John Dewey on the purpose of Education: ”
“(…) to prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities” (My pedagogic creed, Dewey, 1897).”
If you go to a website of any nursery, primary school or secondary 
school, you are likely to find a page with the headteacher’s welcoming statement, expressing their vision for the school, what they have to offer and how “great” their school is.
More often than not there will be a sentence along the lines of “we offer conditions that will help your child reach his or her true potential“.
This is obviously very appealing to the parents, but the reality of this statement is far from being true.
If you look at the design of the schooling system you will see that its purpose is not to assist children to “reach their full potential” but rather to dumb them down, indoctrinate them, and make them servants to the global political and economic systems. That is one inherent reason why the schooling system is not helping children “reach their full potential”. The second reason is the fact that teachers and headteachers do not have the understanding, knowledge, nor the skill to help children “reach their full potential”. As per the schooling system design, that is not their purpose.
Disclaimer: This is not an attack on the people working in education. There are both well intended and incompetent teachers and headteachers. This blog is not about the intent nor the performance of individuals in the system but rather the inability and design of the system to prepare them to be effective educators – and thus incapable of providing an effective education.
School staff, as the name suggests, exists to control and monitor the children’s view on reality and thus their behaviour. They hold the “staff” of power that “spells” how they must behave and never question its power – for if they do, their future will “spell disaster”.
The teacher’s purpose is to spew out information and demand that students accept that information as fact and then have them spew it back out exactly the same way. If they do that, then they are “good students”. If they don’t, then they are “bad students” and probably have some sort of attention deficit disorder (ADD or ADHD) and need drugs to suppress their “disturbing behaviour”.
Many people end up taking on the profession of teaching not for the love of teaching but because it seemed like an easy enough option. Teaching courses are also inadequate and ineffective in preparing people to become Educators. There should be no doubts about this if one looks at the current level of education and state of the world. To add to this fact, the high number of teachers that leave their profession in the first few years is an indicator that there is something seriously wrong about the profession.
Headteachers play politics – and they have to. With SATs, GCSEs and A-Level results determining the future of the head, education is secondary. Again, this is deliberate system design. How can a head truly be “a-Head” when you have Ofstead giving a headache instead of support? How is Ofstead supposed to help if its only function is to judge?
The fallacy is obvious. How can headteachers support teachers to be great educators and thus assist the children to “reach their potential” if:
- The purpose of the school is not to educate but to indoctrinate
- The purpose of teacher is to give information for the students to memorise
- Teachers and heads do not understand neither know what the process of learning entails
- Headteachers (schools) are judged (Ofstead) instead of having a support structure for developing interpersonal, cognitive, social, and emotional skills, knowledge, and understanding
- Headteachers are always “too busy” to look for and consider new and more effective ways to teach/educate and implement them. They rather “play it safe” for the sake of “doing things as we have always done”
- Education has become a game politics and a (huge) business, which means there are many interests at play that have nothing to do with education
This is just the very tip of the iceberg.
Just consider John Dewey’s statement again:
“(…) to prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities” (My pedagogic creed, Dewey, 1897).”
Have teachers and headteachers alike been able to achieve such a level of self-mastery? Absolutely not. So, how can schools claim that they will assist the students to “reach their full potential”?
The current education is a system of limiting human potential.
Everything is in reverse.
Un-Limit-Education 