I re-read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (by Robert M. Pirsig) recently-- or maybe it was the first time I really read it and I was just pretending back in high school because it sounded cool.
One statement in the book that struck me is this: "We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly." Daniel Pink could have written that on a grumpy day-- it is moving the discussion of learning and education from the content to the context.
Pirsig (through the voice of his first person narrator) continues: "The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there." He places this in the context of the Greek concept of "arete" (loosely translated "excellence") that refers to the duty of the individual to the self, to the role that the self occupies in the world, and the respect of wholeness and oneness with the world.
I am always hearing folks complain that with the economy these days, schools should be better preparing students for jobs. And that is true. But what about preparing them to live? What about understanding their place in the world as citizens, friends, family members, co-workers, creators, artists, spiritual beings, thinkers? Are we focused so keenly on "tested skills" or "employability" that we have forgotten what it really means to learn and create and be in touch with ourselves-- to pursue "arete?"
"Great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why." (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
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