Canned Education
Canned education is a form of retrogression, in which information is packaged and delivered in schools in boxes resembling sardine cans.
Canned education deprives students of thinking and creativity. They may graduate and be competent in their work—if they are even allowed to work—but they will not be creative; indeed, they may become disabled. Anyone accustomed to working within a single-minded framework will resist any changes to the system.
In examinations, students are forced to provide answers in the exact manner they were taught; otherwise, they fail with distinction. In school, they are almost entirely deprived of independent thought and intellectual effort.
Canned education indirectly teaches students complete closed-mindedness and an intolerance of differing ideas and people. Take ISIS, for example: it declares anyone who differs with it on matters of jurisprudence and creed to be an infidel, due to its ignorance of jurisprudential and theological differences. Hezbollah and Iran’s militias in our region view Iran as “the savior” and Arabs as “the destroyers.”
These groups have been placed in a rigidly defined mold, carefully selected. Those who designed this mold taught them that this truth alone is valid, and everything else is false, deserving to be severed and its blood shed.
Far from terrorism and terrorists, canned education deprives individuals of logical and critical thinking, meaning a loss of broad horizons and a fear of bold questioning. When faced with a text, a student cannot answer questions logically; instead, he answers in a canned manner. This deprives students of their right to think. Do we have the right to deprive students of thinking?
Canning leads to rashness and reliance on hearsay, without seeking, analyzing, or debating.
The solution is not simple or easy; it requires many years, sustained great efforts, and “mismanaged” funds.
This is not to say that rote learning is bad; it is part of the educational process. There is a world of difference between rote learning and canning. Students learn the shapes and pronunciation of letters through rote learning, but they will not understand or master them unless they practice. Canning, by contrast, imposes a single model that forbids deviation from it.
