Education and Person in Modern Society - Essay Example

Swenson led to the students feeling more interest towards her lesson; for the first time in their classes they paid attention, and even some grudging respect to their eccentric teacher. While obviously ironical, this narrative underscores the problem of acceptance of more intellectually oriented teacher figures in modern society which is based around the television-induced notions of vigour and activity, while more reflective personality types are generally marginalised and ridiculed. Finally, but still more importantly, an issue of leadership and submission is often raised in the debates on education.

The existing system of education and training strives to pursue two fundamentally incompatible goals: that of preparing young men and women for the fulfilment of the tasks deemed to be socially necessary and that of trying to outmanoeuvre one another in the struggle for promotion to the top of the given hierarchical ladder. The problems of leadership are frequently viewed as purely instrumental, provided that the function of leadership is regarded to be primarily the reproduction and maintenance of existing hierarchy.

Such an approach is widespread in the U.S. public schools and colleges, a, despite the ritualistic lambasting of the ‘bureaucrats’, as was noted by Deresiewicz (170), their complex and convoluted structures are necessarily bureaucratic and based on enumeration of merit according to fixed and rigid criteria. Therefore it is rather natural that the supposed daring reformers of the public education fail in their endeavours to de-bureaucratise it, more often than not. The bureaucracy and management-oriented practices of modern American education fundamentally tend to ‘educate’ the.

The paper shows that the existing system of education and training strives to pursue two fundamentally incompatible goals: that of preparing young men and women for the fulfilment of the tasks deemed to be socially necessary and that of trying to outmanoeuvre one another in the struggle for promotion to the top of the given hierarchical ladder. The problems of leadership are frequently viewed as purely instrumental, provided that the function of leadership is regarded to be primarily the reproduction and maintenance of existing hierarchy.

It explaines the bureaucracy and management-oriented practices of modern American education fundamentally which tend to ‘educate’ the students toward the acceptance of dominant values of personal advancement and individualistic behaviour. While it may sound surprising, as the bureaucracy is more commonly associated with collectivistic values and principles, this may be easily explained by the well-known parallel between governmental and private-sector managerial bureaucracies that are likewise present in the field of public education.

The paper makes a conclusion that the formation of integral person that can be both capable of facing the rigors and vicissitudes of modern life with its complexities and controversies, while retaining the sense of individual integrity and personal autonomy.