It’s astonishing to us how many kids have never asked themselves what it is they want, or have never had someone ask it of them. They’re too busy either trying to please others, or rebelling against others’ control. But they need to think for themselves about themselves. They need to consider their special talents and life purpose. They should ask, “What do I want? What do I love to do?” You can help them ask these questions, even if you can’t supply the answers. Hard as it may be to accept this, it’s your child’s responsibility to find interests and motivation in life. [William Stixrud and Ned Johnson, The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives, Viking, 2018, p. 126]
The message that young people do best when they are challenged to strive, to achieve, to serve … fails to address the most essential question of all: For what purpose? Or, in a word, Why? For young people, this concern means starting to ask, and answer questions such as: What do I hope to accomplish with all my efforts, with all the striving that I am expected to do? What are the higher goals that give these efforts meaning? What matters to me; and why should it matter? What is my ultimate concern in life? Unless we make such questions a central part of our conversations with young people, we can do little but sit back and watch while they wander into a sea of confusion, drift, self-doubt, and anxiety—feelings that too often arise when work and striving are unaccompanied by a sense of purpose. [William Damon, The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life, Free Press, 2008, p. xiv]
By the time we are adults we have been bombarded with countless value judgments by parents, teachers, and peers, to say nothing of the culture at large. … We have been exposed to any number of ideas about work, ambition, money, and success. We receive messages about what constitutes the “good life.” To what extent do we think about these views and to what extent to we absorb them without thinking? To what extent will we decide and to what extent to we allow others to decide for us? …
[W]hen it comes to such questions as “For what purpose should I live? How should I deal with other people? What deserves my admiration and what does not? By what principles should I act? What kind of life should I strive to create for myself?” An independent person knows that there are no “experts” to whom one can safely surrender one’s intellect. [Nathaniel Branden, Taking Responsibility: Self-Reliance and the Accountable Life, 1996, Fireside / Simon & Schuster, 1997, pp. 60-61]
Trust in families and neighborhoods and individuals to make sense of the important question, “What is education for?” … [S]uch a question must be framed and not taken for granted if anything beyond a mockery of democracy is to be nurtured. It is illegitimate to have an expert answer that question for you. [John Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, New Society, 2005, pp. 93-94]
The assumption has been prevalent for so long that we all know what constitutes an “educated man,” that the fact that this comfortable definition is now completely irrelevant to modern society is almost never faced. So this chapter constitutes a challenge to educators at all levels. If my concept of the fully functioning person is abhorrent to you as the goal of education, then give your definition of the person who should emerge from modern day education, and publish it for all to see. We need many such definitions so that there can be a really significant modern dialogue as to what constitutes our optimum, or ideal citizen of today. [Carl Rogers, Freedom to Learn: A View of What Education Might Become, Charles E. Merrill, 1969, pp. 295-296]
[I]t is a test of a mature and a free society that in each generation there are sufficient writers prepared to persist with awkward but searching questions and an equally sufficient number of patient individuals willing to consider them. Failure to undertake such discussion means the triumph of prejudice and an acceptance of institutions from mere habit or imitation rather than from any conscious and rational purpose.
The story of education might well illustrate the way in which societies can easily deceive themselves about their own institutions because of an insufficient and inconstant scrutiny of the reasoning and evidence which is supposed to support them. [Edwin G. West, Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy, 1965, Liberty Fund, 3rd ed., 1994, pp. xxiii-xxv]
The great tragedy of our lives is that the major question of our existence is never put by us—it is put by personal and social impulsions for us. … “What is my unique gift, my authentic talent?” As the great Carlyle saw, this is the main problem of a life, the only genuine problem, the one that should bother and preoccupy us all through the early years of our struggle for identity; all through the years when we are tempted to solve the problem of our identity by taking the expedient that our parents, the corporation, the nation offer us; and it is the one that does bother many of us in our middle and later years when we pass everything in review to see if we really had discovered it when we thought we did. [Ernest Becker, The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man, Free Press, 1971, p. 187]
What is one’s true talent, his secret gift, his authentic vocation? In what way is one truly unique, and how can he express this uniqueness, give it form, dedicate it to something beyond himself? How can the person take his private inner being, the great mystery that he feels at the heart of himself, his emotions, his yearnings and use them to live more distinctively, to enrich both himself and mankind with the peculiar quality of his talent? In adolescence, most of us throb with this dilemma, expressing it either with words and thoughts or with simple numb pain and longing. But usually life sucks us up into standardized activities. [Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, 1973, Free Press / Simon & Schuster, 1997, pp. 82-83]
