Education and how we are failing our children.

What is education?  Or what is true knowledge.  I believe we are failing our children and future generations when it comes down to handing down what is true knowledge.  There are few things in this universe or perhaps multi-verse that we as human beings KNOW for sure.  In fact, it is very likely that we are a very primitive species that knows very little about things such as the true nature of the universe.  With all of our vast books of knowledge, most intelligent people would tell you that we still know very little about many things.  We are only at the beginning point of unlocking some of these mysteries.  Some examples of where our knowledge of things is limited are things like the deep ocean, tectonic plate movement, large parts of our own planet, most of our solar system we inhabit, and the galaxy it is a part of, let alone the billions or more other galaxies out there, some much stranger than our own.  Also, something as simple as knowledge of ourselves has been very limited.  Which is one of the problems I have with modern medicine.  Too often, doctors seem to be playing the guessing game, using what tools are available to them to make their guesses.  Way too often those guesses end up wrong, and of course sometimes they are correct.  But as we have learned from certain studies, the placebo affect itself can account for a large number of recoveries.  Which leads me to my next example, the human brain.  It shows how primitive we really are when we are just starting to unlock the mysteries behind the human body and the brain.  I think science is just beginning to acquire the right tools to analyze the brain and other areas to finally give us a better glimpse of what is going on in the most powerful organ in our body.  As it stands for now, the brain still does many things that we have no clue about.  At present time, and maybe not for very long according to Moore's law, the human brain is still the most powerful computer we have.  Of course according to Moore's law, that will only last another 50 years or so.  Most people don't relize this, but at this rate, a "Terminator" like future is not so unimaginable in say 50-100 years from now. I hope we will find ways of avoiding that future once we are capable of building such intelligent machines, which is right around the corner.  Scientist have already been building supercomputers useing things like nano-technology that make our modern notebooks seem like calculators. 
  Back to education, anyone who reads this blog will probably notice that I digress a lot, and spelling and grammar have never been strong suits of mine.  But I'd like to say that to me, education is a lot about asking questions, and asking the right questions.  One of the reasons I feel we are failing our children when it comes to education, is that too many of us our discouraging children from asking questions.  I know the great and now deceased scientist Carl Sagan would agree with me.  In one of his books that I recently read, he talks alot about this topic of how we discourage children from asking questions.  One example he brings up is something like, a child asks his mother why the moon is round, to which the mother responds, "what did you think it should be square", this answer makes the child feel as if he asked a stupid question.  Many times this will occur because the child may ask many questions that the adult does not know, or is uncomfortable answering.  This leads to, after similar situations occuring over and over, that the child begins to stop asking questions, and starts believing that most questions are stupid and the world is as the world is and that no one should question that.  But instead, what impact would it have on the child if the mother instead told the child something like, "that's a good question, but I don't know the answer.  Let's see if we can look it up or google it".  What would the world be like if we had more people who ask questions, and good questions.  People who seek the truth, and only the truth that can be proved and that is good for all.  I have much more to say about this topic of education, but I am running out of time today.  I would like to end with an interesting quote that I like, from a man named Edward Leedskalnin, in his book called "A book in Every Home":

" You know we receive an education in the schools from books.  All those books that people became educated from twenty-five years ago, are wrong now, and those that are good now, will be wrong again twenty-five years from now.  So if they are wrong then, they are also wrong now, and the one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is misled.  All books that are written are wrong, the one who is not educated cannot write a book and the one who is educated, is really not educated but he is misled and the one who is misled cannot write a book which is correct.

    The misleading began when our distant ancestors began to teach their descendants.  You know they knew nothing but they passed their knowledge of nothing to the coming generations and it went so innocently that nobody noticed it.  That is why we are not educated.

    Now I will tell you what education is according to my reasoning.  An educated person is one whose senses are refined.  We are born as brutes, we remain and die as the same if we do not become polished.  But all senses do not take polish.  Some are to coarse to take it.  The main base of education is one's "self-respect".  Any one lacking self-respect cannot be educated.  The main bases of self-respect is the willingness to learn, to do only the things that are good and right, to believe only in the things that can be proved, to possess appreciation and self control.

    Now, if you lack willingness to learn, you will remain as a brute and if you do things that are not good and right, you will be a low person, and if you believe in things that cannot be proved, any feeble  minded person can lead you, and if you lack appreciation, it takes away the incentive for good doing and if you lack self control you will never know the limit.

    So all those lacking these characteristics in their makeup are not educated."

       Ed Leedskalnin, 1936.