What True Education Should Do by Sydney J. Harris: Summary, Analysis

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What True Education Should Do
In the article, there are two views on what constitutes education, but the perception that most people hold is not true education. Education could involve stuffing information transmitted from teacher to pupil and through extracting information from pupils. To emphasize, this you quoted Socrates’ thoughts on education. Socrates opposed the view that education involved stuffing knowledge, but rather that held internally and only needs discovery. “But genuine education, as Socrates knew more than two thousand years ago, is not stuffing information into a person, but rather eliciting knowledge from him; it is the drawing out of what is in the mind.” Your article is convincing, but I am also going to point out on where there incomplete persuasion.
With the curriculum of most schools remaining unchanged for many years, many people still hold the wrong notion that education is merely transmission of knowledge to the pupil from the teacher. Your example of the role of education aptly captures this notion “The most important part of education, “is this instruction of man in what he has inside of him.” Clearly, the perception by some that education involves rote memorization for the purposes of examinations is wrong. Pupils ought to learn with the aim of comprehension with little emphasis on memorization of superficial information that discarded after class tests. The teacher’s role is to facilitate learning and teach students to use their minds. However, I am not entirely convinced that teachers should desist completely from encouraging memorization of facts, as there is no objective way to know whether students have learnt when there is less emphasis on facts.
Your views seem to focus on the American education system and other Western societies, but freethinking is vital in education. Many non-Western societies emphasize on stuffing information to pupils, with less input from the pupils. However, this perception is ineffective in encouraging proper development of intellectual capability, as there is no freethinking. With stuffing information, education becomes a predictable routine that is neither exciting nor capable of nurturing creativity. Such an education system favors rote memorization while ignoring the creative side of students. Pupils simply reproduce what they have memorized as such, education systems focus on what they can put into the students, and not what students can create and get from the education.
Stuffing of information into pupils highlights the role of teachers in education, but ignores the role of pupils. Hence, your view that education should encourage participation from pupils recognizes this function as a contributory factor to the development of pupils in learning. Teachers have authority over their students, but focus on how learning occurs determines the impact of education. Nonetheless, the role of a teacher is not mandatory for learning to occur...