The first day when the boy returned from school, the father asked him: Son, tell me, let me see what you learned at school today.
The boy replied: Today we were told about the dangers of smoking and we discussed about it, the teacher read us a story book and we made a craft.
The father asked: Did you not study mathematics and science?
The boy said: no.
On the second day, when the boy returned from school, the father repeated his question. The boy replied: “Today we exercised for half a day, we learned how not to lose our self-confidence, and for the last class, they taught us that we should give part of our income to the government to spend on the development of cities and villages.”
After several days of the boy coming and going and explaining, the father started to become anxious, as he saw that in a week at school, his son spent little time on math, physics, science, and things that he thought were correct lessons. Since the father was worried that his son would grow poorly in these lessons, he told his son: “Son, from now on, do not go to school on Mondays so that I can work with you in mathematics and physics at home.”
Therefore, the boy did not go to school on Mondays. On the first Monday, they called from school to ask why their son had not come. They said he was sick. On the second Monday, they called again, and the parents again made an excuse. After a while, the school principal became suspicious and called the father to the school to talk to him.
When the father went to school, he tried again to make excuses, but the principal did not buy them. In the end, he inevitably told the truth. He said that he was concerned about his son’s academic progress and wondered why correct lessons were so underrepresented in Australian schools.
The manager was silent for a while after hearing the father’s words and then replied: We thought like you 50 years ago.
The definition of literacy is not just learning physics, chemistry and mathematics, but also a sense of responsibility and participation in the society affairs.
Life and socialization skills are necessary for everyone in a civil society, but physics and chemistry may work for a particular group.
In other words, evaluating and measuring the level of social wisdom of a society can be examined in the type of view and method of dealing with various crises that occur in that society.
A brief look at the corona crisis and the way people deal with it and other social events at the local, regional and national levels, shows that during crises that have a social dimension, the prevailing social atmosphere is often based on mistrust, emotion and emotion.
Indeed, why is irresponsibility, negligence, social irrationality or lack of wisdom, the main aspect of our confrontation with crises, events and social and public challenges?!
The concept of wisdom, means the method of analysis, reasoning and human behavior in crises and life processes. Leading psychological scientist Robert Sternberg defines literacy as the application of intelligence, creativity, and knowledge, mediated by values, to achieve benevolent goals. He considers wisdom as a personality trait that is obtained by combining three dimensions: cognitive, reflective and emotional.
The cognitive dimension is the effort and desire to know the truth and a deeper understanding of life. The contemplative dimension is the attempt to see phenomena from a different perspective without mental biases and projections, and the emotional dimension is the enjoyment of empathetic and compassionate love for others.
Given the country’s millions of graduates and students, it was expected that in the face of social events and crises such as the coronavirus, this educated population would inject rationality and literacy into various segments of society, reduce emotional conflicts and mistrust and try to analyze and manage the public mood logically and in order to control this crisis.
But with a quick glance at the social role of academics and the educated class in public spaces, crises and social issues, we encounter irresponsibility and perhaps chronic social illiteracy that not only do not send any rational currents to the general public. Rather, they themselves are the cause and spread of illiteracy and light, emotional, and erroneous analyzes to the society. This is something we see today in the face of Coronavirus.
Of course, it is not reasonable to expect wise views and attitudes from university graduates, because our universities have never taught literacy to anyone! If not, then why is there such an atmosphere in society?
When the main mission of the university for the student is to get a degree and for the university and the university officials is to be promoted, there is no opportunity left for teaching and learning the elements of wisdom and prudence. When we are only dealing with tuition and diploma issuance, then we have not even been able to teach our students the process of rational analysis of scientific issues and social crises in principle.
What is really the main mission of the university? Just paying attention to producing degrees and unemployed and illiterate people? Or paying attention to social responsibilities? It seems that the most important and main mission of the university is to transfer social literacy and science to the society and increase its self-confidence. Has our educated class, which has a prestigious university degree, been able to overcome the challenge of facing the Coronavirus crisis safely with complete reasoning? Or do they attend the frequent weddings and funerals that take place these days and are still looking for an excuse to escape the challenge? Has our student really learned social literacy or just he can do Mathematics, chemistry, etc?!
