I’ve found that if there’s one thing that may provoke a big ‘talanoa’ is to gather your friends around and ask ‘what is the purpose of going to school?’. The question seems so incredibly easy that no one really bothers to ask it. Here’s my challenge: ask the question and keep asking ‘what for’, or ‘for what purpose’, or my old favourite ‘yes, but why?’ every time they answer. Here’s what I mean:
‘What is the purpose of education?’
‘Well it’s to learn things’,
‘… for what reason?’
‘So you can get a good job’,
‘… OK, but why?’
‘So you can earn a good salary’,
‘… why?’
I warn you though, be gentle with your continued questioning, I’ve had to duck from the occasional object being thrown at my head when I continued this line of annoying questioning.
Eventually though I believe that most people come to the answer that we go to school so that we can learn to survive as adults. Moreover, I think we can also say that we go to school so that we can not only survive, but survive well. In other words we obtain an education so that we can thrive as adults.
When you think about it, getting a “good” job, getting a decent salary and so on, are really all things that enable us to survive and hopefully thrive.
However, until someone asks those penetrating questions, most of us have forgotten this obvious truth and instead we have substituted the ‘survive & thrive’ core of getting our education from school with ‘get good grades’; ‘get a good job’; ‘try to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant’, and so on.
I believe that once we start to focus on education’s purpose as being about surviving & thriving, then what we put in our curriculum and what we might leave out suddenly becomes a lot easier. For instance:
- We’d focus on swimming for survival skills, instead of focussing on their representation & performance for their school in swimming galas.
- We would focus on good people skills, in preference to being able to do calculus.
- History would be taught in order for us to learn from the past, not as an ability to simply regurgitate names and dates from the past.
- We would actively teach our children to recognise and filter out propaganda.
- Our children would understand the difference between ‘culture’ which is always changing, rather than tradition which is the historical culture of a fixed time and place.
- We’d teach about sexual and emotional health rather than the mechanics of biological reproduction.
- We would teach our children to recognise nasty characters in online chat rooms or those offering to be ‘friends’ on our children’s Facebook pages; rather than teach them how to use the Microsoft Windows operating system.
- We would teach that any modern accounting practice should include social & environmental costs, not just the bottom dollar.
- For tomorrow’s uncertain world we would teach flexibility and innovative lateral thinking skills.
- We would teach our children not just their rights as citizens, but also their responsibilities in a ‘civilised’ society.
Many of these issues we’d start to teach earlier rather than later. I’m sure you get the picture even if you don’t agree with my examples.
So remember, next time you’re in a social setting and there’s a lull in the conversation – ask about education’s purpose, keep asking past the initial answers – and then possibly duck to avoid the flying objects hurled at your head.