NOTES: Colored and/or underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked posts/articles. Forwarding this and other posts to relatives and friends, especially those in the homeland, is greatly appreciated). To share, use all social media tools: email, blog, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. THANKS!! 1. Read on Scribd mobile apps: iPhone, iPad and Android. 2. Free download as PDF, TXT or read online for free from Scribd, point-click to open-->SCRIBD/TheFilipinoMind Click the following underlined title/link to checkout these Essential/Primary Readings About Us Filipino Natives:
Primary Blog Posts/Readings for my fellow, Native (Malay/Indio) Filipinos-in-the-Philippines
*******EDUCATION FOR INDEPENDENT THOUGHT
- Albert Einstein
“Never let formal EDUCATION get in the way of your learning.” - Mark Twain, 1835-1910, American Humorist, Writer
“On the EDUCATION of the people of this country the fate of the country depends.” - Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881, British Statesman, Prime Minister
It is not enough to teach man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good.
Otherwise, he—with his specialized knowledge—more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community.
These precious things are conveyed to the younger generation through personal contact with those who teach, not --or at least not in the main-- through textbooks. It is this that primarily constitutes and preserves culture. This is what I have in mind when I recommend the “humanities” as important, not just dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy.
Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included.
It is also vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be developed in the young human being; a development that is greatly jeopardized by overburdening him with too much and with too varied subjects (point system). Overburdening necessarily leads to superficiality. Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
- NY Times, October 5, 1952
See also:
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/08/question-is-educate-for-what-first.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/10/call-to-historians-history-and-liberal.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/07/filipino-norm-of-morality-vitaliano-r.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/07/common-good-developed-by-manuel.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/06/democracy-and-education-noam-chomsky.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/06/ang-sistema-ng-edukasyon-sa-pilipinas.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/06/cultural-illiteracy-what-we-filipinos.html,
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/05/dont-know-much-about-history-in-order.html
"What we should seek to impart in our colleges, therefore, is not so much learning itself as the spirit of learning. It consists in the power to distinguish good reasoning from bad, in the power to digest and interpret evidence, in the habit of catholic observation and a preference for the non partisan point of view, in an addiction to clear and logical processes of thought and yet an instinctive desire to interpret rather than to stick to the letter of reasoning, in a taste for knowledge and a deep respect for the integrity of the human mind." – President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
No comments :
Post a Comment