[Robert] Hutchins wanted a Great Community, a community now and in the future. And the way he proposed to get it was by a Great Conversation, a conversation between specialists and generalists, all sharing a common fund of knowledge and ideas. How else talk with anyone, unless you share with him a common fund of knowledge and presuppositions? And in this way, one generation could be in touch with the other, draw from it, and build on it, steadily and surely. …
[W]hat makes a conversation great rather than trivial? Simply, that it asks the big questions, the questions of ultimate concern. The reason that our conversations are not great, and that we have no real community, is that we steadfastly refuse to ask the big questions, or try to seek answers to them in common. Instead we ask the little questions, the questions that keep our daily work going in its prescribed ruts, the questions that look out for tomorrow by automatically following the routine of the day, by accepting uncritically the world as we find it, and by not caring too strongly what we are really doing in it, or are supposed to be doing. The big concerns and the big designs pass us by, as we keep each to his own narrow game. … What is the good life? What is the good State? What is the nature of the cosmos? What is the nature and destiny of man in the cosmos? [Ernest Becker, Beyond Alienation: A Philosophy of Education for the Crisis of Democracy, George Braziller, 1967, pp. 14-15]
The great problems of human society are plainly too vexatious and difficult to be set before college undergraduates or pupils yet lower down the scale. The best that the teacher can hope to do, considering the short time at his disposal and the small attention that he can engage, is to fill his students with certain broad generalizations and conclusions. [H. L. Mencken, “Bearers of the Torch,” 1923, A Mencken Chrestomathy, Vintage, 1982, p. 315]
[Schopenhauer] remarked that no child under the age of fifteen should receive instruction in subjects that might be the vehicle of serious error, and recommended concentration before fifteen on such disciplines as mathematics, natural science, and languages. The object of those studies dealing directly with society must be to lay the basis of lifelong participation in the dialogue about the issues they raise. …
[I]t is self-evident that subjects that require maturity cannot be taught to the immature. An introduction to the dialogue is one thing; systematic instruction in the discipline, with the idea that understanding is communicated, is another. [Robert Hutchins, The Learning Society, Mentor / New American Library, 1968, pp. 125-127]
[T]here is nothing wrong, in principle, with the expression of concern for planet-wide issues. That is not the point. There is something wrong, however, with overestimating your knowledge of such things—or perhaps even considering them—when you are a mid-twenty-year-old with nothing positive going on in your life and you are having great difficulty even getting out of bed. Under those conditions, you need to get your priorities straight, and establishing the humility necessary to attend to and solve your own problems is a crucial part of doing just that. …
Excuse the cliché, but it is necessary to walk before you can run. You may even have to crawl before you can walk. This is part of accepting your position as a beginner, at the bottom of the hierarchy you so casually, arrogantly, and self-servingly despise. Furthermore, the deeply anti-human attitude that often accompanies tears shed for environmental degradation and man’s inhumanity to man cannot help but have a marked effect on the psychological attitude that defines a person’s relationship to him or herself.
It has taken since time immemorial for us to organize ourselves, biologically and socially, into the functional hierarchies that both specify our perceptions and actions, and define our interactions with the natural and social world. Profound gratitude for that gift is the only proper response. The structure that encompasses us all has its dark side—just as nature does, just as each individual does—but that does not mean careless, generic, and self-serving criticism of the status quo is appropriate (and more than knee-jerk objection to what might be necessary change). [Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, Penguin / Portfolio, 2021, pp. 32-34]
Contemporary education, whether traditional or progressive, is well known for its failure to implicate the child in moral and ethical questions. Such questions are allegedly too touchy or too personal for classroom discussion. … By insulating the learner from thinking about and feeling the intensity of explosive questions, the parent and the parent-intimidated teacher cannot possibly awaken a youngster to his existential freedom and to his sense of individual responsibility for directing his own moral life. The child remains passive and “cool” about the struggle between right and wrong in the world. Teaching continues to be carried on in the third person; the phenomena to which the learner’s attention is directed are all outside his own skin. [Van Cleve Morris, Existentialism in Education: What It Means, 1966, Waveland Press, 1990, p. 119]
[T]he first implication [of client-centered therapy] for education might well be that we permit the student, at any level, to be in real contact with the relevant problems of his existence, so that he perceives problems and issues which he wishes to resolve. …
[The teacher’s] basic reliance would be upon the self-actualizing tendency in his students. The hypothesis upon which he would build is that students who are in real contact with life problems wish to learn, want to grow, seek to find out, hope to master, desire to create. He would see his function as that of developing such a personal relationship with his students, and such a climate in his classroom, that these natural tendencies could come to their fruition. [Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy, Houghton Mifflin, 1961, pp. 286-290]
