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Knowledge is a necessity, much like food and water. People need to eat and drink to maintain good health and survive, but they also need to be enlightened on life’s amazing truths and harsh realities. Education has provided the knowledge to create physically and philosophically, with skyscrapers that are almost a hundred meters tall and the continuous building of quantum theory as evidence of how much power the human mind contains. Without education, any information needed to sustain the high standard of living built for today would not exist. Possibly, humans could have resulted in a more animalistic nature, not knowing how to read, write or communicate with one another, and primarily investing their time in the search for food, drink, and procreation. While schooling has blessed those with a much more quality life, philosophers, great thinkers and the alike still argue to this day the following question: what is the purpose of education? Such an important question that deserves challenging, one so vague, leads those who debate it into more questions. I believe that the purpose of education is to provide information so that students will have a place in their society.
The first reason for prioritizing integrating students into society is that education is supposed to provide the knowledge required in its relevant time period. The world is in a constantly changing state, as well as its flow of information. Throughout history, people would share their findings and current events via telegraphs, mail, newspapers, cellphones, television, and now the Internet, which practically gives us new knowledge at the tips of our fingers. However, the educational system has to keep up with this flow, and it is safe to say that they are performing rather efficiently with transitioning from textbooks to online books, online registration for some schools, and implementing technology classes into the curriculum. This idea that education accommodates the current climate is not uncommonly thought of, as Donald Kagan elaborates on this concept in his essay titled ‘What Is a Liberal Education?’. In this essay, Kagan shows how education “typically serves the interests and beliefs of an era” through several era educational themes. His first example is that the Greeks and Romans valued citizens that proved themselves knowledgeable enough to contribute to society, so much that they implemented a character-based four goals of liberal education as listed: to seek knowledge itself, to shape the character, style, and taste of a person so that he can fit into society, to prepare oneself for a future career, and to contribute to the educated citizen’s freedom. They met these goals by placing emphasis on the studies of literature, history, philosophy, and rhetoric. Kagan also provides an example from the English’s ideal liberal education, during a time of the powerful aristocracy. Englishmen seemed less interested in obtaining knowledge, rather their purpose of education was to “produce a well-rounded man who would feel comfortable and be accepted in the best circles of society and get on in the world”. In turn, this created an education system that trained future courtiers how to act like gentlemen. Evidently, these two eras differ greatly from one another in terms of values and curriculum, but they both share the common theme that their ideas of education had to meet the desires of the people during their time. Their educational system implemented their societies’ values, allowing younger generations to learn what they needed to know to graduate and adapt to their world.
Another reason why education should prepare those for a place in society is that universities are public environments for students. It should already be a necessity that those attending college communicate with one another, sharing their thoughts and ideas in an environment where gaining information is key. At some point in time, these same students will enter the same careers, or maybe different careers that coincide with one another, and overall integrate themselves into the same society. John Henry Newman is an advocate for this sense of unity within universities, and he goes into detail in his essay titled ‘The Idea of a University’. He first makes his stance on education with his opening statement: “I have said that all branches of knowledge are connected together, because the subject matter of knowledge is intimately united in itself, as being the acts and the work of the Creator”. Newman believes, from a more religious standpoint, that all knowledge ties in with one another, and to deny or place more focus on one subject would be improper, as God has created all knowledge. He then proceeds to create a visual of this scale between subjects by comparing them to a painting where its effects are produced by the different combinations of colors and the way they influence one another. Education is similar in that sense, where “if [one’s reading] is incorporated with others, it depends on those others as to the kind of influence it exerts upon him”. Newman implements this idea of a balanced focus of knowledge in a university setting, where he acknowledges students would not be able to study all the courses, however, they will benefit by just living amongst each other. He defends this point by saying that “an assemblage of learned men… are brought… to adjust together the claims and relations of their respective subject of investigation. They learn to consult, to respect, to aid each other. Thus is created a pure and clear atmosphere of thought, which the student also breathes, though in his own case he pursues a few sciences out of the multitude”. By presenting themselves in front of others who are studying subjects that differ from oneself, students can create a circulatory flow of information they gained that day. This ideal displays a sense of group thinking, and it prepares a future generation of citizens that can communicate efficiently with one another.
