What Is the Purpose of Education?
If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you expect to get there?
“To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, 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.”
M. L. King Jr.
Education is now heavily embroiled in our culture wars. As with so many problem areas, the politicians have discovered concerned citizens and leapt at the chance to ‘solve’ their problem. In typical fashion this more than anything else is itself the source of the problem. In today’s society where the internet and social media have given literally everyone a soapbox, the list of ‘cures’ for what ails education has grown to rival a child’s wish list to Santa. “Crisis in Education”, the title of my newsletter, has made me feel obligated to at least read through this list.
The fact that stands out from my study is that the list addresses a broad spectrum of problems, with some ‘cures’ actually exacerbating the ‘problems’ addressed by others. In other words there is virtually no agreement on what is actually wrong with education: This at a time when the rapid rise of technology is elevating the need for an educated populace to unprecedented heights.
Just as an example; much is being made of how public education is not producing people ready for the work force (I heartily agree!). This does NOT mean that job training is a goal of education! The job training for a kindergarten teacher would be pretty dramatically different from that of an HVAC technician, or a computer coder, or a doctor. How could these differences be addressed, not to mention how do you assign kids to the appropriate training? Who decides? What ulterior motives might the decider bring to their decision? Thus while job training itself should not be a part of public education curriculum, producing graduates capable of being trained MUST be! What elements produce trainability? There’s another long list, but surely the ability to read, follow logic and write understandably should be on everyone’s list.
Even when there is agreement, how to achieve what you’ve agreed on can be an area of disagreement. Everybody thinks critical thinking should be taught. What does a critical thinking ‘lesson plan’ look like? For sure it apparently includes whatever educational product is currently being hawked. Supposedly AI is all about teaching critical thinking although all evidence indicates that the one thing AI is incapable of is thinking critically.
The ML King quote above would, in my opinion, be a pretty good definition of critical thinking. There are those in the education debate that would also consider it a pretty good definition of ‘woke’, which they are hell-bent on eliminating from the educational curriculum. This begs the question: Can we have a debate on educational curriculum when we can’t even agree on the meaning of the terms we will use in our debate?
As a mathematics teacher for decades and as a public school advocate who has focused on the crisis in education since retirement, I have paid particular attention to the discussions of education. My take is that the only thing more convoluted, more subjective – in short worse – than the problems facing education is the debate on those problems.
For starters let’s consider the ‘education expert’. Every debate includes parties on every side presenting support for their view from an ‘expert in education’. What qualifies one as an ‘expert in education’? The background of whomever you claim is an ‘expert’, apparently. This varies from degrees in widely varying fields of study, to experience in widely varying fields of endeavor, to nothing more than your say-so. Even worse is educational research. Most ‘research’ does not qualify under the scientific meaning of the term: At best it could be called ‘anecdotal evidence’, more pointedly outright manipulation of data. Often when checking ‘scientific evidence’ claimed in support of a point the support claimed turns out to be antithetical to the actual conclusions of the research used.
Coming from a teaching background the most disturbing commonality among educational experts is the fact that almost none have ever spent a day in the actual practice of educating a classroom of students. At best they have talked to some teachers, but nowhere else in science is collecting opinions considered actual research. The only time teachers’ thoughts are considered is when any are located who support the point you’re making.
In fact the worst part of ‘educational expertise’ is that from all that I have seen, teachers have NO ‘educational expertise’. For the vast majority of the ‘cures’ I have seen the role of the teacher is apparently irrelevant – as is their opinion. This gives teachers the singular distinction of holding a degree, preferably a Masters; certification in their field; and virtually constant Professional Development during their career: Yet they are not considered or treated like professionals in their chosen field. THIS is the reason there is a teacher shortage which somehow those engaged in the education debate feel will magically disappear when the ‘cure’ they support is enacted. The lack of simple logic in including those who will certainly be implementing the cure in the discussion of what that cure should be is the best possible proof of how ludicrous this debate has become.
