What is the Purpose of Education?

Posted on | January 19, 2009 | 35 Comments

Flickr Photo by Donna62
Interestingly, when I search for machine shop, in Flickr this morning, I got a lot of pictures of empty buildings, neglected machining tools, and a rock band. When I searched for assembly line photos, I got mostly pictures of people working together to prepare meals for large groups of people.

Over the last few months, I have had the pleasure of working with a number of independent schools. For those of you who work as consultants, you know how different schools can be, especially when you compare independent schools, with public schools, and even more so when you throw in international schools. What teachers and administrators do is not that different, nor is what the schools, classrooms, and libraries look like. What’s different is the conversations.

On several occasions, lately, when working with teachers and administrators at independent schools, I’ve been asked, “What is the purpose of education?” It’s not a question that comes out of public school conversations very often. We already know what education is for. The government told us.

Education is about:

Covering all the standards
Improving performance on government tests
Meeting AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress)
Producing a competitive workforce

We don’t even ask any more — and even in this season of Change (http://change.gov/), we’re still not asking that question.

Now I generalize when comparing different types of schools, and to be sure, independent schools are also governed by testing, as many of their students attend so that they can get into Harvard, Yale, or Duke (Go Blue Devils). But, again, there is a palpable sense of confidence in the conversations I witness when away from public schools — a willingness to ask tough questions.

I’ve had a ready answer to the question.

“The purpose of education is to appropriately prepare our children for their future.”

There are some implied, but essential questions in that answer:

What will their future hold? What will they need to know?
What are appropriate method, materials, environment, activity?
Who are these children? What is their frame of reference?

Today, I have a new answer. My old one is still good. I’ll continue to use it. But if you ask me, “What is the purpose of education?” today, I’ll say,

The purpose of education is to make the world a better place!“

What drew me to this answer was Karl Fisch’s teleconferencing activity last week (see A 2.0 Sort’a Day: Part 2). As I thought more about the experience, it occurred to me that this was an almost singularly unique activity — beyond the fact that students were interacting with an internationally renowned writer, exchanging thoughtful insights, and the really cool use of technology.

What struck me in hindsight was that these students were earning respect. They were respected by each other, by their teachers, by the instructional support professionals, and by the internationally renowned figure, Dan Pink. Their engagement in that activity will continue to be respected by people, young and old, who will read the archive of those multidimensional conversations.

Those students were full partners in their learning, and they were entrusted to go beyond just what was expected. They were encouraged to freely extend and develop their own thoughts, skills, and knowledge, building on their own frame of reference, pushing and pulling through conversation, and being responsible for their part of the endeavor.

Preparing students based on standards, so that they can pass government tests (to make politicians look successful), carries expectations. Students should listen, study, learn, and assure gain. If they do that, they’re doing what they are supposed to do. We’re happy about it. They’re happy about it. Let’s go home.

But, when there is a mission, where teachers and students are equal partners in achieving new learning — and they both realize that it is not simply about new knowledge, but more importantly it is about new potentials, then we’re not just producing cogs for an industrial and societal machine. We all becoming better and more inventive builders of the future.

Let me get back down to earth here. Before I graduated from undergraduate school, I spent some time working in manufacturing. One plant made oil filters for cars. Another one made dog collars — for dogs. The factory that I spent most of that year in made chain saws.

I started out operating drill presses and milling machines in the machine shop and also spent some time as a setup man. But the last job I had at the plant was quality control engineer. I got to wear a white lab jacket and walk around with rolled up blueprints, spouting vocabulary that I have long since forgotten.

Essentially, my job was to take the chainsaw parts at the end of their fabrication and use high-precision measuring instruments to test them, to make sure that they all met the specifications, that they were all the same, and that parts that exceeded the acceptable tolerances from the standards, were sent back for retooling or rejected.

How much is this just like what we are doing to our children. They move down the assembly line, where we install math on them, and install reading, and science, and then we measure their learning at the end of the year, to make sure they all meet the standards, that they all know the same things.

Of course, this makes perfect sense in an industrial age, where you need workers who know the same things, think the same way, working in unison.

