At least in Brazil, people keep talking about education and how it can solve the problem of irresponsible parenting, crime, and many woes of society. I hear the same yarn from all over the world as well. Now, if education was the answer, how come a lot of educated people all over the world keep electing stupid leaders? Education gives information, but, most of the time, it doesn’t teach people how to think. I hear very stupid opinions from “educated” people all the time. And those same educated people show very little thought in what they talk about, they just spout propaganda from different segments of society: the left, the right, whatever, and many of them don’t even try to think outside their particular boxes.
I happen to talk to people from all walks of life in Brazil, and online, I talk to people from all over the world, I speak more than one language, which makes it easier, and many of those people are educated and let me tell you, what the educated prove to me is that education is not as hot as people think it is. The “right” education is important, not what many call education: constant amassing of information with little time for digestion and little to no development of critical thinking.
I live in a poor neighborhood in São Paulo. Of course, in the same neighborhood there are some middle and upper class families living right among the poor, and my work makes me go to the rich parts of town and get in touch with the more fortunate, but I’ll go smack dab in the middle of favelas (fahVEHlaz) and have a beer with the guys and the same day I’ll have dinner on Paulista with executives. And many times, I hear stupid opinions from the “well-educated” and very good opinions from the uneducated, and vice versa. Who’s the judge of opinions? Me, of course, and so is everybody else. I could care less when somebody criticizes me because of my views, there are always those who’ll oppose you, no matter what you preach, so those who support me fall behind or alongside me, those who oppose me, come get a piece of me, that’s life.
My son goes to public school in the morning and to a private school in the afternoon. Many schools here don’t require a uniform anymore, but his requires a partial uniform, I’m all for uniforms, at least with them you know who belongs in the school, and he gets it for free, as well as milk and books and notebooks and he has read lots of books, including “Os Lusiadas” (ohz loozEEadas), a classic by Luiz de Camões, a Portuguese poet, the teen version, and he loves “literature de cordel” (liteddaTOOdda di corDEoo), stories told through rhymes, a mixture of pulp fiction with poetry, which became repente (rePENGtee), a kind of very old Brazilian rap, as it is sung through rhymes, but it usually tells a story, he recommends this book http://www.livrariaresposta.com.br/v2/produto.php?id=1085 for those interested, and he has read Robin Hood, and he loves Greek mythology, so he has read the Iliad and the Odyssey, by Homer, the teen versions as well, so Homer is not just Homer Simpson to him. He loves the school library, which is very good, and he monitors it as well as the information technology room, and he sings and acts, and the stage at his school is pretty good, too. So for those who think São Paulo has a very bad public school system, I’d say I’m happy with the school my son is going to. The problems I point out about education go deeper than the basic stuff.
At night, he has 2 hours with me, on the weekend, I go out with him. I send him to public school so he can get to know people from all over, I send him to a private school so he can learn practical stuff, such as languages, information technology, math, business management, anything that can prepare him for practical life. I personally teach him how to be a leader, how to debate and get his points across, how to handle people so he can get what he wants from them, and since he’s a teenager, I’m teaching him how to deal with women so he can eventually get a great one, not just a regular worthless pain in the butt and he needs martial arts as well, not to fight people, unless it is a competition, just to be prepared and to give him physical confidence. Anyway, fighting people is not a good idea because there are plenty of cowards here who’ll shoot you in the back. They don’t believe in the same principles my son and I do.
If I wanted just data, just information, if I thought that was education I’d get people to keep doing searches in google. Education is preparing people to deal with life; it is not just knowing where Europe is on a map and getting to know the history of your country and the world, and sciences in general. This is just information, and information doesn’t make you educated, “thinking” about the information is what makes you so. Today we have access to lots of information and I don’t think the stupidity level has dropped that much. Schools get students to memorize stuff, and unfortunately, very few teachers get students to “think” about what they are learning, and to “examine” the source of the information.
