Hello everyone, I hope you are all having a good first week in our course despite the challenges of corvid-19.
In this Week’s readings, I found Whitehead’s article so interesting. One of the things that especially resonated with me from his work was how education “has been radically infected with inert ideas” because of the heavy emphasis placed on learning content for the sake of doing well on exams (Whitehead, 1). I found those few passages very eye-opening, as I could see exactly how those ideas were manifested in our society. In my early experience, every subject existed within its realm of reality. I never had the time nor the desire to connect the ideas learned in class even though, as Whitehead pointed out, “there is only one subject-matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations” (Whitehead, 6-7). If subjects were tested in isolation, I never saw the point of synthesizing and thinking critically about what I was learning; it didn’t matter if I did it since all that mattered was how well I did on exams. The education system lacks interconnectedness as subjects have been divided. According to Whitehead, education should aim at producing people who possess both culture and expert knowledge in their areas of specialization. Education gives people a ground of consciousness where they can start from while culture will lead the individuals to their areas of experience. Education should interconnect with other aspects of life as it creates vitality in education. According to Whitehead, the inert ideas were received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations. This makes many learners lean only to score grades but not to connect to the outside world. My question for thought is, what is the need to emphasize grades rather than interconnectedness in the education system?