I have been in education for all my life beginning from when I joined a preschool class over seventy years ago until today as professor of Philosophy and Ethics and from that experience I can state with certainty that any education that is mostly cold facts, bare data and information is boring and uninteresting.
This is why Swiss Psychologist and Psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) says that education should warm the heart and touch our human feelings. He says that most of our educational system is too much raw material and tons of information unrelated to real life, which turns off students and some end up hating school and even absconding from it dramatically.
This is the reason that most of us who have been to school remember not so much the facts, methods and techniques we received in school, but we fondly remember teachers who touched our hearts, teachers who understood our brokenness when it was part of our experience, teachers who laughed with us when we were celebrating, teachers that cried with us when we were overcome with profound sorrow. Those are the teachers who warmed our hearts and taught us that, when all is said and done, the most profound meaning of life comes alive when we care for each other. Outside of life, life is inhuman, cold, unpalatable.
No wonder, therefore, that our ancestors used stories and proverbs and riddles and music to teach their young ones. Some of my most fond memories of childhood are sitting around the fire in those cold June and July evenings and listen to our master story tellers, our grandfathers and grandmothers. They really were master story tellers. In those stories, told in ways that also entertained us, we learned about life, about responsible citizenship, responsible parenthood and the value of humans taking care of each other.
It is my heartfelt belief therefore, that we should prepare parents and teachers who know and feel our human condition, who understand that even the hardest pieces of information and data to be understood can be clothed in ways that relate to real life. We desire to have parents, teachers and leaders who understand this wise saying of Eleanor Roosevelt: When governing yourself you should use your head, but use your heart when governing others. This means that teachers, parents and leaders should relate what they are trying to communicate in a human language that warms the heart. Education packaged in this mode is interesting, alive, inspiring and life giving.
