Sunday, March 02, 2008

Privilege and Education: Part 1

Just a pointer to these two post: one by The Mad Momma, who is worried about whether the school her son has got admission in is the right one for him. The second is Dipali Taneja, who remebers her own childhood and schooling in this perspective.

Say the word 'education' and my antennae are up. There's much to say about this question of schooling and schools, versus what one might call an education. Some of it I've said as a comment to Dipali's post. But more thoughts coming up in a bit.

4 comments:

dipali said...

I'm waiting for more, Space Bar!
Have replied briefly to your comment on my blog.

Falstaff said...

You realize, of course, that the whole discussion is really about schooling and not about education?

Personally, I can't say I ever properly got an education, at least not in my school years. I'm constantly aware of how little I know - about History, Literature, Philosophy, Music, Art - and how hard (if not impossible) it's proved to catch up on all that retrospectively.

The challenge, I think, is figuring out what to do with privilege rather than denying it. Not being afraid of the opportunities a new generation can get, but of figuring out how to translate those opportunities into a real education. Which is hard because most of the parents faced with that challenge haven't ever had that kind of education themselves. Ironically, it's actually the familiar problem of enabling learning among kids whose parents have never learned to read or write, only at a higher plane.

Space Bar said...

dipali: yes, yes, coming up!

falstaff: of course. i said as much in my comment to dipali's post. also, i'm not sure education can be equated with the acquisition of knowledge, merely.

it's actually the familiar problem of enabling learning among kids whose parents have never learned to read or write, only at a higher plane.

yes. that's a part of what i want to talk about in my next post.

Anonymous said...

Spacebar, I completely agree with your pov.

I also think that we can never be the PERFECT parents we strive to be. There will always be something or the other that our kids will wish we had done differently for them. There's no point in worrying too much about things we cannot control.

We all (in a manner of speaking! :)) want the best for our kids and we do our very best to give our kids a good grounding and base, and after that, we can only hope for the best.

ano