The Purpose Of Education

In England, education has usually been seen as primarily serving the purpose of character building. The English public school is sometimes taken as an epitome of this emphasis. In Roman Catholic and Communist countries, moral or religious training is usually the primary purpose of education. Hence, every subject is imbued with religious content, and there is a constant attempt to draw moral lessons from educational material. In the United States, where large-scale immigration once brought the fear of social disintegration, preparation for citizenship and development of national consciousness have tended to be emphasized. Thus every nation tries to equip with those tools of education which it considers most important.

Education---like democracy, free markets, freedom of the press, and "universal human rights" --- is one of those subjects whose virtue is considered self-evident. In the words of Aristotle, the goal of education is identical to the goal of man. The supreme good to which we all aspire is happiness but, for Aristotle, the happy man is neither a noble savage, nor a man in his natural state, but the educated man. The happy man, the good man, is a virtuous man, but virtue is acquired precisely through education.

"The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort." ~Ayn Rand

The aims behind the acquisition of education by most is debatable, most

think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end. Education actually has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life. The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think-rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men. Education must train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices, and propaganda. To save man from the morass of propaganda is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.

The purpose of schooling and a formal education is not to produce people with life skills like balancing a checkbook etc. The purpose of education is to learn critical thinking skills and be able to analyze situations and the world around us so that we are better able to make decisions and be productive citizens. The purpose of education is to learn these skills via the specific thought processes that are inherent to specific disciplines. Students learn Social Studies and analyze history so as to learn certain thought processes which will allow them to think critically about current events and apply that learning to present situations. Students learn mathematics so as to be problem solvers and be able to apply specific mathematical skills in new, sometimes unique circumstances. The purpose of all of our formal learning is not for specific job training or because one will "need to know it". The purpose is to demonstrate that one has the ability to learn and think and apply said knowledge (in each academic area) for the betterment of each individual and society as a whole. To say that a student "will not need it" and therefore we shouldn't teach it misses the purpose of education completely.

Education is not merely learning things; it is learning to learn things. The cliched proverb about fishing and learning to fish may have suffered somewhat from overuse, but there is truth to it. The purpose of education is to enable students to learn for themselves, not to spoon-feed them every fact they will ever need in their lives. Such an attempt is Herculean to the extreme and cannot succeed. Education should encourage students to learn how to make connections between facts, and give them the ability to use this process throughout life.

In the words of Bishop Creighton-"The one real object of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking questions."

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.