THE MEANING OF EDUCATION

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Recently, a university professor wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. He
commented that people shouldn't put too much weight on the recently released trends in
SRA scores of the state's high school students. The professor went on to describe some of
the unanswered questions about the nature and value of assessment. He mentioned that
one of the problems with assessment was the ongoing disagreement on the very purpose
of education.

A few days later, a scathing response was printed from a community member who
questioned whether the University really wanted someone on their staff who didn't even
know the purpose of education. Clearly, this person assumed that his definition of
education was shared by all. What is the meaning of education?

Webster defines education as the process of educating or teaching (now that's really
useful, isn't it?) Educate is further defined as "to develop the knowledge, skill, or
character of..." Thus, from these definitions, we might assume that the purpose of
education is to develop the knowledge, skill, or character of students. Unfortunately, this
definition offers little unless we further define words such as develop, knowledge, and
character.

What is meant by knowledge? Is it a body of information that exists "out there"—apart

from the human thought processes that developed it? If we look at the standards and
benchmarks that have been developed by many states—or at E. D. Hirsch's list of
information needed for Cultural Literacy (1), we might assume this to be the definition of
knowledge. However, there is considerable research leading others to believe that
knowledge arises in the mind of an individual when that person interacts with an idea or
experience.

This is hardly a new argument. In ancient Greece, Socrates argued that education was
about drawing out what was already within the student. (As many of you know, the word
education comes from the Latin e-ducere meaning "to lead out.") At the same time, the
Sophists, a group of itinerant teachers, promised to give students the necessary
knowledge and skills to gain positions with the city-state.
There is a dangerous tendency to assume that when people use the same words, they
perceive a situation in the same way. This is rarely the case. Once one gets beyond a
dictionary definition—a meaning that is often of little practical value—the meaning we
assign to a word is a belief, not an absolute fact. Here are a couple of examples.

“The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should
produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning
society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.” ~Eric
Hoffer

“No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden
in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that
treasure.” ~Emma Goldman

“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 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.” ~Bill Beattie

“The one real object of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually
asking questions.” ~Bishop Creighton

“The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each student.” ~Carol Ann
Tomlinson

These quotations demonstrate the diversity of beliefs about the purpose of education.
How would you complete the statement, "The purpose of education is..."? If you ask five
of your fellow teachers to complete that sentence, it is likely that you'll have five different
statements. Some will place the focus on knowledge, some on the teacher, and others on
the student. Yet people's beliefs in the purpose of education lie at the heart of their
teaching behaviors.
Despite what the letter writer might have wished, there is no definition of education that
is agreed upon by all, or even most, educators. The meanings they attach to the word are
complex beliefs arising from their own values and experiences. To the extent that those
beliefs differ, the experience of students in today's classrooms can never be the same.
Worse, many educators have never been asked to state their beliefs—or even to reflect on
what they believe. At the very least, teachers owe it to their students to bring their
definitions into consciousness and examine them for validity.

Purposes and Functions

To make matters more complicated, theorists have made a distinction between the
purpose of education and the functions of education.(2) A purpose is the fundamental
goal of the process—an end to be achieved. Functions are other outcomes that may occur
as a natural result of the process— byproducts or consequences of schooling. For
example, some teachers believe that the transmission of knowledge is the primary
purpose of education, while the transfer of knowledge from school to the real world is
something that happens naturally as a consequence of possessing that knowledge—a
function of education.

Because a purpose is an expressed goal, more effort is put into attaining it. Functions are
assumed to occur without directed effort. For this reason it's valuable to figure out which
outcomes you consider a fundamental purpose of education. Which of the following do
you actually include in your planning?