In a conceptual age, however, it isn’t what you know that’s the same as everyone else that brings success to an endeavor. It’s what you know that’s different, how you think and solve problems that is different, your ability to bring a new set of knowledge and experience to the task that brings value.

Why do we continue to treat our children like cogs.

Change this!

Twitter This

The What is the Purpose of Education? by 2¢ Worth, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Category: education

Comments

Kimberly posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 9:42 am.
An excellent and important question, and one that frustrates me to no end as a public school teacher. I dream of the day when the public schools move away from the Carnegie Unit and the outdated factory method of education.
Reply to Kimberly
1. Gregory Louie posted the following on February 5, 2009 at 11:25 am.
  I recall two teacher’s who changed my life. They taught me the meaning of education both implicitly and explicitly. Both were steeped in classic and ancient wisdom traditions – and spoke often of the need to integrate the mind, body, spirit and soul.
  
  What is education? My seventh grade Latin teacher, taught us its Latin roots (e-ducare) … “e” (L: out of) “ducare” (L: draw or lead out). And what is drawn out if not the very soul of a student, revealed in those early years as a gift or talent. These harness the spirits and as they mature and challenge themselves to put these talents to good use in service of humanity, they find themselves richly blessed with a deeper understanding of soul.
  
  This kind of education takes time. The soul is drawn out over many years. In the typical western progression, it starts with knowledge and perhaps the spirit refined by competitions, only later is it encouraged if at all with the reflections of the heart.
  
  Why not start with the heart? It is the clearest path that leads to the soul. This has been missing in most public schools and what contributes to the success of schools that integrate values-centered education.
  
  What is education? It is a life-long process of recognizing one’s gifts and talents, of putting those gifts and talents to good use in service of the greater good. Education leads a person to find their place in society with all the attending rights and responsibilities of adulthood.
  Reply to Gregory Louie
Jay Swan posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 9:48 am.
We have been having a similar discussion within our department – trying to figure out how to bring out what love about science (the exploration, the discovery, the excitement) in our students. But more importantly how to do this with one hand tied by the district and the administration: standards and the growing number of specific test prep initiatives that have been implemented to meet AYP. We are finding less and less time to cover content, let alone inspire creativity and passion about the sciences. This is some we continue to struggle with – making many of us feel like a cog in a machine. We have to do more.
Reply to Jay Swan
Greg Cruey posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 10:37 am.
Hi David,

As a teacher involved both in special education and in reading in the elementary grades, I agree with you that the assembly line approach to “installing knowledge” in our kids must change. I think the purpose education is more complicated than people generally understand. I certainly wouldn’t boil it down to the government’s answer to the question as being comprehensive in some sense. The government is a stakeholder in education – not just a service provider. Stakeholders are sometimes at odds in this discusssion. My answer, for an article a couple of years ago…

“Education in America has no purpose – at least no one, singular, canonical purpose. The purposes of education are multiple and interwoven. Those purposes change with age, environment, and the peculiarities of individual students so that even within a specific classroom the primary purpose of schooling for this child may be one thing and the primary purpose for that child may be yet another. In the case of any given child, the parents’ purposes for sending the child to school may differ significantly from the purposes of the educational agency requiring the child’s presence. And in as much as the provision of educational services is a joint venture that usually involves at least three different government agencies (a local city or county, a state, and the federal government) the purposes of the various agencies taking part in this partnership may vary significantly, or even be at odds.

“For all parties involved, the purposes of education change significantly with time. Kindergarten has a unique set of priorities for everyone engaged in the educational process. The nature of those priorities change significantly by middle school, are additionally altered in high school, and are further renovated in the college setting.”

http://specialneedseducation.suite101.com/article.cfm/a_philosophy_of_education_
Reply to Greg Cruey
Joanne Robert posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 12:26 pm.
I think Robert M. Hutchins nailed part of it when he said, “The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens.” He also said “the death of a democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”

I think it should read, The purpose of any education is to produce responsible GLOBAL citizens.

