What is the purpose and role of Education in Society?
When we talk about education do we all hold a similar definition? Do we all have the same goals for education? Often in taking with parents, teachers, administrators and local politicians I often get the feeling we are not talking about the same thing. What do you expect from education? What do you wish for your children? Do you see education divided into two areas formal schooling and self-directed learning?
The following are the some rather provocative thoughts to get you thinking.
“Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself.”
“It is our American habit if we find the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory to add another story or wing. We find it easier to add a new study or course or kind of school than to recognize existing conditions so as to meet the need.”
“The school must be made into a social center capable of participating in the daily life of the community . . . and make up in part to the child for the decay of dogmatic and fixed methods of social discipline and for the loss of reverence and the influence of authority.”
“A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron. ”
“Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.”
“The entire object of true education, is to make people not merely do the right thing, but to enjoy right things; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learned, but to love knowledge.”
Robert M Hutchins
“Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible.”
“The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Common-wealths. Almost all Governments have therefore made it a principal Object of their Attention, to establish and endow with proper Revenues, such Seminaries of Learning, as might supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country.”
“We want to argue that part of the growing crisis in public education centers around the declining competence of students and others to effectively interrogate and communicate ideational content. In other words, in jeopardy is not merely the ability of students to be creative, but the very capacity for conceptual thought itself. Moreover, since democratic social, cultural, and political forms depend on a self-motivated and autonomous public, the precondition for which is critical thinking, the crisis at hand may be the very survival of democracy itself.”
Mass Readiness Final Report
“Despite quantum leaps in academic rigor, our existing education system is not adequately preparing every student for success in life and work. As a source of workers, it doesn’t meet the needs of employers. As a public investment, it doesn’t deliver the return it should for taxpayers. Most importantly, as an entry point to the American dream, it remains too selective. All too often, a student’s chances for success are determined not by her intellect or ability to learn, but by her ZIP code and circumstances beyond her control.”
“We’ll invest in early childhood education programs so that our kids don’t begin the race of life behind the starting line and offer a $4,000 tax credit to make college affordable for anyone who wants to go. Because as the NAACP knows better than anyone, the fight for social justice and economic justice begins in the classroom.”
“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787.
“A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest.” –Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1818.
I never let my schooling interfere with my education ( this is attributed to Mark Twain)
“Learning is more than the acquisition of the ability to think; it is the acquisition of many specialised abilities for thinking about a variety of things.”
There are quite a few good ones here I particularly like Albert Einstein’s quote “It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of enquiry.”
Please feel free to share you views on the role of education. My views are still evolving but for a pretty good reflection of my current understading please see the following posts This I believe and The Purpose of Education .