An Education For Freedom in the 21st Century
As a former teacher, I often think of the ideal education, but I have realized that I am really thinking of the ideal education for me.
Despite the current bias towards specialized knowledge and belief that education is to train students to make a living and against the Liberal Arts, I still believe as the ancients did that technical education is servile education, an education for slaves.
It eventually leads to submissions to some form of authority who pays for the professional service rendered.
It requires a trade of time for money.
You life is not really your own.
As long as you must ask permission to go or stay, you are merely a serf, tied to a job, no matter how well paid.
Unfortunately, the education of the Free, the Liberal Arts, requires a life of leisure, and those who pursue this higher form live in a time and culture that values the practical over the impractical, utility over beauty, security over freedom, and so receive little pay, finding themselves in a different form of slavery: financial slavery, perhaps even poverty.
I refused to accept these two forms of slavery.
What form of education would provide the freedom to live in the manner I wanted? How could I be free from a job that restricted my time? And how could I have the time freedom that did not condemn me to a life of poverty? I knew I didn't want a job, no matter how well paying.
Going on welfare was not an option.
That too is a form of slavery, and how was I to pay for the travel? I had to work for myself.
Freelance writing or translating was a possibility, but it still didn't provide money or lifestyle I wanted.
I needed to find a means to earn money that allowed me to travel well and gave me the leisure to pursue my real interests.
I also wanted to be able to do it anywhere in the world, that meant it had to be on the Internet, unless I were to be a writer, and that usually didn't pay enough either.
After years of looking, and frequently despairing that I was condemned to a life of "quiet desperation," I found the answer.
It was so obvious.
It was everywhere I looked.
I just hadn't tied it all together.
The Liberal Arts taught me how to be free and to think, but there is a form of specialized knowledge that gave me the time and financial freedom I wanted anywhere in the world.
For more information go to my blog, Libertas.
ws, found on the link below.
Aloha!
Despite the current bias towards specialized knowledge and belief that education is to train students to make a living and against the Liberal Arts, I still believe as the ancients did that technical education is servile education, an education for slaves.
It eventually leads to submissions to some form of authority who pays for the professional service rendered.
It requires a trade of time for money.
You life is not really your own.
As long as you must ask permission to go or stay, you are merely a serf, tied to a job, no matter how well paid.
Unfortunately, the education of the Free, the Liberal Arts, requires a life of leisure, and those who pursue this higher form live in a time and culture that values the practical over the impractical, utility over beauty, security over freedom, and so receive little pay, finding themselves in a different form of slavery: financial slavery, perhaps even poverty.
I refused to accept these two forms of slavery.
What form of education would provide the freedom to live in the manner I wanted? How could I be free from a job that restricted my time? And how could I have the time freedom that did not condemn me to a life of poverty? I knew I didn't want a job, no matter how well paying.
Going on welfare was not an option.
That too is a form of slavery, and how was I to pay for the travel? I had to work for myself.
Freelance writing or translating was a possibility, but it still didn't provide money or lifestyle I wanted.
I needed to find a means to earn money that allowed me to travel well and gave me the leisure to pursue my real interests.
I also wanted to be able to do it anywhere in the world, that meant it had to be on the Internet, unless I were to be a writer, and that usually didn't pay enough either.
After years of looking, and frequently despairing that I was condemned to a life of "quiet desperation," I found the answer.
It was so obvious.
It was everywhere I looked.
I just hadn't tied it all together.
The Liberal Arts taught me how to be free and to think, but there is a form of specialized knowledge that gave me the time and financial freedom I wanted anywhere in the world.
For more information go to my blog, Libertas.
ws, found on the link below.
Aloha!
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