Education: The New World View

We are like fish swimming in the water; the water is the world view. The water is so ubiquitous that it becomes invisible and the most difficult thing for a fish to notice is the water that surrounds it”

From Concept of the Self, J. Hobson, text of the lecture for SSK12, learning arts and social sciences, Murdoch University

This quote in my opinion best describes what I think world view is. I come from two separate worlds, now you’re thinking that I am crazy, but if you believe that world views are the inside view of the way things are coloured, shaped, and arranged according to personal cultural perceptions” it’s true. The world views of my parents are so amazingly different that it looks like I do come from two different worlds.

My dad is a true blue Aussie. He is a country guy who left school at the young age of 13 to start working at a mushroom farm, he never really got very much encouragement from the family in terms of education and still now doesn’t believe education is all you need. He is also unemployed.

My mum comes from Indonesia; she holds education very dear to her heart and believes that if you want to get somewhere in life education is the key. She came from a middle class family and her parents pushed her to get an education, with many attempts she then finished university at the age of 27 gaining a job as a teacher then in social services.

The reason I bring my parents into this equation is that I wish to show the extremities of the different world views that are in my life.

I am now doing both a university course and a TAFE course and will relate my opinions more to how my mother brought me up. You will also hear how this upbringing and others around me have affected my world view.

Once upon a time there was no such thing as the internet; we all went to the university if we wanted to study there. Now there is distant education a “baby” if you so want to call it, from the internet and other forms of correspondence. I myself am doing distance education though there are many background ideas on distance education itself.

Many people in my community, their world view is that it is not a proper education if you don’t have the lecturer there in front of you or that a lot of the things over the internet are just scams and a waste of time, this I believe is due to a lack of knowledge and other peoples ”conception of the world” around them. That’s the old view, now we do know that this course is a legitimate course by a legitimate university and that I will one day get a degree by working as any other university student does to get their degrees.