Acquisition of information about the past and present: includes traditional disciplines such as literature,
history, science, mathematics Formation of healthy social and/or
formal relationships among and
between students, teachers, others

Capacity/ability to evaluate information and to predict future outcomes (decision-making)

Capacity/ability to seek out alternative solutions and evaluate
them (problem solving)

Development of mental and physical skills: motor, thinking, communication, social, aesthetic
Knowledge of moral practices and
ethical standards acceptable by society/culture

Capacity/ability to recognize and evaluate different points of view Respect: giving and receiving
recognition as human beings

Indoctrination into the culture Capacity/ability to live a fulfilling life

Capacity/ability to earn a living: career education Sense of well-being: mental and physical health

Capacity/ability to be a good citizen Capacity/ability to think creatively

 Cultural appreciation: art, music, humanities Understanding of human relations and motivations

Acquisition/clarification of values related to the physical environment Acquisition/clarification

of personal values

Self-realization/self-reflection: awareness of one’s abilities and goals Self-esteem/self-efficacy

As Tom Peters reminds us, "What gets measured, gets done." Regardless of the high
sounding rhetoric about the development of the total child, it is the content of
assessments that largely drives education. How is the capacity/ability to think creatively
assessed in today's schools? To what extent is the typical student recognized and given
respect? How often are students given the opportunity to recognize and evaluate different
points of view when multiple choice tests require a single 'correct' answer?

Teachers who hold a more humanistic view of the purpose of education often experience
stress because the meaning they assign to education differs greatly from the meaning
assigned by society or their institution. It is clear in listening to the language of education
that its primary focus is on knowledge and teaching rather than on the learner. Students
are expected to conform to schools rather than schools serving the needs of students.

Stopping to identify and agree upon a fundamental purpose or purposes of education is

rare. One sees nebulous statements in school mission statements, but they are often of the
“Mom, baseball, and apple pie” variety that offer little substance on which to build a
school culture. Creating meaningful and lasting change in education is unlikely without
revisiting this basic definition. At the very least, educators must be challenged to identify
and reexamine their beliefs in the light of present knowledge.

It is time for the focus of education to shift from what's "out there—the curriculum,
assessments, classroom arrangement, books, computers—to the fundamental assumptions
about and definitions of education held by educators and policymakers. NASA did not
send men to the moon by building on the chassis of a model T. In the same way,
education cannot hope to move beyond its present state on the chassis of 18th century
education.

References

1 Hirsch, E. D. Jr. (1987). Cultural Literacy. Houghton Mifflin (Return to article)

2 Callaway, R. (1979) Teachers' Beliefs Concerning Values and the Functions and Purposes of Schooling,
Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED 177 110 (Return to article)

The Purpose of Education"

 [September 1946-January 1947]
[Atlanta, Ga.]

This essay, written sometime during King's junior year at Morehouse, may be an early
draft of the article of the same name published in the Maroon Tiger. He suggests that
education should not only "teach man to think intensively" but also provide "worthy
objectives upon which to concentrate."

Last week we attempted to discuss the purpose of religion. This week our attention
moves toward education. I will attempt to answer the question, what is the purpose of
education?

To my mind, education has a two-fold function in society. On the one hand it should
discipline the mind for sustained and persistent speculation. On the other hand it should
integrate human life around central, forcusing ideals. It is a tragedy that the latter is often
neglected in our educational system.

Education should equip us with the power to think effectively and objectively. To think is
one of the hardest things in the world, and to think objectively is still harder. Yet this is
the job of education. Education should cause us to rise beyond the horizon of legions of
half truth, prejudices and propaganda. Education should enable us to "weigh and
consider," to discern the true from the false, the relevant from the irrelevant, and the real
from the unreal. The first function of education, therefore, is to teach man to think
intensively. But this is not the whole of education. If education stops here it can be the
most dangerous force in society. Some of the greatest criminals in society have been men
{who} possessed the power of concentration and reason, but they had no morals. Perhaps
the most dangerous periods in civilization have been those periods when there was no
moral foundation in society.

Education without morals is like a ship without a compass, merely wandering nowhere. It
is not enough to have the power of concentration, but we must have worthy objectives
upon which to concentrate. It is not enough to know truth, but we must love truth and
sacrifice for it.

ADS. MLKP-MBU: Box 118, folder 6.

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