The Aims of Education - Chapter 1

‘The Aims of Education and Other Essays’, consists of a collection  of texts from Whitehead's lectures. Alfred writes about the limitations, functions and purposes of the education system.

The first theme within this chapter is that of 'Inert Ideas and 'Dead Knowledge'

'a succeeding generation 

exhibit merely 

pedantry and routine. 

The reason is,

 that they are 

overladen with

 inert ideas. 

Education with 

inert ideas is 

not only useless: 

it is above all things, 

harmful’

So Whitehead is suggesting that each one of us has ideas, and those ideas can be powerful,  they have the potential to influence our future. However, these ideas are not powerful, if we don’t make use of them; they are in fact, useless! Now this is one of Whitehead’s key themes throughout Aims of Education; he believes that Schools overload children with ‘inert ideas’ or in other words, information which one can 'express but not use'..  which some may call useless or irrelevant information.. 

An example of this may be teaching to exams, and 

gaining the information needed just to pass the exam, but not 

really learning it or seeing its relevance in life.

 "Let the main ideas which are introduced into a child's education be few and important, and let them be thrown into every combination possible."

"keeping knowledge alive, of preventing it from becoming inert...is the central problem of all education."

He believes that the child should make ideas his own, and should understand their application here and now in the circumstances of his actual life. He says,

Whitehead makes us question the usefulness of our education system..

‘If education is not useful, then what is it?’ 

‘education should be useful, whatever your aim in life’

Whitehead believes that the education system advocates teaching few subjects but taught thoroughly and according to Whitehead.. this is 

‘Passive reception of disconnected ideas'.

Whitehead also believed in discovery learning; a concept which we are now very familiar with as it is also reflects later work of Jean Piaget and is now an integral part of the Foundation Phase. 

‘From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery. The discovery which he has to make, is that general ideas give an understanding of that stream of events which ppours through his life, which is life.’

Students interact with the world by exploring, questioning and experimenting. As a result, students may be more likely to see the relevance to a subject or find an interest if he or she has discovered it themselves.

.

Whitehead also believed that the main curriculum within education should be, 'life in all its manifestations'. So learning about life and all that it embodies, whether that be theoretical or abstract.

‘The problem of education is to make the pupil see the wood, by means of the trees’

If somebody can’t see the wood for the trees, they are unable to understand what is important in a situation, because they are giving too much attention to details.

Therefore, Whitehead is emphasizing that pupils cannot understand the reasoning behind what they are being educated and the relevance, they first need to make connections before learning all the details there are about a topic.