【clover】issue107 习作 by 七七夕夕

七七夕夕UID: 2753801

Issue 104
It is primarily through formal education that a culture tries to perpetuate the ideas it favors and discredit the ideas it fears.       
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Every culture in the world has its own unique value system in which the ideas deserving perpetuation and the ones should be against are clearly defined. How to pass down a value system to a new generation? In my view, it is primarily through informal education rather than through formal education.  
   
Admittedly, formal education is an indispensable way for many cultures to inculcate young people with value systems they accolade, for its advantage of teaching quickly and straightly. For example, in the history course, which is a universal subject of almost all schools, well-trained teachers guide young to examine and reflect on past, but not always objectively. For a culture holding Liberalism in esteem like America, it focuses on its achievement in human rights, including Lincoln’s success in abolishing slavery, but mentions lightly the deep reason why the financial crisis happened. In contrast, a culture praises Nationalism highly like North Korea, gives an understatement to their people’s human rights in history, but introspection in the aftermath of financial crisis on poor. Therefore, formal education teaches young generation what to think according to different purpose of various cultures.
   
However, human is more an acceptor than a receiver. What people have received from formal education are just raw materials that need to be processed by human thought. And this processing course is not only happened in class, but all the time. So, informal education functions incessantly mainly by two means.

Firstly, informal education carried out by after-school programs, community-based organizations make people experience by themselves what they received through formal education in a specific atmosphere, which is predetermined by the quality of culture. Also take the instance of liberalism and nationalism, pageants are held in liberalism country primarily for personal affairs, e.g. for rights and interest of jobless; while they are happened in nationalism country, the purpose is diverted to the inter-nation affairs, e.g. for their specific belief. It turns out differently; the people of liberalism feel them more responsible for their own rights, while the people of nationalism feel them more responsible for their nation and belief. This kind of informal education is adopted widely and works well, depending on the so-called group effect.

Secondly, informal education permeates the live of people though art, entertainment, firmly planting a culture’s values in people’ mind. Watching local TV show and going to museum are the direct and efficient way for one to tell which type of culture a group or nation most values.  For instance, a religious group accords more importance on their rites by broadcasting the solemn scene to its believer and keeping their formal instruments for rites in museum as holy. Unconsciously, people treasure rites as well. Thus, ideas spread by this informal education is powerful, though soundless.
     
In conclusion, formal education teaches people what to think while informal education guide people how to think. A culture who utterly spread all its ideas favored or against to new generation takes this two weapons, but consider the last as the biggest, after all, what to think finally is up to how to think.

终于写完第一篇issue了，感觉不是很好，表达方式很单一。以后努力的还有太多 太多。。。

小灵易碎UID: 2733622

不好意思，有点晚了，欢迎讨论
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