Some people believe that the purpose of education is to free the mind and the spirit. Others believe that formal education tends to restrain our minds and spirits rather than set them free.Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely alig

This topic raises the controversial issue of whether formal education bolster or restrain our minds and spirits. Indisputably, education fails in its purpose when it is excessively based on inflexibility and rigidity and when students are required to learn topics by heart instead of really understanding them. Nevertheless, nowadays this is less likely to happen, and education is a precious tool which we should regard as a gift. Hence, I generally disagree with the view according to which formal education could hinder the freedom of our minds and spirits and would argue that education should be seen as a priceless gift.

One major point that induces me to believe that education frees the mind and the soul stems from the fact that without education our thoughts are severely limited. Indeed, education can actually provide us with the right tools and methods to tackle a problem and to critically discuss a view when is proposed to us. To illustrate, let us look at the following example. When Einstein, back in 1905, formulates the concept of the special relativity, based his entire reasoning on a mental experiment. Indeed, he thought what would have been the consequences to run at the speed of the light. Now, of course it is not thanks to education that he had this thought but thanks to education he had translated his thought into mathematical terms. Thanks to the discoveries of Einstein we can use daily the GPS or other electronic devices. Therefore, it is undeniable that education has helped Einstein to solve his problem and frees our lives by annoying problems which can be easily tackle by some modern technologies. Therefore, education clearly frees our mind and our spirits because it enables us to tackle problems and to propone different solution, but most notably to, as Einstein has done, stimulate progress in our society. In this term, education makes us more free. On the other hand, if Einstein would not have been educated, his thought about the speed of the light would have just remained a thought because he would have not had enough knowledge to properly translate that thought into mathematics.

Furthermore, education provides us with invaluable tools to critically accept or refuse an opinion or a point of view. Specifically, consider the following problem that is particularly widespread nowadays: “fake news’”. Indeed, fake news are currently popular on the web, for instance on Facebook. But, where is the link between the importance of education to free our minds and fake news? Thanks to formal education at school we learn to critically evaluate any assertion that is presented to us. For instance, during a history exam we can evaluate the truth of a statement which cited that the first world war has begun in 1900. Of course, this is not true, and we are able to do so because education has provided us with both the knowledge and the tools to say so. By contrast, without formal education we could be more inclined to uncritically accept each statement prosed to us, and this is exactly what happens when we consider as true some fake news on the web without verify their validity.
On the other hand, those who argue that formal education restrains our mind and spirits instead of set them free, they are actually misperceiving and mistaking formal education with excessive rigidity. Indeed, formal education can have negative effects on us but just in very few occasions. Suppose to live in a nation where the leader of it is a dictator. In this case, the latter will impose some specific topics, which praise the tyranny, to be taught at schools to students. Of course, this could be one case in which formal education actually hinders the freedom of our minds. But, there is one implicit assumption in this reasoning which weakens the conclusion. Indeed, education under tyranny, for instance during Nazism, cannot be considered as education according to its definition. In fact, in this extreme case education is viewed as a tool to install wrong ideas into young students and not as a way to teach them something new.

In conclusion, in all the situations presented above, starting from Einstein to education under tyranny, an educated person would have been several advantages thanks to his formal education compared to another person who disregards education because of its supposed negative effects on the freedom of minds and spirits.