Creation of Mindless Beings

Creation of Mindless Beings

“...public schools where the children are repressed in the spontaneous expression of their personality till they are almost like dead beings... like butterflies mounted on pins, fastened each to his place, the desk, spreading the useless wings of barren and meaningless knowledge which they have acquired” (Montessori 286). Mass education has become as routine in our lives as death and taxes, but does it work? In reading the essays Montaigne’s “Of the Education of the Children”, Emerson’s “On Education”, Montessori’s “The Montessori Method” and Frieire’s “The Banking of Education” has enlightened me on the shortcomings of mass education. Even though they all wrote and lived in different era’s and locations all over the world these essays all have various connections to each other. Michel Eyquem De Montaigne lived in the 16th century in France where he learned to speak and read in Latin because that was the language of scholars. Ralph Waldo Emerson lived in the 19th century in Massachusetts, he enrolled at Harvard at age fourteen, he then taught for a few years and became a minister but he lived his later years as a lecturer during and after the Civil War. Maria Montessori was born in Italy in the late 19th century she founded a children's school in the slums of Rome where the learning was focused on the child's natural learning process. Paul Frieire lived in the 20th century in Brazil where he worked to help peasants learn to read and write, he had a goal of liberating the minds of the peasants. All their backgrounds are heavily influenced by education and the way that it effects people. The ideas that the writers have on mass education are so similar it is profound that dating back to the 16th century many philosophers views on mass education have been one of dissent. For it takes away any soul and individuality that each student possesses. Where does individuality come when students are taught to the lowest denominator and taught cut and dry facts.

How many times have you stepped into a classroom only to listen to the teacher lecture without any interest in the students actual goal of their education. A student should be in control of their education because the student is the one who will decide what he or she wants to learn whether or not the teacher is doing it. It is to easy for a teacher to have a class read out of a text book and focus on the numbers and dates without even acknowledging the reasons behind the history or why this history is important. We as students are told to go through so many obstacles along the way it seems unnecessary. Why should a history major have to take math, will they need to know how to use these skills with their life after mass education? As Emerson states,”Every mind should be allowed to make its own statement in action, and its balance will appear”(Emerson 255). If students learning experiences are controlled by the systems wishes only a few minds will come out of the experience with anything valuable.

Students are put into classrooms with 30 other individuals, put in desks with a strict schedule and strict curriculum. “He cannot indulge his genius, he cannot delight in personal relations with young friends, when his eye is always on the clock, and twenty classes are to be dealt with before the day is done”(Emerson 255). There are so many days in school that students spend listening to mindless language out of the teachers mouth just waiting to get out and actually learn something in the real world. We are so dumbed down in school that it is hard to create pictures or realities to the knowledge teachers preach at us. How are we supposed to understand 14th century Europe by reading facts out of a book. “...what may happen to the sprit of the child who is condemned to grow in conditions so artificial that his very bones may become deformed”(Montessori 289). Our environment that we are told to learn in is so soulless and uncreative that it creates a sense of slavery. Locked in a box with maybe two windows, told when to come and when to leave, what to do and when to do it, what to learn and never told why we need to learn it. It is as if we have a preconceived notion in our head that will lead us to the answer and understand the topic immediately. When our schools are told that the children have health problems because of the conditions of the school, the system says build better benches. No student ever asks for better benches, what a student wants is a better environment to work in, a shorter day so that the student can experience other things in life besides sitting, listening and waiting to be released.

Our minds are meant to be things of vast knowledge and experiences, not a receptacle of meaningless knowledge. “The