Complexity in Education

    This paper chronicles some epiphanies I have had concerning the formal education system. We have spoken in class several times of the need of formal education reform. We have detailed how insufficient the current system is in creating creative thinkers or even educated thinkers. We have spoken of how the system sets many people up for failure and disregards many other children whose minds work in ways different from the ones prized by our system. I wholeheartedly agree with all these sentiments, but as I think on them, my mind harkens back to two incidents: a conversation I had with my friend who attended school in Ghana and a book I read for pleasure.

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
 – John Donne
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others
 – George Orwell, Animal Farm.
       In this class and some of my other classes across many disciplines, we have had several discussions whose aims were to impress upon us the truth of John Donne’s assertion that “no man is an island,” that we do not exist in a vacuum.  Especially in this class, we are discovering that even within ourselves, we are not an Island, so to speak. Inside the brain, where the seat of our persons and our cognitive functions reside, we find that the way we perceive the world is an ongoing interaction between compartments of the brain that we have termed the “storyteller” and the “cognitive unconscious” (Grobstein). In addition, we are discovering that more than one ‘person’ exists within ourselves – we are a conglomerate of multiple personalities, each with their own distinct character.