Many things can be said about public schools and their failings but undeniably we must acknowledge the fact that a public school is the ONLY place that ANY child can attend no matter what their abilities or circumstances. Students around the world would flock to our doors given the opportunity.
Reply to Joanne Robert
Charlie A. Roy posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 1:06 pm.
@ David
A great post . Many of these thoughts are mirrored in Ken Robinson’s “The Element”. If we no longer have to turn out students with the exact same set of skills why do we focus our pedagogy to this end? I work in a private school with a religious affiliation and we try to focus on the mission of turning out young men and women who think critically, lead effectively, and live humanly. We also hope we can instill a passion for life long learning and creativity as we no longer live at the turn of the industrial century. The hard part is always asking ourselves do we do what we say we do? We have much soul searching to do. We owe our students the best education possible and the refusal on our end to reflect on why we do what we do is not helping. My school is beginning to ask these critical questions and I am looking forward to the changes it will bring.
Reply to Charlie A. Roy
triciaseuffert posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 1:59 pm.
This is a question that frequently plagues educators. Often times, the answer is to blame the teacher for not educating the youth of today properly. Your statements address necessary change. I try to get my students to understand that they are learning about learning, so in the end of things they can own their own knowledge.
Reply to triciaseuffert
Greg Stager posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 2:53 pm.
Well said! I like this posting and am going to throw out some random thoughts that passed through my head.

While I am not an advocate for standardized testing, I do feel that there does need to be some level of basic knowledge that we all share.

Once that common foundation is realized we can begin to branch out more easily from the current standard, specialize, and develop the differences that facilitate success.

Reading this, I was reminded of a time when I was inputting transcripts for some of our students that were taking college courses while in high school. A three credit course was only granted 0.75 credits. I was confused by this and argued by saying that the student most likely gained more knowledge from that college level course than they would have in a high school one. Why not grant the full credit? My question was – is this about knowledge gained or time served? Turns out that it was about time served… that was a very frustrating day for me. I thought…no wonder students think of school as jail sometimes. I can think of a lot of students who could have earned their diplomas long before 12th grade – they just had not served their time yet.

In this case, “our cogs” need to have accrued a certain number of man hours before an upgrade is granted.

We are all unique – and certainly, not all cogs are equal they come in different sizes and with different numbers of teeth and are placed in such a way that they facilitate the function of different parts of the machine as a whole. Trying to use a particular cog where it doesn’t fit seems like something that would break the machine.(Repair 101)

Maybe we are breaking our machine?

Thank you for the call to change – more need to hear it.
Reply to Greg Stager
Kathleen Casterline posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 7:05 pm.
The purpose of education according to the Northwest Ordinance is: “Religion, morality, and knowledge” are “necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Our founding fathers knew that education was important for a free people. This may be why education is still America’s greatest export.
Reply to Kathleen Casterline
Gary Shellhammer posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 8:45 pm.
I’m a tech. But I have taught Chemistry and Physics for 20 years. I have seen this question for 29. Over those years, I have come to the conclusion that the Government demands their definition of education, because they can easily evaluate that definition.
For example, the answer to the density of water is a known value and if it is a choice on the multiple answer question, you will get it either right or wrong. But if I ask you to determine a means to calculate the weight of an oak log floating in a pond, the answer there might be a little harder to grade. So, no evaluation of the student, or of the teacher or the school system is obtained. And if the government is going to give you a large amount of money to educate their children, they need to evaluate your effectiveness.
My definition for purpose of education is to teach children to think. Unfortunately, that takes more time, more resources, and more individual contact with students. And it is almost impossible to evaluate.
Reply to Gary Shellhammer
Rob Jacobs posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 9:26 pm.
Take your purpose statement, “The purpose of education is to make the world a better place!“

Then switch the question. What is the result of education?

Does the purpose align with the result? Is the world a better place because of education?

As you say, “It’s what you know that’s different, how you think and solve problems that is different, your ability to bring a new set of knowledge and experience to the task that brings value.”