[C]hoose the crucial problems, particularly the problems that are prompting change within our culture. Let those problems and our procedure for thinking about them be part of what school and classwork are about. This does not mean that school becomes a rallying place for discussion of the culture’s failures. But … [for] probing into the human condition—Past, Present, and Possible—with the Troubles that keep that topic as current today as it ever was. …
Remember what I said earlier: Trouble is the engine of narrative and the justification for going public with a story. It is the whiff of trouble that leads us to search out the relevant or responsible constituents in the narrative, in order to convert the raw Trouble into a manageable Problem that can be handled with procedural muscle. [Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education, Harvard UP, 1996, pp. 98-99]
[T]he teacher who is unclear on important questions finds that somebody will happily impose external clarity. An instructional vacuum—an empty teacher—is quickly filled by other teachers, parents, principals, school committees, and superintendents. [Roland Barth, Run School Run, Harvard UP, 1980, pp. 146-147] quoted by [Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, Harvard UP, 1994, p. 170]
[Jerome Bruner] has addressed himself to the question, How can we improve our schools? Perhaps it is obvious that his answers are administrator’s answers. It may not be obvious, however, that his question is the question of the technocrat. For given the current crisis in education, the question, How can we improve our schools? would satisfy neither the scientist nor the philosopher. Both would ask instead, How can we educate our young? [George Dennison, The Lives of Children: The Story of the First Street School, 1969, Vintage / Random House, 1970, p. 250]
You need to consider the future and think, “What might my life look like if I were caring for myself properly? What career would challenge me and render me productive and helpful, so that I could shoulder my share of the load, and enjoy the consequences? What should I be doing, when I have some freedom, to improve my health, expand my knowledge, and strengthen my body?” You need to know where you are, so you can start to chart your course. You need to know who you are, so that you understand your armament and bolster yourself in respect to your limitations. You need to know where you are going, so that you can limit the extent of chaos in your life, restructure order, and bring the divine force of Hope to bear on the world. [Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Random House Canada, 2018, pp. 62-63]
Your professors will give you some fine books to read, and they’ll probably help you understand them. What they won’t do, for reasons that perplex me, is to ask you if the books contain truths you could live your lives by. When you read Plato, you’ll probably learn about his metaphysics and his politics and his way of conceiving the soul. But no one will ask you if his ideas are good enough to believe in. … No one, in short, will ask you to use Plato to help you change your life. …
That will be up to you. …
And you will have to be tough if the professor mocks you for uttering a sincere question instead of keeping matters easy for all concerned by staying detached and analytical. (Detached analysis has a place—but, in the end, you’ve got to speak from the heart and pose the question of truth.) [Mark Edmundson, Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education, Bloomsbury USA, 2013, pp. 64-65]
[It is] impossible … to give the students genuine possession of the truth without ever really perplexing them first by the problems or issues which the truth resolves … [Mortimer J. Adler, Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind, Macmillan, 1988, pp. 180-181]
Next to no consideration has been paid to the fundamental necessity—leading the child to realize a problem as his own, so that he is self-induced to attend in order to find out its answer. [John Dewey, The School and Society, 1900, Chicago UP, 2nd ed. 1915, pp. 151-152, https://archive.org/details/schoolsociety00dewerich]
Answers to questions you [haven’t] raised will be knowledge you [won’t] use. …
We are constrained and enabled by our purposes for knowing. … If [one person comes] into a class and wants to learn this material for life, and some other person wants to spit back a reasonable response on an exam, they will qualitatively know that material differently. [Corey Anton, “Education and Ethics in the Digital Age,” YouTube, uploaded by Ernest Becker Foundation, 28 Aug. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOYhhqUviKY]
To think critically, people must feel motivated and free to voice their own ideas and raise their own questions. But in school students learn that their own ideas and questions don’t count. What counts are their abilities to provide the “correct” answers to questions that they did not ask and that do not interest them. [Peter Gray, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, Basic Books, 2013, p. 80]
In the end, the best way you can help your child maintain a sense of control and guide him (as a nonanxious consultant) into a satisfying life is to teach him to ask himself two questions: What do I truly love to do? And what can I do better than most people?
It can be that simple. [William Stixrud and Ned Johnson, The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives, Viking, 2018, p. 319]
Unless we are deeply touched by the problem, we will never find the right way of education. [Jiddu Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life, HarperCollins, 1953), pp. 48-49]