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THE MEANING OF EDUCATION |
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THE MEANING OF EDUCATION |
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FREE
NEWSLETTER GREAT
GIFT--especially for yourself!
Contents TEACHER
THINKING EDUCATION
MYTHS
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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 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?
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) |
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