This is my attempt to answer the agelong yet forgotten question: What should an education try to achieve? In other words, what's do we want out of an education? What the end-goal of it all? As explained in my another essay [[The Fundamental Theory of Human Development]], human growth is essentially the process of collecting information, building knowledge, and turning these knowledge into actions and projects -- and the loop restarts. From this perspective, education is essentially concerned about no more than these things: knowledge, learning, and action. They form the three pillars of education. *We will first explain the three pillars from bottom up (from the most basic and widely accepted to the most far-end), and then look at how the top pillar necessiates the pillars below them.* ## Pillar 1: Impartation of Knowledge This is also what most people think about when they think of education. A teacher passing on knowledge to the students, or faciliatating students to learn from textbooks and other works. Why though? What's the point of passing on knowledge created by people who have long dead? Let's look at this issue from an evolutionary perspective. It is generally believed that the thing that gives humans an evolutionary edge over other species is our command of language. And language, when it comes down to communicating information and passing down knowledge, is a powerful powerful tool. While other species are still passing down information to their offspring through the information encoded in DNA and through the porcess of random mutation and natural selection, we humans can directly teach our children how to hunt, how to weave, where to go for food, and where to sleep. Similarly, if we look at the human civilization as a continuous relay and collaborative work of exploring the world -- how it works, how do we work with it, what's our point of being here, things make much more sense. Humans need to pass on the knowledge they created in their lifetime, because individual life is short and limited. We don't want to let what we learned in our lifetime to just dissappear, and leave our children to start from scratch. We are not saying our knowledge is the right way of looking at things, but at least they provide some insight for the future generations. Of course sometimes the old way of thinking about things stifle innovation, but other times they provide great foundation and convenience. Of course, if you are brave and capable enough, you are encouraged to start your own path and start your unique exploration; but if you don't want to, you can stand on the shoulder of giants and keep climbing upward. That's how humans as a species collective build our civilization and evolve as a species, turing our knolwedge of the world into greater and greater power tha enable us to build skyscrapers and airplanes. The impartation of knowledge is crucial because it fuels the progress of our civilization. ## Pillar 2: Cultivation of the Ability to Learn In 21st Century, with the rapid progress in humans' information technology, the school's primary role is passing down information or knowledge is greatly weakened. We have Google and ChatGPT, the two hallmarks of our civilization in the Information Age. However, rather than solving the problem of knowledge impartation for good, Google and ChatGPT posed new challenges. Having access to the world's knowledge at fingertip doesn't guarantee effective learning. Most people don't even know what to put in that search box, or what prompt to get the results they want. Moreover, they simple have no idea when Google returned them with millions of result or when ChatGPT spit out a 1000-word explanation. It turned out that in a world where knowledge is no longer scarce, the skills of information processing and knowledge management are. Presented with a textbook with several hundred pages, most students have no idea how to get what they want out of it -- the old method of learning make them believe that a teacher will do that for them -- breaking down a complex topic into small units, and feed them into their mouth (or ear). Or worse, they don't know what they want to learn and why are they learning it. Which links to the third pillar which will come later. But for now, the message is this -- more than merely trasmitting knowledge, schools should also teach students how to learn. In this sense, the second pillar of education is built on the first -- once students learned how to learn by themselves, they no longer need teachers or any insitution to pass the knowledge to them. The links to the idea that the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that the goal of education is de-schooling, or getting rid of schools. This idea will be explored in my next essay [[Don't let school interfere with your education]]. One can be filled with knowledge but have no idea how to learn. If that's the case, they are dead as soon as they step out of campus, if we define death as stopping to learn and grow. Which is true. And that is exavtly schools should teach more than knowledge, but cultivate students' ability to learn. We can't force students to learn without first telling them how to learn. ## Pillar 3: Liberation of Potential As mentioned in the previous pillar, a bigger problem emerges -- what if the student doesn't know what to learn, or doesn't want to learn at all? This then points the question why learning at all? What's good of learning for our lives? Turned out what really changes our lives is not knowledge and learning alone -- but the actions they empower. As explained in the [[The Fundamental Theory of Human Development]], knowledge fuels action. We can't just sit with knowledge and not being empowered to do something. Knowledge is meaningless until used and turned into outputs applied to actions. And it is actions that are fundamentally connected to our lives. Knowledge holds great potential to change individual lives and shape the world. Education is the key to unlock that potential. Thus the third and most important pillar of education. There are two key components of the liberation of potential. First, enlightenment. In one sentence, it means "you have more choice than you realize". It could be really hard to see this in our lives, which is full of already-set paths and false binanries. Education should seek to point out those hidden pathways to students, and tell them, your life doesn't have to follow the path that every one takes. You have the all the power and courage you need to follow your heart and go your own way. In a deeper level, this is about encouraging students to think about what they want with their life and helping them to find their passion, love, and sense of purpose. The original meaning of “school” in ancient Greek is “leisure” -- the leisure and freedom that makes it possible for students to think about the big things and figure out what they like. Every one wants, more or less, different things -- and chasing those different goals automatically lead to diverse pathways. Second empowerment. In one sentence, it means "you can do it" and "we will support you". This is fundamentally where action is involved. Making impact is impact is hard and terrifying sometimes, but you are free to give it a shot. Aside from oral and spiritual encouragement, it's even better ifi education can equip students with certain basic knowledge for change-making -- problem identification, effective communicaiton, managing a group of people, advertising & sales, etc. However, I would also argue that they are not strictly necessary, for an obvious reason -- onece students feel empowered to do something and are passionate about achieve it, they will actively think about and learn those things themselves. Once students have a goal and sense of purpose, everything else flow naturally. Nothing is forced. Rather than forcing the students to be change-makers, an education only needs to be readily prepared to give the support when students seek them. ## The way we are doing it VS the way it should work Rather than standing side by side, the three pillars of education is built on top of each other more like a pyramid, and is fundamentally all related to the concept of empowerment. By empowering students to learn themselves (pillar 2), they no longer need schools to pass down the knowledge them (pillar 1); by empowering students to take actions and do projects for their passion (pillar 3), they will automatically be incentivised to learn (pillar 2). As explained, things should really work from the top down (starting from pillar 3), and everything will flow naturally. However, the unfortunately the way we are doing it is the complete oppostive -- we force students to learn all the isolated knowledge in textbook, without teaching them how to navigate the sea of information and knowledge on the interent, and seldom empowering them to achieve what they really want. This, is I believe, the fundamental tragedy of modern education. In my next essay -- [[Don't let school interfere with your education]], we will try to get things right again. ![[The Three Pillars & The Pyramid of Education|700]]