By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
America has a love/hate relationship with education. While we encourage our children to strive for high levels of formal education in order to have a well-paying career, we also have disdain for educated experts when their highly qualified opinion differs from our own highly unqualified opinion. RFK Jr. is the poster boy for this way of deranged thinking.
Education is a loaded word in our culture. Mostly, we use it to describe a formal education in school, colleges, and universities. We encourage our children to get the highest degree that will ensure them success in their careers. The focus is mostly on career success and financial stability. On one hand, this is understandable. College is expensive, and if you’re going to take on debt, you will need some way to pay off that debt and still be able to afford a home and raising a family.
On the other hand, studies in both the U.K. and the U.S. have some sobering results. Polls of people in their thirties—with a great education, a successful career, and a loving family—show that 80% in both countries admitted they were not happy. They did not feel fulfilled or joyful in their lives, despite having achieved their goals.
That is a failure of education, both from formal education and from the values of our culture. We have turned the American Dream into just another consumer product that, like most products hawked at us endlessly throughout the day, promise our lives will be better and we will be happier if we just purchase this item. Sometimes I wonder if part of the reason for the rise in mental health issues in this country is because people who aren’t happy when achieving their goals blame themselves for this lack of satisfaction. What’s wrong with me that I can’t be happy even when I get what I want? Will they be thinking, “Is that all there is?”
We need to rethink the purpose of education. It’s not just a formal degree that ends once the cap and gown are removed. It’s not about getting a job and a 401K and a starter house, it’s about nurturing curiosity in our youth to crave more knowledge because it delights them. It’s also about teaching them critical thinking so when they read a book or article, they have the ability to analyze the worth of what they’re reading and not just believe it. That way lies madness—and conspiracists.
Art, poetry, literature are not a waste of time any more than furniture in a room is a waste of space. Studies show that reading fiction makes people more empathetic toward others. Empathy makes us feel more connected to others, which makes us happier. Famous soccer star Héctor Bellerín recently admitted, “Literature has become something that has – and I know it’s a cliche – but to me, it has completely changed my life.” He grew up reading nonfiction because he’d been raised to believe reading had to serve a tangible purpose. During the COVID-19 quarantine, he became moody and miserable. He started drinking too much. “Literature,” he said, “I’m not gonna say made me survive, but it made my life way easier.”
When educators teach students not just how to read for facts, but how to read for depth, for meaning, for insight, they are teaching them how to understand the world better, how to relate to others better, and how to self-heal. The shape of happiness.
The current administration is making a lot of noise about how, as J.D. Vance put it, “professors are the enemy.” The attacks on colleges and universities in order to get them to teach only the policies of the GOP, as well as the dismantling of the Department of Education to dumb down K-12 students, are efforts to transform education into indoctrination. They are promoting trade schools over academia, claiming there’s no need to accrue college debt when a trade school will get you right into a paying profession. I totally support trade schools and encourage the creation of as many such schools as we need.
However, the argument is twisted—as befits those with no critical thinking in their education. Instead of allowing students to take on debt to attend college, the government could subsidize students much more so they have a choice of what kind of education they want regardless of cost. Studies prove that a higher education usually results in higher pay, which results in higher taxes paid back to the government. It’s a cost-efficient investment. More important, it makes for a better informed people necessary for a sound democracy.
Back to today’s quote: Education of the mind is about learning facts and critical thinking, while education of the heart is about using that education to be happy with your life. Happiness comes from perspective: seeing your place within a greater community. Education can elicit happiness, but we have to be taught how. That’s the real education. And we’re falling short…
