go into” the student rather than with what should be taken out, and how this can best be done.” I find this absolutely true to my experience as a college students. I’m pity for Harris’s student who “spends so much time studying” that he or she didn’t “have a chance to learn anything.” But at the same time, I feel sorry myself, because that happens to me and everyone that I know. Harris concludes his article by saying, “Pupils are more like oysters than sausages. The job of teaching is not to stuff them and then seal them up, but to help them open and reveal the riches within. There are pearls in each of us, if only we knew how to cultivate them with ardor and persistence.” He believes that a student should be given selective material and enough time to “draw on his own resources” and “use his own mind.” That
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