Currently the discussion of education is about nothing except money – whose ‘cure’ will enable them to skim large amounts of cash into their pockets. Again, the primary thing missing is logic. We have dramatic evidence that the use of online learning during the pandemic led to the largest loss of learning in history, and some made closing schools the worst mistake of our response to that pandemic. Now many of the same complainants are actively working to close public schools as failures – with no replacements suggested. The loss of educational time has been bemoaned by people who now back four day school weeks or educational days reduced to two hours – of online work administered by AI. The assertion is the replacement of teachers by AI will reduce the cost, even as it is admitted the cost of the AI will be very high – which certainly gives me pause to wonder into whose pockets all that money will be going.
The problem is clear.
What about the solution.
Step one of any solution is to define the problem. In this the solution to our problems in education must start with what is the purpose of education. This purpose has always been nebulous – my observation from decades of attempting to achieve said purpose – but the rapid advances in both technology and the ways technology has changed society and our world have definitely shown the purposes must likewise change. Before we can define the purpose of something society has been doing for a long time, we must grapple with how that society has changed.
For centuries assimilating knowledge of facts has been the hallmark of education: In fact how to access such information – through libraries, encyclopedias and research – has itself been a staple of education. The internet has made these facts instantly accessible. This has led to the erroneous conclusion that education need not teach any of these facts at all. It has been demonstrated to me quite conclusively in four decades of teaching mathematics that not internalizing the multiplication tables makes it impossible to study higher mathematics – yet we have publicly stated in the core curriculum that trivial computation has no place in elementary math instruction as calculators do this so much quicker. So one solution that I can guarantee every math teacher supports is returning the teaching of computational skills to elementary education.
Similar non-sequiturs have blossomed as education has been ‘saved’, ‘improved’ and ‘updated’ by implementing new methods and ideologies that foster ‘deeper level thinking’, ‘logical thought’ and the mathematician’s favorite ‘critical thinking’. While all of these lofty goals are clearly desirable, an emphatic truth is they cannot be measured by an end-of-the-year multiple choice test – but that is the only standard offered.
While these aims are proudly posited and the worthless tools for measuring success are ignored as a problem – hailed as necessary instead – nowhere is the means to accomplish them revealed to the teachers, who are ultimately the only people who can perform these miracles.
Oh there are ‘educational experts’ who are more than willing at nominal cost – in their view – to school teachers in how to do their job. Teachers are very familiar with these ‘experts’ and find the reality that they have never spent a day actually instructing students themselves astonishing. Imagine if you were being taught how to do your job by someone who has never attempted it themselves. For teachers this is just another day at the office.
The realities are ignored repeatedly: By politicians who see problems they can promise to fix without ever being held to account for their failure; by salesmen who basically do the same; by parents who hear promises and believe them. The reality is teaching is an inherently human activity wherein the process, which can be extremely complex, is not the same for any two individuals; a teacher learns to teach through rigorous training in their discipline, careful attention to both the process and the students, and a love of interacting with the students. This makes the training long, ongoing and thereby expensive. There is no way to accomplish learning without considerable effort on the parts of both teacher and student, no shortcuts, and the more involved and aware the parent becomes, the more success is possible for all – and it damn sure ain’t cheap!
This brings us to why the educational crisis is horrific and mounting; the only people who can solve the crisis – the teachers – are being shut out of the decision making process! Read that again. Shut out of the decision making PROCESS! The only people who can solve the problem! This is the formula for creating the biggest Pandora’s Box of horrors in the shortest possible time.
Lost in the culture wars are what teachers are true masters at; teaching beyond the curriculum. How to be kind; everybody gets to be heard; don’t be a bully; try your best; good habits are a good habit to pick up; behavior has consequences. These are the things that truly count: Not which teaching method is used for math, or who wrote the curriculum, certainly not which field is being taught. And the teachers surely need help. Teachers ARE NOT parents – nor do they want to be, nor can they be. But they can help, if you let them; and if you help THEM.
So the solution to our educational crisis is remarkably simple: Ask the teachers!
The teachers don’t even expect what they say to be what is done. This would appear to be a no-risk strategy – unless their input would harm the chances of your ‘diametrically opposed to what needs to be done’ plan, which also happens to make you mucho moolah. Those with a product to sell or a cause to exalt have no interest in teacher’s input. Those with a child to educate are interested: They also will never see that input unless they demand it.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/purpose-education