Maybe the purpose of education is to allow you to do that? But does doing that make the world a better place? Maybe. Probably. Hopefully!
Reply to Rob Jacobs
Sean Nash posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 11:04 pm.
This is actually one of the better things I have read from any blog in a while. This line:

“…it isn’t what you know that’s the same as everyone else that brings success to an endeavor. It’s what you know that’s different, how you think and solve problems that is different, your ability to bring a new set of knowledge and experience to the task that brings value.”

…is elegantly simple. I couldn’t agree more here. I spend my time working with 16-18 year-old juniors and seniors (when I’m not coaching fellow colleagues as an IC). I can’t tell you how often I try to drive home the point that they are going to have to do far more than score that piece of paper in college (degree) to have a career that inspires them. When we are rooted into a “workmanlike” progression through the hoops of school- it is easy to imagine that next hoop as the one that will make all the difference. I shared college classrooms with many friends who do anything but work in a field related to the biological sciences. What was the difference? No experience… No independent research. No extraordinary internships. Nothing unique. This is a message I can’t seem to preach enough to my current students.

I feel that we spend precious little time inspiring, then coaching children along a self-chosen path towards success. Until we do that, I am afraid we will be batting our heads against a wall like always. I live near Kansas City and I will never forget the late 80’s and 90’s when the managers of the KC Royals felt they were only a player or two away from getting back into the World Series. I will never forget the lessons that seemed clear to me back then… tiny adjustments rarely achieve great results in a short time. When things are as broken as they are now, a new & improved high stakes exam is just not going to deliver the Change we preach.

Sean
Reply to Sean Nash
Brad Ovenell-Carter posted the following on January 19, 2009 at 11:44 pm.
“The purpose of education is to make the world a better place!”

A good answer to a good question, a question that is not asked often enough and is too often misunderstood.

Your answer is a very old idea. The ancients Greeks and Romans saw education has liberating; that is it freed a person from ignorance, for the pursuit of human excellence–hence the term liberal education. “Become what you are,” says Pindar, and he doesn’t mean “Follow your bliss.” Moreover, he says that with the distinctly un-modern understanding that personal and public pursuits and obligations are the same: to be a fully realized person, I must also be a fully realized individual in society. Jacques Maritain, the 20th C. French philosopher, saw the relationship between persons and individuals in society this way: as a person I ought to contribute to society so that the goods of a society, enlarged by by efforts, flow back on me, making me more than I could be if I stood outside society. It’s a positive feedback loop. Modern Jesuit schools get it, as they always have: education is intended to prepare men and women “for others.” At my school, Island Pacific School, we try. Our motto is “Learning to Make a Difference” and we’ve built our curriculum on a model of a revitalized liberal education. But as a small, independent middle school it’s been hard to swim against a still ebbing tide. I like to think, though, that the talk around Web 2.0 technologies marks a turn in the flow; that as we rethink our methods and tools, we are also rethinking–remembering, is a better word–our ideas of the purpose of education.

Thanks for keeping the dialogue going.
Reply to Brad Ovenell-Carter
Breanna Hite posted the following on January 20, 2009 at 12:10 am.
Are we asking what is the purpose of education, or what is the purpose of schools?

I would argue that the purpose of schools is to spark intellectual curiosity in students, then provide them the resources to satisfy it. In the post-industrial age, the knowledge that they can learn whatever they like (and the desire to do so) will best equip them for life in the information era.

I think that the purpose of education is more nuanced. For individuals, the purpose of education should be to enable them to live the life they will find most fulfilling. For society, it is, as you said, to make the world better.

