浮生琐记

I fundamentally agree with the speaker with the respects to the stages before higher education. In these stages of education, the students are generally indoctrinated with the values, ideas, and principles of mainstream society. Therefore, formal education is an ideal way for a culture to perpetuate the ideas it favors and discredit the ideas it fears. But the speaker’s assertion ignores two significant other means in this process, that is, law and the mainstream media.

Through education, which is an important part of life, people shape the values and characters. During the Second World War, for example, the Japanese infused the value of sacrifice into children, and therefore, so many young men were willing to devote themselves to the war without fear of death. When the Japanese were in a disadvantageous situation in the war, the soldiers regarded sacrifice in suicidal attacks as the greatest glory. Maybe this is the reason why formal education is so emphasized in every country.

The students are the future of our society, while on campus the students are learning at not only the knowledge but also how to integrate themselves, and to be a real people, it is necessary for the education to canon what should indoctrinate to the students. Moreover, the mission of our colleges and universities should be to afford students a cultural perspective and a capacity for understanding opposing viewpoint, and to encourage as well as to nurture the skills of critical analysis and skepticism, but not to indoctrinate students with certain ideas while quashing others.

The culture is a collection of all the essentials the society cherished and selected to preserve, while the education is the media the society take advantage of to infuse into the mind of the student – the descendants. Though I admit that the formal education also asks students to be skeptical, but it is on the basis of not undermining the culture’s basic principle, that is to perpetuate the ideas it favors and discredit the ones it fears. It is also this basic principle that serves as a way the government keeps its governing.

On the other hand, to a great much existence throughout the history and all over the world, when the education fails to practice its task, there would not be a ruin in the whole generation and the downfall in the morality. Because there are two other ways to reach the goal; they are law and the mainstream media. The speaker should not ignore their significant influence on shaping people’s values and characters.

In conclusion, education might be an effective way for a culture to indoctrinate people – especially the young – with the ideas it favors, and the values, ideas, and principles of mainstream society and discredit the ideas it fears. However, whether education is less or more effective than other means like law and the mainstream media, is still open to debate.