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What is a successful education?
Classification
We qualify an education as successful if it produces autonomous and responsible citizens.
To be clearer, let us specify what we mean by autonomous and responsible.
For autonomous, it is quite simple: an individual capable of meeting their needs in their social environment.
For responsible, it is much less obvious. This must be understood in the sense of Kantian morality, namely that if all individuals behaved in this way, the world would be well. Yet the world, at the beginning of the 21st century, is not well: the two great questions How to satisfy the ecological constraint?' and 'How to halt the slow degradation of the social fabric, which leads to civil war?' do not find a satisfactory answer. And the reason is, as seen in the question 'Why are small gestures for the planet dangerous?', a very large number of individuals consider themselves responsible, yet are not so in the Kantian sense of responsibility. Responsible is therefore much more demanding than it may appear at first glance, and presupposes mastery of a set of achievements that we will clarify a bit further in this text.
We now qualify an education as conventional if it produces autonomous citizens, but collectively irresponsible. Why choose the word 'conventional' instead of 'incomplete', 'partial', or 'insufficient'? Because what characterizes conventional education is, on the one hand, the tolerance (or even encouragement) of the disregard for facts in favor of alliances alone, and on the other hand, the ignorance of the effects of cognitive dissonance. This can lead to all kinds of abuses: there is no serious safeguard, as history shows. Yet current Western education resolutely meets these criteria, as does the vast majority, if not the totality, of educations throughout the world and across centuries. Education, like politics, philosophy, and psychology, suffers from not having begun by correctly defining its subject by answering precisely and on a factual basis the question: What is a human?
Finally, we qualify education as dysfunctional if it damages, or even destroys, the individual, through mistreatment or major emotional deficits.
Nothing changes
Following the events of May 1968, one might think that education has fundamentally changed: an end to corporal punishment. But in fact, on the essentials, nothing has changed: conventional education remains structured by thegeneralized nepotism:
First, the goal of education remains to allow the new generation to access the best possible social status (us, the family, against them, the rest of society).
Secondly, within the family, the parents' goal remains to maintain their authority (us, the parents, against them, the children). Instead of exercising explicit patriarchal authoritarianism, they now use - without even being conscious that they love their children - something closer to what Eric Berne called psychological games. These can be non-explicit threats, as totalitarian governments practice to activate self-censorship (example: 'I trust you'), or the use of guilt-tripping (example: 'I can't go on anymore'), etc.
In fact, the shift from explicit coercion to non-explicit coercion at the educational level, combined with the abandonment of political struggles in favor of self-development, has led to a considerable increase in psychological stress among young people, especially mildly autistic individuals.
Put more simply, a rigid framework limits the harmful effects of insincerity. Therefore, no sincerity, and no rigid framework, ultimately produces a quite toxic mixture.
Indicators
Never forget that in matters of education, example takes precedence over discourse. Indeed, very early on children master the concept of lying, so when confronted with contradictory discourse and behavior, they interpret the discourse as lying, even if for emotional reasons this is not always conscious, or even if the contradiction is not noted.
Corollary: the very possibility of 'training' teachers is therefore largely an illusion.
An education is successful if, in response to the question 'How to succeed in life?', the young person resolutely turns towards 'succeeding in life' as opposed to 'succeeding in society'. Indeed, this means that the young person has adopted through culture a philosophy allowing them to transcend, surpass, the simple genetic inheritance of the human species. This is a complete reversal of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's vision.
In the rest of this document, we will use the term transcended education instead of successful education.
Characterization
Let us return to the three levels of education we have just defined, and try to specify what they comprise.
Dysfunctional education:
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Mistreatment, or major emotional deficits.
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Conventional education comprises the following elements:
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Knowledge and respect for social conventions.
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Mastery of rhetoric and networking to favor access to a high social position.
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Transcended education comprises the following achievements, which will allow the child to ultimately become a fully adult:
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Being able toestablish sincere relationships, which requires the moderation of social ambition and the pursuit of collective happiness.
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Mastering the problem-solving technique, meaning primarily being able to conduct a serious and objective analysis.
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Having integrated the meaning of not judging, thus renouncing the insertion of anything between oneself and reality. This is the preamble to action.
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Having techniques to minimize negative emotions so as not to be directed by one's fears.
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Having integrated the difference between modern science and beliefs, and the necessity of progressively acquiring solid knowledge.
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Being able to sustain effort over time and toaccept frustration.
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Having integrated the necessity of a search for minimalism.
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Having sufficient self-confidence to face the group when necessary. This last point is rarely acquired by the age of 20.
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Conventional education therefore largely corresponds to the recommendations of Emile Durkheim. Let us recapitulate and synthesize what we have just mentioned:
Conventional education primarily produces individuals who manage well in society, while remaining collectively irresponsible, that is, incapable of collectively solving the two great problems of our time: satisfying the ecological constraint, and halting the slow degradation of the social fabric. Indeed, this education leads to prioritizing social conventions over facts.
Furthermore, conventional education models a narcissistic affective structure, which produces a high level of social violence, including within families.
