Education is a Matter of Faith
In grad school I got an M.S. Ed. A master of science of education. It always felt strange to me that education could be considered a science. There’s not much that is scientific about it. People in the education field love to talk about data. But is it really data? Scientific data? Are variables controlled? Not really. In fact, there may be too many variables at play to even control a few of them. What does that mean for the concept of data in education?
Is it a myth? If so, what might that imply about education? That we really have no idea what we are doing when we try to teach kids? Or anyone?
As a teacher, I always felt like everything I was doing was just a social experiment, and a poorly run one at that. It was more tinkering than actual scientific experimentation. And trying to measure what the students learned also seemed kind of impossible to determine.
Considering all of that, I couldn’t help but feel that education was more a matter of faith than anything else. We educators, no matter how hard we tried (or didn’t) were just hoping what we did worked. We really had no way of knowing for sure.
I liken it to planting a seed and hoping it will grow. Sure, there is science at play there, but unless you are planting the seed in a lab and controlling all the factors you are not measuring, you might not really be able to draw any scientific conclusions. Plus, you never know if the seed is any good. It might not grow because it went bad or rotted. Or, the conditions may not be right for it to grow.
What if that is the best we can do with education? We plant seeds in the hopes they grow. Maybe it takes longer than we think or would like it to take. Or maybe it takes more life lessons for school lessons to make sense. Has something you learned about in school ever made sense in retrospect, years later?
We certainly invest a fair amount of resources in education, pass all kinds of laws, have all sorts of political fights about it and still have faith it will happen.
We also decide (in convoluted and politically fraught ways) what is worth teaching our kids. Again, we have no idea if those are the things the kids need to learn. The world may be different by the time they are out in it trying to apply what they were supposed to learn in school. We take it on faith that we know what students need to know and be able to do. But can we really know? I don't know.
None of this even accounts for the students we are trying to teach. Do they want to learn what we want to teach them? Should they? What is their motivation? Should they have faith in the very concept of education? That it can improve their lives? That it is really important? Should they have faith that their schools and teachers have their best interests in mind? That the schools and teachers can actually create learning opportunities for them? Is most of the job of education convincing students to have faith in education?
Does all of this mean that every aspect of education is a matter of faith?
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I don't know.