What is the Connection Between Mythology and Education
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Although school is the best place to learn about mythology and how it affects human lives, this topic is often ignored in today’s educational system. However, since this issue is fundamental, we decided to explore the relationship between education and mythology in this article.
Phenomenon of Mythology
Some people, maybe even most, think mythology is only about tales of olden times. Indeed, who would talk seriously about Hercules or Orpheus nowadays? But myths are only the product of a particular way of thinking, commonly called mythological. And it’s still with us today.
So let’s examine why we still think in myths and how it affects our lives. And first, what is mythology? In short, it’s the primary way of understanding the world in cultural history. Back then, it looked like this:
✔️ Human don’t set themselves apart from the world but represent a whole with it.
✔️ Collective consciousness prevails over individual one.
✔️ Thinking operates on the principle of associations and likenesses rather than logical connections.
Thus, mythological thinking offers a general picture of the world in which everything is connected to everything. But almost all of the above has faded into oblivion over a long history. So why is myth still relevant today? First, mythological thinking doesn’t understand how the image of an object differs from the thing itself. Hence, rock art was not a way of creating beautiful images but a literal doubling of reality to directly influence it, for example, to ensure a successful hunt.
Now let us remember our attitude toward photography. Try printing out a photograph of someone dear to you and stabbing it with a knife. Sure, most people would have their hands shaking. Even though we know perfectly well that nothing will happen to the person in the photo. This example vividly demonstrates how mythological thinking continues to affect our lives as a way to gain new knowledge. It may seem strange, but the fact remains: you internally continue to connect the image and object.
Mythology Animates the Whole World
In mythological thinking, the entire human environment is inhabited by spirits. For mythology, nothing is dead or empty. Everything that falls within the field of mythical thinking is filled with meaning. Moreover, even our senses take on specific representatives, as they did in ancient Greece. For example, Ares represented anger and Athena — wisdom. And if you want to learn more about the Greek gods, which will be very helpful to your education, use Best Writers Online to find an expert to help you with that.
And now, think about how some people refer to nature’s forces or usual things like their car or smartphone. So have you ever given your gadgets human characteristics or addressed the weather with requests and threats? Of course, we inherited this habit from mythology. It’s just that back then, people believed in the power of their influence on these objects.
Mythology and Education in the Modern World
Today, the problem of developing the ability to resist the lack of meaning is particularly acute. Yet, at the same time, we often face an awful sense of aimlessness and emptiness. Sometimes it’s tough to look for and find meaning in life. Plus, don’t forget about global problems of culture and civilization, which also affect our lives and perceptions of the world. In such a situation, there’s often a reassessment of values and basic universals, such as mythology and education.
After all, we find our worldview, values, meanings, goals, and aspirations in relationships between education and mythology. Education is a critical component of humanity’s overall development and self-awareness. It ties together all elements of socio-cultural experience and creates the conditions for their interpersonal and inter-generational transmission. So it’s difficult to overestimate the fundamental nature of education and its importance for forming a coherent system of worldview and awareness of human place in the world.
Moreover, it’s not enough for human existence given by nature: it is through education we create ourselves and build our consciousness. In turn, mythology is also a way of organizing and constructing human forces, replenishing and making human beings for which there’s no biological basis for him. Mythological components are revealed in religion, in art, mainly oriented on the mass consumer, economy, politics, and even in science in parascientific and quasi-scientific forms.
Mythological “logic” works at all levels of the heterogeneous consciousness of the modern human, including the sphere of emotional and sensory experience, theoretical and projective thinking, creative activity, and social and communicative experience. Thus, education and mythology are two fundamental phenomena of any culture and in any historical phase of its existence.
However, what are the origins and genesis of mythology and education as the most important beginnings of human existence? Do mythology and education have common features? What is the role of interaction between mythology and education in the process of human formation? Is it possible to find a mythological component in modern education, and what is its positive potential?
Today, people feel a particularly acute need to expand the boundaries of traditional approaches to the systematization and analysis of the basic phenomena of human existence, including mythology and education. They need a reasoned assessment of the modernization processes in modern education and a search for ways to respond to them adequately through an appeal to the heuristic resources of myth.
Bottom Line
Mythological thinking is a picture of the world where everything is understandable to us. It is a state of consciousness in which we don’t ask the world around us and live with a ready set of answers. Perhaps soon, mythological thinking will be replaced by philosophical one. People have already begun to question the obviousness of mythical solutions and develop a method of cause-effect relationships and semantic explanations. But it is impossible to get rid of mythology completely, as you can see.
And it’s not surprising. Myth is anchored in cultural patterns and is therefore included in the content of the lifeworld. Myth bridges meaning from one social position to another, creating conditions for social communication and making various possible relationships, including those that lead to agreement and understanding. The destructive role of myth is associated with its distortion, the transition to the form of social ideology. The modern system that rules the world deprives the myth of its freedom and forces it to become an object of manipulative technologies.