I loved your analogy.
Reply to Breanna Hite
Yan Sun posted the following on January 20, 2009 at 2:06 am.
I am impressed by your answer to the question “what is the purpose of education?” It is sad that, facing all the standards and various government tests, our students become products out of assembly line, they find their ultimate satisfaction in knowing the correct answers and passing the tests, and instructors are forced to become test-centered leaving students’ individual needs behind. Should students who fail to meet the standards and pass the tests be rejected like products which do not meet the specifications? Are students who are all the same without individuality and the guts to be different what we expect of our modern education? To change the way our children are treated, we have to think about “empowerment”—empowerment of our children and teachers.
Reply to Yan Sun
Cathy Fraser posted the following on January 21, 2009 at 12:17 pm.
Been thinking a lot lately about the concept of “partnership” regarding students, schools, and teachers. That’s the part of your post that resonated most with me. Partnership connotes ownership and investment, which I think are missing to a certain extent in the current education model.
Reply to Cathy Fraser
Iryna Brown posted the following on January 21, 2009 at 3:33 pm.
David,

Thank you for putting my exact thoughts on education so eloquently in to this blog! I am so tired of seeing our students treated as mere passive recipients of knowledge, empty receptacles, who are expected to follow the teacher’s directions and regurgitate information. It is very bothersome to me that memorization is called learning; being able to follow the instructions is called being successful; and not asking questions is called being a good student.

The purpose of education for me is teaching a student how to learn, and how to process and apply that which is learned. In other words, we, as educators, must give our students a set of strategies, a way of thinking, a mindset even, with which they will be successful regardless of what their future holds. Some of the jobs that these kids will be performing in the future do not yet exist now. However, by encouraging our students’ ownship of
Reply to Iryna Brown
Lee Ten Hoeve posted the following on January 21, 2009 at 6:36 pm.
Stumbling upon your blog was like finding a gem in my pocket. I agree with Sean’s “elegantly simple” review of your words, “…it isn’t what you know that’s the same as everyone else that brings success to an endeavor. It’s what you know that’s different, how you think and solve problems that is different, your ability to bring a new set of knowledge and experience to the task that brings value.” It is a the core of what I believe teaching is about – cultivating uniquely special and diversified critical thinker and problem solvers. The problem is, the solution isn’t simple. What I have learned so far in teaching – novice as I am – is that I need to hold myself to a “No Excuses” policy, as I do my children. As an Art teacher I find nothing more enjoyable than cultivating their unique abilities but it undoubtedly requires more effort than the other “assembly line approach.” I do it because I love it, but there are teacher out there who don’t love it and don’t do it and so how can we ever claim to be a “Professional” when only some of us are willing to toil and do the necessary work that needs to be done? What we do it far from easy, but done without imagination it could appear so. I just tell them to keep dreaming, dream big and dream hard and then match that dream with effort and you’re going places.
Reply to Lee Ten Hoeve
cassie posted the following on January 27, 2009 at 12:19 pm.
I feel that we spend precious little time inspiring, then coaching children along a self-chosen path towards success. Until we do that, I am afraid we will be batting our heads against a wall like always. I live near Kansas City and I will never forget the late 80’s and 90’s when the managers of the KC Royals felt they were only a player or two away from getting back into the World Series. I will never forget the lessons that seemed clear to me back then… tiny adjustments rarely achieve great results in a short time. When things are as broken as they are now, a new & improved high stakes exam is just not going to deliver the Change we preach.
Reply to cassie
Carolyn Foote posted the following on April 2, 2009 at 3:07 pm.
David,

A group at our campus used this post today for a jumping off discussion for a learning community we have formed, and it was fascinating.

All of us felt very empowered by your eloquent definition of education–whose purpose is to make the world a better place.

One of our teachers wondered if we shouldn’t also try to make our own “world” at our own campus a better place–by interacting on campus with one another in community ways, and by teachers within the campus interacting much more with one another and one another’s classes.

We also spent a lot of time discussing the individual value that each student brings, and how to encourage that self-value in a competitive AP oriented school where students are prone to compare themselves to one another.

