Our Cultural Concept of Education

Education can be defined as the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.
“Our cultural concept of education and knowledge is based upon the idea of building something up from a ground, from zero, and starting piece by piece to put things together, to construct edifices. It is addictive. If we approach this process from the other direction, considering it to be backwards, or subtractive, all sorts of things start to happen.  Scientists always marvel at nature, at how it seems to be some grand code, with a built-in sense of purpose.  Discoveries are made which reveal that more and more things are related, connected. Everything appears to be aware of itself and everything else, all fitting into an interlocking whole. We quite literally carve out our own realities.  If you want to make a jigsaw puzzle, you must first start with the whole image, and then cut it up.  The observer, working backwards into the system, has the point of view that he or she is building things up, putting it together piece by piece.”
Education in our culture is like the jigsaw puzzle, we look at the overall picture of what our culture feels is important for everyone to know, and they break it down and teach children piece by piece. The pieces are seperated into what is age appropriate, and thus why we have grades, first grade through twelth grade.  Pre-school and Kindergarden’s purpose is more or less a way to prepare children for the rest of their education, showing them how to interact appropriately with other children and teachers.  If you think about what a Kindergardener does at “school,” they are read stories, they play with toys, and they take a nap. Once a child enters first grade they are given the outside edges of the puzzle, they learn the basics of reading and writing, and simple math.  As in a jigsaw puzzle, the outer-edge is where it makes sense to start, it’s the easiest to put together. You would not introduce calculus to a first grader. Calculus is like the most inner part of the jigsaw puzzle…. it requires the knowlegde of the other maths to make sense.  We put our education piece by piece, since you can not throw all of it at a person in one sitting and expect them to retain anything.