Finally, conventional education can prove dysfunctional for individuals not presenting a standard psychological profile.
Now that we better understand the limits and dangers of conventional education, let us try to better grasp the relatively long list of points to be ensured to obtain a transcended education.
Let us first note that it contains on one side techniques (problem solving), on the other values (pursuit of collective happiness), but also mixed elements that could be qualified as savoir-vivre or qualities (accepting frustration), and finally consequences (ability to establish sincere relationships).
Let us also note, and above all in this list, the presence of a main technique, the keystone of the whole:
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Problem solving to limit social violence.
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With two techniques whose acquisition is necessary for its good practice:
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Les ACT and CBT psychotherapies to make our cognitive-affective system docile to reason.
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The modern scientific method as a method of acquiring reliable knowledge.
It presupposes the adoption of taking into account all facts, including disturbing ones, as moral basis.
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A practical method to access a transcended education is proposed, in the form of 4 key points, in the article Transcending education.
Finally, let us note that the other techniques and savoir-vivre elements proposed in the list defining a transcended education can be seen as other tools useful for the good practice of problem solving. And above all, let us recall that the credibility of the educator rests primarily on their exemplary nature, that is, the fact that their actions are consistent with their discourse.
The exercise of authority
Authority must be exercised within the framework of problem solving.
When a more experienced person (parent, teacher, specialist) practices problem solving with a less experienced person (child, adolescent, less experienced adult), after a phase of complete analysis which has allowed transmitting a lot of information concerning the subject, the solution proposed by the less experienced person may not be the one the more experienced person would have retained. In this case, the more experienced person can validate this solution with the aim of encouraging the less experienced person to become autonomous, to have confidence in themselves, to acquire experience. They can also take back control and impose their solution by explaining the risk they identified and refuse to take. In this last hypothesis, it is the complete work done at the level of analysis, and the confidence in the problem-solving process practiced commonly, that allow the less experienced person to accept the solution imposed on them without feeling it as tyrannical.
Let us note that the lack of confidence in the more experienced person will generally lead them to impose their solution more often than necessary. This will be perceived by the less experienced person as a sign of distrust towards them. If they internalize this state of affairs, it will produce a degraded image of themselves, and induce a lack of self-confidence. If they reject it, it will lead them to perceive the more experienced person as tyrannical, and eventually seek to escape their control.
Being right is not enough to justify authority, nor even thinking one is right. One imposes all the more successfully as one imposes little, and within a relationship modeled by well-conducted problem solving.
Becoming proficient at problem solving
Once it is made explicit that the central point of a transcended education is problem solving, one can further enrich the list of qualities that education can cultivate, which will allow practicing it more effectively:
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a healthy body
When the body does not function well, it captures our attention, is not docile.
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technical knowledge and personal experience
These are elements that will be useful at the analysis and finding a solution stages of problem solving.
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the capacity for logical reasoning
The solution must be constructed in accordance with logic and the modern scientific method, as opposed to being a simple compromise between the different elements envisaged at the analysis stage. It is especially not about arriving at a synthesis following a thesis and then an antithesis as one learns to do in literary classes.
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the capacity to mobilize one's thought
This presupposes a certain taste for mental effort, as opposed to the cult of rapid decision-making which serves, among many people in power, to clothe nonsense in virtue.
It also presupposes not being too perturbed by emotions related to one's personal history, nor by the beliefs of one's social environment.
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a network of influence
At the implementation stage of problem solving, one often needs to mobilize resources beyond one's own person.
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wealth
Since the agrarian revolution, the accumulation of wealth has become the ultimate goal of many people, leading them to all kinds of baseness to increase it without putting it at the service of a noble cause. Nevertheless, wealth is also as important as the network at the implementation stage, as it allows mobilizing resources without the help of others.
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time
Problem solving presupposes having time to devote to it, that is, not having a life too full by constraints related to earning a living on one side, and consumerist leisure on the other.
This directly refers to the minimalism exposed at the level of the third precept of the question 'How to succeed in life?'.
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motivation
Having sufficiently developed one's morality to move from the primitive goal of searching for personal happiness via a high social position obtained through the game of alliances, to the goal of searching for collective happiness.
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Other remarks
Establishing a truly sincere relationship requires overcoming a double difficulty. The first difficulty is the temptation of conscious lying. Renouncing it requires surpassing the simple nepotic relationship, in which one seeks to use the other for one's own benefit. The second difficulty, much more formidable, is lying to oneself. Renouncing it requires being ready to question one's beliefs, that is, accepting to take into account disturbing facts, which constitutes the basis of morality.
Effort and the search for minimalism are what allow one to obtain margin in order to then assume the loss related to moral choices, as opposed to an opportunistic attitude.
Deepening
An educational user manual is proposed in the article Transcending education.
Complete the answer to this question with the answer to the question 'What is the perversion of the school system?'
Then refer to the following questions:
Why do humans reason incorrectly en masse?
What are the conditions to be met to produce serious reasoning?
What is an adult?
What must one do to be a good person?
What is the goal of life?
How to succeed in life?
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