Education is a word whose connotations are very broad. People worldwide differ on what constitutes a good education and what constitutes a bad education.
People amass debts of thousands of pounds for a piece of paper and can still be considered totally uneducated in their behaviour, in their critical thinking, and in their ability to tap into their creativity.
And there are people who have failed every exam they have ever sat, but they have led full lives that could not have been afforded to them had they gone through the traditional route of getting a degree.
One aspect of education that is constantly in discussion is what methods work best in effectively educating people, specifically the young. Some are of the belief that exams are not a fair measure of a person’s abilities and that course-work-based study is better because it rewards consistency, instead of having a student’s results depend all on one day. And others believe exams are still the right means of assessing a student’s abilities.
Another factor that one must consider regarding modern education is what is prioritised in the contemporary world. Schools, colleges, and Universities seem to place emphasis on Science and math-based subjects, and while the knowledge of mathematics and science are absolutely necessary to make life run in the way that we are used to, they are given an unfair amount of precedence over the arts.
People are now incentivised to study science and mathematical professions because, typically, they pay more- this is not discrediting those who have a genuine passion for these fields- and are not encouraged to immerse themselves in artistic and cultural studies.
Personally, I believe this is not right, for the arts hold within them the oldest form of education that man has used for millennia. The arts have within them a medium of education that I would argue is just as valuable- if not more so- as the education of the sciences. That medium is storytelling.
Storytelling is something that is vital to the human situation. For we are inexorably the stories that we tell ourselves, the stories that we reject, and the stories that we hope to create. But why is storytelling an excellent means of educating human beings?
While the sciences make sense of the laws of the universe and how we can use those laws to make our physical lives more convenient, stories-whether they are told to us through word-of-mouth, books, TV, film, theatre, or radio- are things that help us to examine the more abstract elements of human life.
Humans eat, sleep, relieve themselves, and procreate. These are all sensory experiences that are necessary for the physical health of all living creatures, but what about those aspects of life that are unseen, i.e. the drives, emotions, and states that human beings experience within themselves? Those things that are not within the category of sensory experiences.
Human beings are complex creatures; they are made complex because of the states they experience throughout the course of their lives. Whether that is love, despair, joy, sadness, or a sense of wonder, human beings have experienced these things and, through human language, have created stories to communicate those experiences to other people who have- or will- go through the same things at some point in their lives.
Stories contain universal experiences and motives that have been recognised in all cultures and eras as far back as the first cave drawings. Stories help us to make sense of and give meaning to the highs and lows of the human situation to help us understand what we are going through.
The sciences can educate us on what a thing is, but they cannot educate us on why a thing is. There is no doubting the constellations; we observe them and study them, and we are all smarter about the physical world we live in by doing this.
But, the epic known as The Illiad is something that has been studied for thousands of years and has had numerous interpretations because the contents within the epic have raised questions concerning morality, destiny, man’s relationship to a higher power/powers, and the overwhelming hand of fate.
Achilles’ anger at being humiliated by Agamemnon and his slow drift into apathy in regard to his place in the grand scheme of things is something that any human being in the year 2025 can relate to because the experience of humiliation and the apathy that can come when we question our place in the world is something that all people will live through at some point. Achilles was a hero that existed in Ancient Greece, in what is ostensibly an archaic society compared to ours.
The Illiad is an epic that can take someone on a journey that involves reflecting on what the right course of action to take is, what is considered good and noble behaviour, or maybe even what are the actions not to take when navigating the battle that is life.
Such discussions are what help a person grow inwardly in their ability to reason, to understand why a person would choose to do good instead of following their own whims and desires, as well as creating in us a sense of empathy as to why characters- and people in real life- do the things they do. Such things lead to a more conscientious understanding of life. Something that, in many ways, the sciences cannot give us.
There is a sense of snobbery in some respects to this topic. People feel that the only things worth reading are the classics, which consist of stories written by the likes of Dickens, Austen, Dumas, Hugo, Bronte, Hesse, Dostoevsky, etc.
But that is not what is being looked at here. This is not a matter of high VS low culture. It is about the medium of storytelling, and stories considered vulgar still can convey the same teachings on universal themes as the most sophisticated novels. Maybe not to the same standard, but the same themes can be communicated.
For example, you had people in cinemas jumping out of their seats in excitement during Man of Steel (2013) when Superman took off in flight for the first time. Say what you want about the Zack Snyder film. However, he- in a very reductive way- managed to tell the audience the story of a man who lived his whole life up until that point as an outsider, struggled with his sense of belonging, learned to accept that which made him different, and finally, used that as a source of strength to serve people. There has not been one human being on the planet, past, present, or future, who has not (and will not) go through any of the things mentioned above.
It may not be as layered as The Illiad, but the story of the Man of Steel is something that people from many parts of the world have drawn inspiration from and have used as a source of comfort in times of sadness for decades now.
This is why people draw connections with certain characters across all forms of fiction. They relate to them, to their situations and conflicts, because it may mirror what the reader/viewer is going through in their real life and provide them with a sense of teaching.
A person may be exhausted by something that they have taken on, a goal they are striving to achieve, and in times of despair, find themselves thinking of Odysseus (Homer’s Odyssey) and his arduous journey back to his homeland of Ithaca and the many times his ship was steered off course, but in the end, he reached his home.
Or they may be tired of trying to help a friend who has lost his way, and despite the fact that many people have told him: ‘he’s a lost cause’, they remember Luke Skywalker and his determination to turn Darth Vader into the side of good, even though his teachers assured him that it was not possible.
Storytelling is an essential form of education because it reflects our experiences. That is all it can ever do. We are born, we experience, and then we put pen to paper, press record, or begin to speak these events to people whom we hope to inspire, excite, humour, and make reflect.
Storytelling gives people the freedom to choose the type of person they would like to be by providing them with examples of people who succeed against overwhelming odds (or fail, in the case of a Greek tragedy) and how they deal with the dilemmas that life throws their way.
On an individual level, a person can shape their future and their understanding of their past by the type of stories they choose to tell themselves and the type of stories they choose to reject. On a cosmic level, the reason we are so fascinated with them is because human existence is a story in and of itself. As Hector Barbosa says in the original Pirates of the Caribbean film:
‘You best start believing in stories because you’re in one.’