Freedom and Education True education is in service to more than the acquisition of a job We remain fearful anxious frightened of life So is it the function of education to help us understand the whole the process of life or is it merely to prepare us for a vocation for the best job we can get Education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast expanse of life with all its subtleties with its extraordinary beauty its sorrows and joys You may earn degrees and have a very good job but then what Isn t the true function of education to cultivate in you the intelligence which will try to find the answers to life s problems Intelligence is the capacity to think freely without fear without a formula so that you begin to discover for yourself what is real what is true but if you are frightened you will never be intelligent Living safely generally means living in imitation and therefore fear To create an atmosphere is which there is no fear requires a great deal of thinking on your part as well as on the part of your teacher It s only those in constant revolt that discover what is true not those who conform It s only when you re constantly inquiring and learning that you find truth God or love and you can t observe learn or be deeply aware if you re afraid Function of education is to eradicate the fear that destroys human thought relationships and love Most of us become frightened as we become older Most men live lives of quiet desperation R W Emerson The Problem of Freedom 1 We are condemned to be free We are always obliged to make some kind of choice Even if I can t choose my circumstance I can choose attitude I take and response I make in light of it Order both constricts and creates freedom You have to follow social rules in order to comm successfully Freedom also requires resources Redundant Freedom too many rules Culture is a series of constraints that enable people to exist and survive together Cognitive Choices We have no choice but to choose We can choose to accept what is handed to us as this is the way it is or we can question and interrogate our culture s meanings to see if embodying them is really in our best interest We can learn to artfully break cultural rules to our advantage The moment we want to be something we are no longer free When we re aware and understand something about ourselves there is transformation Facets of Freedom Autonomy freedom from others independence of our judgment Agency our ability to discern alternatives evaluate choices and the will to choose Without bias from internal or external sources Choice a range of alternatives Exit the ability to withdraw Voice making your will know Resources means to actualize choice Freedom involves the range of alternatives choices the ability to discern evaluate them independently and want to choose among them agency and then independence and freedom to choose among the range of alternatives we desire autonomy 2 ways people can exercise their freedom when faced with constraints 1 Exit stop supporting company leave job with bad environment divorce from bad marriage 2 Voice taking action and participatory role in managing one s affairs community Protests voting holding public office making donations Freedom in the 21st Century Profile of success is changing we swapped freedom to manage our communities for freedom of the marketplace We ve abandoned our political agency for consumer agency We re more concerned with our choices at Walmart then at the voting booth More concerned with the pursuit of commodity pleasure than the pursuit of freedom Freedom to more liberal Need both Freedom to do something you ve never done before Education income upbringing grant people choices Freedom from more conservative Freedom from crime so you need laws Freedom from interference Of Dogs and People Dogs have pack mentality who s the alpha dog Dogs communicate with Signals universal and unchanged meaning stands for one thing only People use Signs agreed upon and open to change may have more then one meaning depending on what people decide it means Dogs experience only the here and now can t learn and grow from past experiences Signs allow for experience of the past and future Humans are time binders Time binding taking past experiences to make something that did not exist before use to evolve How language gives us a past Social Constructionism That it is nonlinguistic physical here What it is linguistic culturally created arbitrary what we call it determines what we plan to do with it We do not live in the world of things we live in the world of the meaning of things A culture whatever its language is a way of minding the world A mind is a way of minding the world that recapitulates that culture One doesn t learn from one s experiences One learns from one s interpretations of ones experiences Mind how we see understand make sense of something not something you have its something you do with language culture Mind isn t something just inside your head it s part of your language environment your culture When you don t have a word for a feeling you can t talk about or describe it Unlike thinking where your back in your head reflecting Naming Social Constructionism Some people have the authority to name the world authority gov media Greatest freedom is defining things on your own terms but there are consequences Every definition of anything contains the agenda and objectives of some group of people Those people who can use language to explain and persuade are the one s whose view of the world becomes the way it is Manipulate control Price of Human Communication Knowledge of death Dogs live instinctual lives no system to interpret whether they re leading moral happy full life So humans are driven to meaningful lives What is a Theory Foundations Schools of Thought 1 Cognitivism Your Modernist Mind is in Your Head Brain maps reality Cog backed by modern philosophies of mind and reality For modernist science tech math and sound logic are the tools to understand and improve life Life is made meaningful by solving the problems that keep us from living out life s potentials Searching for unchanged and universal patterns To the extent that we understand the patterns of the Universe and of ourselves we will live longer lives of quality experience Requires measurable empirical objective evidence Separates reality out there from the human mind in the head To understand how the mind maps reality looks for what kind of behavior leads to