“There is a sense of urgency today for concerned educators to produce their own leadership that will provide a powerful challenge to leadership readily taken by others-even within education-- who are following a course to reduce you to being mere mechanics and your students to mere widgets.” William Durden, the President of Dickinson College speaking at The East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools held in Vietnam in 2004
Educators must, now more than ever, be prepared to step up and take a more forceful stand in promoting what they believe constitutes a quality education. Teachers, principals and parents can no longer cede to politicians and business leaders the task of determining the purpose of an education, and then dictating it to educators, students and to the general public
So what do you as an educator consider should be the purpose of education and are you and your school actively pursuing that purpose? Have you and your school simply accepted that primary purpose of education as getting students college and career ready, or do you believe that there is a higher purpose for education? Below are some comments on the purpose of education to consider.
"It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country." Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America
Do I risk being stoned in the public marketplace if I suggest that the purpose of education is not to make kids economically valuable, but rather to enable them to develop intellectual and personal worth as well as practical skills? As we become ever more instrumental in our attitudes, affixing monetary profit and loss statements to every activity, we risk losing sight of the need to produce truly well-educated individuals who can adapt to the extremes of any technological climate and who have the skills (and perhaps even the wisdom) to become leaders in science, medicine or public affairs. (Jane Healy, Failure to Connect)
When people ask for education they normally mean something more than mere training, something more than mere knowledge of facts, and something more than a mere diversion. Maybe they cannot themselves formulate precisely what they are looking for; but I think what they are really looking for is ideas that would make the world, and their own lives, more intelligible to them. When a thing is intelligible you have a sense of participation; when a thing is unintelligible you have a sense of estrangement. E.F Schumacher, Small IS Beautiful: Economics AS If People Mattered
Education must become the agent of change rather than the object of change.
American Education Research Association
“The power of education extends beyond the development of skills we need for economic success. It can contribute to nation-building and reconciliation. Our previous system emphasized the physical and other differences of South Africans with devastating effects. We are steadily but surely introducing education that enables our children to exploit their similarities and common goals, while appreciating the strength in their diversity.” Nelson Mandela
“The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.” Abraham Lincoln
Mike Connolly’s latest book ... but few are chosen: A Different Path to Coming of Age, written with two co-authors, is the true story of how a quality education rescued three boys from a life of tragic loss and dysfunction. Now available on Amazon.com