More than anything, your definition was so eloquently inviting. Thank you for providing the “meat” for a great discussion.
Reply to Carolyn Foote
Shelia McDill posted the following on October 12, 2009 at 8:05 am.
Thank you for putting “voice” to a great concern of mine. I teach business computer technology, a vocational secondary class. “Vocational” stills carries the connotation of low achievers and those who are not college bound. I think that it should be quite the opposite. Many high school students are “burned out” on the same classroom drill of teaching to the state test. These students do not really see the need or correlation of education to their future career. If we are not preparing students for a productive vocation, then what are we doing in school? I would love any resources or responses on this topic.
Reply to Shelia McDill
Alfira Karnain posted the following on November 2, 2009 at 11:55 am.
According to me,the purpose of education is a way to make all of the students in a school or in another institute become cleverer then before.And all of the students can be an usefull persons for their country in the future.
Reply to Alfira Karnain
Sam Callantine posted the following on February 12, 2010 at 8:55 pm.
I think this opinion was expressed well. But what kind of schooling are we talking about? Secondary? College? Secondary schooling is modeled after the Prussian education system. When George Washington first gained leadership in this country he had a German advisor for the matter of education. Which in turn lead to alot of German people settling here in America. Prussian style education is teeming with military based values. Ship them in, stylize them, seperate by class, and produce a more managable population. I am a student at I.U.S.B. and am composing an essay on the purpose of education. If any one is interested in reading the paper it will be posted on my myspace and facebook blogs. I am interested in feedback on the facts I come up with. I will post this after March 4th @ http://www.myspace.com/wegotthaze or search Sam Callantine @ http://www.facebook.com
Reply to Sam Callantine
Jeremy Harrington posted the following on May 4, 2010 at 1:45 pm.
I thoroughly enjoyed this article. I am an education student, and this is a question that is posed at the beginning of most classes that I take. I completely agree with the statement that the purpose of education is to make the world a better place. I also agree with the statement that the purpose of education is to prepare students for the future. I think these two ideas go hand in hand. By giving students knowledge and skills that they can use in the future you are making the world a better place. You are teaching students to care about the world and are giving them the skills to be able to make a difference.I think too much of education is based on just passing the test. What is this really teaching kids? I think if more educators took this stance, schools would have a much more meaningful and lasting impact on students.
Reply to Jeremy Harrington

Trackbacks and Pingbacks

Pingback from U Tech Tips » Latest Web Marks 01/20/2009
[...] 2¢ Worth » What is the Purpose of Education? [...]
Pingback from 2¢ Worth » Another one of those trips
[...] Then, it’s the train down to Virginia for an heads of school conference put on by the Virginal Association of Independent Schools. Really looking forward to that one (See What is the Purpose of Education). [...]
Pingback from Organic Learning » Blog Archive » Interesting Finds in My RSS Reader - January 23, 2009
[...] What is the Purpose of Education? [...]
Pingback from Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech » Blog Archive » Stuff we talk about but don’t do
[...] they teach. Early on someone mentioned the goals of education. With some recent discussions on the purpose of education, I thought it pertinent to look up the 9 goals of education for students in [...]
Pingback from Two of My Favorite Ed Tech Guys Quoted in the Same Post | EdTekZone - Musings on Educational Technology
[...] David Warlick wrote after watching – and participating – in our videoconferencing with Daniel [...]
Pingback from The Purpose of Education | meL's Word
[...] I also admire, but don’t follow as closely as I probably should) post with a similar title, What’s the Purpose of Education?. I read the Karl Fisch post and then read the original David Warlick post. The [...]
Pingback from The Purposes of Education « Candace’s Blog
[...] http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=1668 [...]
Pingback from A balanced view … - dougmuses
[...] the purpose of education is and in this regard have returned to listen again to David Warlick who posted about it earlier this year. Warlick had a first and then a subsequent answer to the question : [...]
Pingback from Homefrontier » Repairing the ruin
[...] a look at what I picked up online: “The purpose of education is to make the world a better place. Education then is about making good… “It is my belief that it is the purpose of education to cultivate and facilitate the growth of [...]
Pingback from “What do you want to be when you grow up?” « Constructing Meaning
[...] Warlick (Blog, Twitter) in his post, "What is the Purpose of Education?" took a similar view: I’ve had a ready answer to the [...]
Pingback from "What do you want to be when you grow up?" | Constructing Meaning
[...] Warlick (Blog, Twitter) in his post, “What is the Purpose of Education?” took a similar view: I’ve had a ready answer to the [...]