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 ...