Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The purpose of education, part deux
Sunday evening we had a nice conversation discussing the purpose of education. That thread seems to have run its course, but last night a reader sent an email that crystalized the subject so well I thought it warranted its own post:
I did want to pass on a couple of my thoughts as a teacher:
The single largest problem facing public education in our country today is the lack of a clearly articulated message as to the PURPOSE of education. While I agree wholeheartedly with your post...I would go so far as to say that the majority of the country does not agree. There are three competing philosophies about what the purpose of education should be:
a) To create lifelong learners and independent thinkers
b) To create a viable and sustainable workforce
c) To facilitate social justice
Now, the large problem resides in the fact that several of these are mutually exclusive (how do you praise the good of a viable capitalistic workforce while banging the Marxist drum of social justice?). So we have in our own country a number of competing philosophies within the same governmental system, within the same schools, and sometimes, in the case of cooperating teachers, in the same classroom. This presents a conundrum because depending on what end you are trying to achieve, your methods (namely, type of teachers hired and curriculum implemented) are going to be vastly different. A "social justice" goal would lean more towards (in my opinion) indoctrination, a sociology and race heavy curriculum, and the strong anti-Americanism we have so come to despise in academia. That being said, it also offers some of the largest opportunities for creative thought (if a teacher is professional enough to encourage dissent) and service learning projects. The workforce goal, by contrast, lends itself towards technology and trade specific courses (computer lab, auto shop, etc.) that teach skills that can and will soon become obsolete. Naturally, I fall into your camp with the lifelong learners. I often make this argument regarding mechanics: if you teach a kid how to fix an engine, you get a damn good mechanic. If you teach him the basics of thermodynamics, physics, and math AS WELL as how to fix an engine...you get a kid who is going to figure out how to make a BETTER engine. If you can teach a student nothing else than the fact that knowledge is important, the causal relationship between past and present, and the ability to think critically about competing philosophies...then you have created a productive citizen who will thrive in any field.
Commentary
This dovetails with a thought that I have had for some time: Conservatives stand no chance as long as the media and chattering classes are so completely dominated by the left. It occurs to me that conservatives would do well to make the purpose of education into a political issue. Not only would it drive a public discussion of enormous significance to the country, but it would force the education establishment, which leans heavily toward the "social change" theory articulated above, to defend itself in the open. In so doing, more Americans would grow to understand one of the important mechanisms by which the left drives its ideology.
18 Comments:
By 
Christopher Chambers, at
Tue Mar 10, 08:58:00 AM:
"Conservative stand no chance" as long as they claim that a) To create lifelong learners and independent thinkers
b) To create a viable and sustainable workforce
c) To facilitate social justice, are NOT mutually exclusive on any level.
And this race-heavy curriculum comment--lovely.
By SR, at
Tue Mar 10, 09:20:00 AM:
My take on the "race heavy" comment is that a. and b. can be taught without the notion that c. is all important.
If you start with the notion that lack of c. is the reason why teaching a. and b., then all is futile because there is no way to verify that c. has been achieved, and a lot of self interest in seeing that it has not.
By 
, at
Tue Mar 10, 10:18:00 AM:
Some feeble minded thoughts: 1)Changing the nature of the education debate is an excellent idea. 2) Odds of getting any real change in education are quite long. Not only is there a hostile media/dems/chattering class, the teaching profession seems loathe to change as well. 3)Returning control of curriculum to local school districts would be a big help in my estimation but that is not going to happen. 4) Teaching kids how to think sounds good in the abstract, but as a former child I can tell you that a lot of kids don't want to be taught such things. It is the old adage of you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Furthermore, in may areas we can't even teach them to read and write and get them to stay in school. Seems like this needs to be accomplished before one can teach them to think. 5)When the repubs came to power I had hoped for tangible changes to education. All we got was a half-hearted attempt at school vouchers. Very disheartening and disillusioning. I fear the inertia of the status quo is too much to overcome.
By , at
Tue Mar 10, 10:31:00 AM:
It seems that we are in agreement that the goals of creating (1) lifelong learners and independent thinkers and (2) a viable and independent thinkers are compatible. The question arises about the goal of facilitating social justice.
The problem is that it sounds bad to be against social justice. There is no appealing slogan for opposing it. And it is hard to replace something with nothing.
However, if one believes that some of the goals and values of the new liberal left pave "The Road to Serfdom" and that the values upon which our Republic was founded provide a surer path to social justice, then we can talk about that better way to achieve social justice rather than to decry social justice.
If I am right, then an important goal of education is to teach, preserve, conserve those values upon which our Republic was founded.
Best wishes,
Jim
By Purple Avenger, at
Tue Mar 10, 11:12:00 AM:
how do you praise the good of a viable capitalistic workforce while banging the Marxist drum of social justice?
The best way to help the poor is by not becoming one of them. Since the poor pay little/no income taxes, and hire few/no employees, their per-capita impact on attempts to increase this real/imagined "social justice" is minimal.
The easiest path to this end is stay in school and don't become one of society's largely "inert ingredients".
By MEANA55, at
Tue Mar 10, 11:44:00 AM:
"Social Justice" is a rimshot punchline to help identify the idiots among us who don't get the joke. The fact that so few take it as the joke that it is makes an unimpeachable case that our institutions are beyond salvage.
