My parents rarely took my brother and I out to dine at restaurants when we were young. When they did, it would be an evening table for four at a Red Lobster or Swiss Chalet or Denny’s. Their answer to the hostess on which section was preferred never changed. Smoking. Always the smoking section. Like the fish swimming in the tanks we stared at while patiently waiting for the shrimp cocktail appetizer to hit our table, my brother and I thought nothing of the smoky haze we were immersed in. It was our reality. In public at the rare dinner outing. In private at the coffee table in our living room while watching Saturday morning cartoons. Even in the staffroom of our elementary school. In the early nineties the culture around smoking indoors was rather inconsequential.
But towards the middle of the decade we started to learn about the detriments of secondhand smoking. My age would correspond with the stage of schooling when students were introduced to the dangers of cigarettes and alcohol. But secondhand smoking was a new thing. Through science, the narrative around secondhand smoking wafted from arbitrary to objective. My sixth grade classroom learned how bad it was simply to be around people when they were smoking cigarettes. By the time I entered eighth grade, my parents no longer had the option of telling the hostess which section they would like to be seated in. Smoking sections in public places like restaurants had vanished.
There is no question that education has an impact on culture. Like any institution, its outturn is able to lean upon and dent society. The question that requires a deeper mediation is whether or not education can change culture and society.
Because culture and society cyclically inform each other, Education becomes the conduit for learning about both. School, then, is the site we individual members of a culture learn, both implicitly and explicitly, about the very culture they exist in.
We should be asking ourselves, What is the purpose of education? Is its most essential aim to promote happiness? Or ought a child’s learning be absolutely tethered to their experience and the practical applications that evolve in between the continuum of survival and thriving? Regardless of which aim we lean towards, one thing is for sure: Education, in part, is a preparation for something.
Ultimately, educators must teach citizens to be aware. Aware of their experience, of history, of reality, of what knowledge is objective and what is subjective. One purpose of education is to foster, within its students, an awareness of the culture and society they live in. Then, when we understand the elements that are most important to education we can insist that, at its core, a vital aim of it is to foster a capacity to prepare for and seek out a just culture. That is how education was utilized to make smoking indoors taboo. Because the purpose of education is inextricably tied to freedom, education can not only change culture, it is responsible for changing culture. The question remains: Is it doing a good job?