And of course, religion doesn’t help people how to think critically at all. For people, religion is like wine, the old ones are good, the new ones, cults, are bad. The older a religion is, the less you question its dogmas. The new ones are easier to prove wrong, the older ones are taken as truth on faith, and what’s faith? Just self-convincing, repeat something long enough, get into a trance, and you’ll believe anything. So I teach my son to be agnostic about religious matters and to adopt just what he thinks is good, and he decides what’s good based on critical thinking and facts. His mother is a born-again Christian, my sister is a Mormon, my mom is a Catholic, my son goes to churches and I introduce him to philosophy, other religions, and free thinking, which is good, at least he won’t become a fanatic since he’ll be pushed around by different influences. Diversity is good; it forces you to think more.
My son is great, and I trust him entirely. I take him to parties and he gets offered drugs and people try to convince him to do things that would be detrimental to him and he doesn’t do it. Unfortunately, the drug culture is very strong here, my son is just 13 and you can’t imagine how many times he’s offered alcohol, cigarettes and illegal drugs. One of his friends is a Satanist, who takes all sorts of drugs, because his family is made up of born-again Christians who are too severe and not prone to dialoguing, just saying NO!, so since his family is Christian, he decided to become the opposite, but my son is helping this friend and others, and I try to do my part as well. The way the Satanist adopted of being a rebel is very common, but being a rebel doesn’t mean being the opposite, it means doing what you think is right. A long time ago, my son liked Michael Jackson and people showed bad stuff about his idol, I told him not to care about Michael’s life, he is just a man, he should keep liking his art no matter what people said. I’ve always taught my son not to be led by the stupid majority, to always do and like and think whatever he wants, even if he had to face the whole world. If you try to please everyone, you’ll end up pleasing yourself the least. He likes Chris Brown today and Chris is going through hard times, so? That just proves he can fail, but my son keeps on liking his music.
And a friend of his almost got a girl pregnant, but he told his plans to my son, and my son convinced him to use a condom and to think about his future and not to spoil it by early pregnancy and that he would be responsible for the child he put into the world. His friend is just 15, you can imagine the kind of problems he could get into.
I never taught my son there was such a thing as Santa Claus. I never lie to him. I always give him a straight answer, so when he was very little and people talked about Santa Claus I told him it was just superstition, and I told him people believe all sorts of stupid stuff, no matter how educated they are, and that they have conducts that are way stupid, no matter what country they come from, what their religions are, their degree of education, and that he should never judge a person just because of money, religion, philosophy or “education”. He should never hand over his thinking to a person just because they are a supposed authority on something. He regards a priest, experts, a teacher, a politician the same way he regards anybody. Authorities are not special; they should never be obeyed unthinkingly. You teach somebody blind obedience and then you’ll have authorities abusing people, or societies like Nazi Germany and other totalitarian regimes of today, religious or lay, with its obedient citizens. I’ve never hit my son, and I’ve taught him I don’t hit him, unless I’m teaching him how to fight, because I want him to learn to reason with people, so I must set the example, I’ve always reasoned with him, I’ve always explained myself, I’ve never told him to follow me just because I’m telling him to do so, just because I’m his father. That just teaches blind obedience and to have blind faith in authority. And I’ve taught him how to fight and debate, so he can defend or impose himself using whatever weapons people understand since most people are not educated as he is.
He’s learning hypnosis, mass manipulation, neuro-linguistic programming, rhetoric and all the means the media and authorities use to MANIPULATE people’s minds. This way, he’s learning NOT to be a victim of this manipulation and become a manipulator for GOOD, and good is whatever he decides it is. In case a relativist opposes mine or his definition of good, somebody has to decide what good is, it might as well be him, or me, for that matter. My son is not perfect, neither am I, but we have to decide what is good for us, life is action, if you don’t move by your beliefs, the beliefs of others will move you. We prefer to be the movers and shakers.
Anyway, I don’t think what many people call education is the answer at all. The answer is CRITICAL THINKING and SELF-CONTROL. And that doesn’t come from society, it comes from good parenting, and it could come from school as well, if most people believed education is not simply amassing information, but reflecting on it.
Author: Joe da Silva
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