Some may argue a contrary point of view that education should not prioritize a place in society, rather it is a destructive view to have, and that its purpose should solely be to attend for the sake of learning. In their defense, a fundamental aspect of education is mastering different subjects, and there would be no point in going to school if students failed to learn. Going back to Donald Kagan’s example of the English’s idea of a liberal education, he shows the problematic direction a system that prioritizes having a higher social standing can lead. As he describes, universities at the time were “meant to shape character and manners much more than intellect” and they were viewed as “irrelevant, useless, and damaging” to the social and economic goals that the forefathers from the Enlightenment era sought after. Higher education did not value the training that “turned philosophy into a keen and powerful tool for… the discovery of truth” and it was only accessible to those “born and rich enough to afford it”. This arrogant curriculum deemed those gaining new insight for its own sake were considered pendants, and consuming their time on ‘useless’ facts. This is a terrible attitude towards learning, as this curriculum seems to only train those for socializing with higher-end cliques instead of nurturing an intellectual mind that could help advance society.
However, there is a clear effect when education does not prioritize a secure place for students and thus fails them once they enter the outside world. This is evident in Mike Rose’s writing in ‘Lives on the Boundary’, in which he even explicitly states that “a failed education is social more than intellectual in origin”. He goes on to point out that the problem the American education system faces is “how to create both the social and cognitive means to enable a diverse citizenry to develop their ability”, meaning that it needs a way to teach a more diverse group of people. In his essay, he provides examples of students who learned through alternative routes instead of formal schooling. One of these examples was his uncle, Frank Marrel, an Italian immigrant who moved to the States at the age of eight. He struggled with attending school in a new country, feeling embarrassed that he could not read, write, or even understand the teacher. Frank would have to rely on the other Italian kids to translate their lessons for him, and eventually, some of them dropped out of school as they could barely keep up with the English language themselves. After school, Frank would work at a dry cleaners where he “listened to the radio, trying to mimic the harsh complexities of English… He tried talking to those whose shoes he was shining, exchanging tentative English with the broken English of Germans and Poles and other Italians”. The obstacles Frank and the other Italian students had to face as children who could barely understand English highlight the downsides of an education that placed curriculum above inclusiveness. The fact that some of these children had to drop out not because they were less cognitively able but rather because they were not included in an English-speaking classroom is undoubtedly more the reason to believe that schools should help students integrate into society. The text does not mention whether these same children received help from the school, but considering that Frank had to learn English on his own as a working grade schooler only proves how little involvement the school had with the immigrant children. Educational systems should balance an environment that is collective and brilliant. They should actively get involved with their students who should receive the information needed, and neither simply recite the information and expect students to figure out the rest on their own, nor teach students that they can only get by in the real world through connections to the higher-ups and how to efficiently communicate with them.
There is a wide spectrum of what it means to have an education, and we may never find a ‘correct’ answer anytime soon. The world is constantly finding new solutions and new problems all for the sake of survival, and the curriculum has to adapt to these new conditions to stay relevant. However, it is also necessary that the human mind remains stimulated, and education should benefit the individuals who desire to learn, as much as it benefits from being used as a means to inform. Learning is an essential part of education, but so is the need to get involved with one another. Communication is a healthy part of learning as it creates a circulatory system of information being passed around, allowing us to be more aware and even contribute or change the ideas being presented to one another. In a world where people are now more immersed in technology than with each other, it is more important than ever that this spread of ideas is maintained. A society cannot function without those within it working together as a whole.
Works Cited
- Kagan, Donald. ‘What Is a Liberal Education?’. Reconstructing History: the Emergence of a New Historical Society, by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Routledge, 1999.
- Newman, John H. The Idea of a University. 1959. Print.
- Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America’s Underprepared. 1989. Print.
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