Wednesday, April 28, 2010

teaching a free man

To be truly free one must have no obligations and no restrictions only choices and opportunities. Therefore the ideas of freedom and education must be opposites. When one tries to teach another he can take either of to approaches; guiding the student or apprentice or simply telling him. Either way education is an obstruction of his freedom because you are either guiding the student towards one answer or giving him that answer instead of leaving any posssibility open, you are not letting the student reflect and come to his own answer. If you teach a child how to walk you are taking away from his freedom by doing so, if the child were truly free he would choose to get up and try walking on his own. Now i do realize this example may be extreme however it is concrete and it is also undeniable. The only tru education that respects freedom is that of personal experience or trial and error. Even the education of mathematics or sciences must be done through personal thought in order to respect ones freedom, if one teaches that 1+1=2 then the individual who is said to be free has just lost his freedom, the individual must, on his own, encounter a situation in which he needs this knowledge and decide for himself what the anser should be. then again if one needs knowledge in order to live is he truely free?

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