By , at
Tue Mar 10, 11:44:00 AM:
Compounding the issue is the often-documented and highly controversial idea that not all students are capable of the same level of learning. For some, training for a life of productive work is the best that they will ever be able to achieve, for others, lifelong and independent thinking is attainable, but must be encouraged; they will not necessarily "discover it on their own".
Second, before one can teach social justice (if, indeed, one would want to), one has to define exactly what "social justice" is. And any definition that includes "equality of outcomes" as opposed to "equality of opportunity, outcomes dependent on choices" gets an automatic veto from me.
By Unknown, at
Tue Mar 10, 12:28:00 PM:
Saw a bumper sticker today that fits: "Social Justice is Revenge in a Party Dress."
By , at
Tue Mar 10, 12:40:00 PM:
If you can actually accomplish (a), then (b) will probably take care of itself.
The problem with (b) is just exactly what does it mean (?), and as other, wiser folks here have said, accomplishing (a)-"lifelong interest in learning", is a lot harder than it seems. How do you follow up on that and evaluate the methods?
More importantly, half of the people in the country are on the left hand side of the bell curve in IQ, so just what is the goal of the educational system supposed to be? These people have value and want to be productive, but they are probably not material for MIT, Harvard or even the local State University. There used to be a path to the middle class through trades, apprenticeships and well-paying factory jobs, but these seem to be disappearing. So how do we prepare the people in public school that are on the left hand side of the bell curve to lead valuable and productive lives? What do we tell them, as a group, what their place in society (economically) is going to be?
And (c) is nonsense.
-David
By , at
Tue Mar 10, 01:43:00 PM:
Teach them how to think, not what to think.
It's my job to undo the 'part c' of this in what is foisted upon us as part of her public school 'education'.
By Viking Kaj, at
Tue Mar 10, 01:49:00 PM:
Oviously you have not been in an adminstrative post in American higher education.
They have huge debates about research versus what you refer to, which is generally known as teaching.
Teaching looses pretty much every time.
The golden rule of American education is the PI with the most gold rules the campus. So the purpose of American higher education is to provide bricks, mortar, slaves (post-docs) so that researchers can compete for huge chunks of the federal budget in pursuit of esoteric research goals that have limited practical application. You are allowed to think independently as long as you don't express any opinions contrary to those of the principle investigator. Nobody is interested in social justice because they are slaving away 24/7and the jobs training is limited to an extremely narrow field
The jackpot is a Nobel, but runner up is admission to the National Academy.
Once you've got tenure and your grants you could basically give a rat's a$$ about students.
There's my $ .02 on the philosophy of higher education.
By Viking Kaj, at
Tue Mar 10, 01:55:00 PM:
Oh, you're talking about high school. That, like most colleges generally speaking, a holding tank for the illiterate so they don't flood the job market.
If you know how to read you can teach yourself anything.
By , at
Tue Mar 10, 02:56:00 PM:
Once you get past a) you are indoctrinating or training not educating.
By , at
Tue Mar 10, 05:24:00 PM:
Having dealt with the prospect of my own children entering into a highly respected (but very different) educational system overseas, I would suggest Americans are very confused about education generally, just as your reader suggested. Throw out the myths and whatever preconceptions you have; they're all wrong. A few of my views:
1. Education is over-rated. While I completely buy into the values of independent inquiry and all that, it really hasn't helped me as a "member of the workforce" and most people aren't all that interested in inquiry anyway. In this country, education and college education in particular, serve much the same purpose as marriages and weddings do in some Middle Eastern countries. They're very inexpensive and worthless in and of themselves, except for the all-important purpose of identifying a person's place in society.
2. The kids are alright. Kids today are smarter and better educated on average than the generations that preceded them. Stop blaming social problems on a poor educational system and trying to fix them with reform. Put more into HUD if you want to do something. And by all means, keep education local.
3. School is a race. The unjustice of the educational system comes from it being set up as a meritocracy, when really it should be the opposite. One would ideally go to school to better one's self and appreciate others, when in reality it is a system whose underlying purpose is to start the process of social stratification. I mean, as every parent today knows, it's already a horse race by the time your child's in pre-school!
By Mrs. Davis, at
Tue Mar 10, 05:38:00 PM:
I may not stand a chance, but the goals are not mutually exclusive and any education addresses all three. The imponderable is in what priority, by what definition and to what extent. The error is to think, as do all supporters of public education, that there is a single correct answer to all three that can be implemented by the state. Education, like religion, food and health care, is too important to be left to the politicians.
By , at
Tue Mar 10, 06:25:00 PM:
The problem is that it sounds bad to be against social justice. There is no appealing slogan for opposing it.
I disagree. Relentlessly expose "social justice" for the fraud it is. Heck, expose all the liberal buzzphrases as frauds.
By Gary Rosen, at
Wed Mar 11, 03:36:00 AM:
"And this race-heavy curriculum comment--lovely."
That's rich, coming from a semiliterate Jew-baiting nitwit like yourself, Chrissy.
By , at
Wed Mar 11, 11:49:00 PM:
The "lifelong learner" objective sounds good as theory, but in practice, it's not a measurable objective. If you want results, you have to be able to monitor and measure progress. Since a school doesn't last a lifetime, how do you measure "lifelong learner" progress? You are better off with a measurable objective if you're interested in actually accomplishing it.
