What is the ultimate function of education?

[peterdasaa]

What is the ultimate function of education? I'm always wondering what kind of education do we need. I'm a college student, but the courses offered are so many and the study load is so heavy that I almost have no time to develop my own interest. However, recently there emerges heat discussion about the education's aim: whether it is to elevate the students' quality or to obtain better competence in the job market?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I see it this way:

 

Life is a series of problems waiting to be solved. Whether they be problems at your job, like "how do we make this sprocket attach to the widget correctly" or "why can't we find the Higgs boson", or at home ("how do I balance my budget this month"), they all take some creative thought. Your education should provide you with the background information required to help you find better solutions to those problems.

 

Because remember, whatever field you end up in career-wise probably won't follow perfectly from your education. If you get a degree in psychology or English, you probably won't get a job just analyzing people's minds or understanding literature. (Some people do get those jobs, but they're rare.) You use the knowledge you got during your education and apply it to something else. You'll be learning the job-specific details on the job, not at school. School is just for the background information.

[fredrik]

What is the ultimate function of education? I'm always wondering what kind of education do we need. I'm a college student, but the courses offered are so many and the study load is so heavy that I almost have no time to develop my own interest. However, recently there emerges heat discussion about the education's aim: whether it is to elevate the students' quality or to obtain better competence in the job market?

 

I would prefer to choose the program that is reasonably close to your own interests as to minimize the mentioned stress. But even given that it will happen that you raise more questions that you have time to deal with in the process. When I studied I felt what I'd like to call a stress of inhibited creativity. When you study something, it's not uncommon that the process produces a myriad of spin-off ideas, and it can be very frustrating to realise that ideas are generated at a rate faster than you can elaborate them. To study something is stimulating, but when there isn't time to let the ideas flower, it leads to frustration.

 

Maybe this is even part of the lesson, what do I know

 

/Fredrik

[Mr Skeptic]

However, recently there emerges heat discussion about the education's aim: whether it is to elevate the students' quality or to obtain better competence in the job market?

 

Yes And it also reduces crime rates. There are many uses for education; why try to choose only one?

[insane_alien]

At the risk of sounding incredibly nerdy, how about because it's fun.

 

i love learning about new things. Today for instance I learned a good deal about MOFs(Metal Organic Frameworks) used to store CO2. quite an interesting technology and relevant to the project i'm working on(hence the reason i came across it).

[DrDNA]

I personally believe strongly that too much of the time/effort in education, including K-12, 4 yr university and even graduate programs, is focused on teaching students what to think; while too little time/effort is spent teaching students how to be thinkers.

 

Almost all of our high school graduates, most college graduates and many (a majority of?) PhDs have absolutely no idea how to be critical thinkers.

 

I also believe that many societal ills are a result of this.

 

Exactly three and only three courses taught me how to be a thinker and they were Philosophy or Philosophy-based courses.

Philosophy, Bioethics, and the History and Philosophy of Science taught me how to be a thinker (in that order).

All three were taken as an undergraduate and none were required to graduate with a degree in science; they were electives.

 

All of the classes I took in high school and the remainder of the classes I took in college and grad school taught me only what to think, not how to be a critical thinker.

 

I cringe every time I see a commercial for a school like ITT tech on the boob tube.

They brag about teaching ONLY the technical skills necessary to perform a job.

 

I might add that the negative bias against Philosophy, which is sometimes expressed on this forum .... plus the fact that modern science has its roots in Philosophy.....puzzles me.

 

 

But, hey, maybe the world needs more robots than thinkers.....

Edited February 9, 2009 by DrDNA