purpose of education essay

purpose of education essay

The Purpose of Education: A Comprehensive Exploration

1. Introduction to the Concept of Education

In South Asia, the roots of the word education can be traced to a verb in Sanskrit – “Bodha” which means “to awaken”. In Asian culture, education wasn’t about an information dump, but rather a fine process of awakening the child’s soul at the right time for instruction, or in other words, aiding and assisting the leading of the soul. Once the definition of education moves in this direction, its root value is found in the core value of culture basically resting on the belief in the idea of man, the divine soul, and human development. Simply by developing the concept in this perspective could help to explain the comprehensive role of education in building the personality of the learner. In this perspective, education encourages the nose for inner truths and moral laws. In an ‘ordering conception’ of ethics, values, or knowledge, it could collect there with attending the moral side or ethical side or other aspects. So we must argue that, in this sense, education grows in terms of emotional, moral, physical dimensions. The reversal of the discussion goes in school education, where maximum discussion is on cognitive dimension or only a few words say about the emotional part and exercise. Ultimately the current society has gone side-tracking itself due to this barren classification of education as work, employment, information, wisdom, and value in society.

When we use the word education, we generally mean the all-round development of a person. We need to maintain this perspective to get a clear understanding of the concept of education. The word education has many connotations, and its meaning is determined according to where the emphasis is placed during any given period. The most common meaning of the word is based on a narrow view that confuses education with schooling and the process of acquiring a degree. But education continues throughout our life from the day we are born. Everywhere in the world, every day, millions of people are getting educated, whether it is in schools, colleges or through life experiences. This ‘education’, whether of the formal and informal variety, continues in some way, shape, or form everywhere, at all times – whether a person goes to a school or not. This comprehensive and personal human journey of acquiring knowledge through information, understanding through analysis and wisdom through perspective plays a very critical role in shaping a person and, in the long run, an entire society or nation.

2. Historical Perspectives on the Purpose of Education

During the 17th and 18th century, the purpose of education was linked to the societal need for institutions aimed at selective academic disciplines. This idea was filtered into England named as the study of the “classics”. These early Greeks were not unlike many countries today. They had divided their schools to fit social needs. For example, the Spartan system was a military one. The early Greeks from 776 to 333 B.C. tried to make the school fit the social and economic needs of the people. That seems to be the way in which some American schools in their earlier days began to meet the needs of their communities. That is certainly the way many European schools began. And our state universities, even, began this way.

During antiquity, it was widely regarded that education played a crucial role in shaping a wise and responsible citizenry. Plato, for example, in his book The Republic, reflects the idea of educating people to be responsive to the needs of the society in which they live. His guardian class receives an education that teaches them to fear diversity and welcome uniformity, and to develop other capacities that reflect the needs of the society. For the Norse, the purpose of education was to better enable students to serve the gods through their actions. Throughout history, many cultures have linked the purpose of education directly to preparation for work, the transmission of cultural values, and the moral and physical development of students. However, in modern society, the purpose of education has ebbed and flowed between these needs and that of increasing educational standards.

The second section of content should focus on historical perspectives on the purpose of education.

3. The Modern-Day Role of Education in Society

The world is changing at an ever-increasing rate, caused by technological change and globalization processes. Such changes are also having a radical impact on the nature and orientation of work, and drawing in its wake, on the nature and orientation of the industry and services. These changes are slowly gaining momentum, with the result that numerous societies are moving from the industrial to an information society. The consequence is that it is ever more important for people to be better informed and educated. In other words, education assumes a new central role within society, including its economic life. Moreover, by aiming to be as comprehensive as possible, more and more education systems are having to provide their individuals with a range of different knowledge and skills relating mainly to a vast array of technical and instrumental aspects. All the same, the process of acquiring knowledge in the future will demand more interdisciplinary know-how. This will become a strength in providing better insights for solving complex problems. At the same time, the exponential growth of knowledge has exceeded the human capacity to memorize or even remember facts. Such a situation will make it difficult for teachers to follow education ministry curricula and reproduce all the details of curricula within their lessons. This is the reason why the education system and also teachers’ functions should change from reproductive memorization towards an education centered on understanding. Since the environment and labor market have changed, it means that the role and function of school, and also as teachers, are unable to be the same as they were in traditional times. Therefore, now there are some people who say that the role of a teacher is not only teaching, but also acting as a friend, a colleague, and even a father or mother for students.

Education is an essential aspect of modern society and people’s lives across the globe. The societal expectations from educational systems are to prepare individuals for the workforce, to introduce cultural values and norms, to play a role in students’ personal growth and participation as citizens, and to foster social justice for learners of all ages. As education may serve multiple purposes, it may also provide different functions for a large portion of society at different times within their course of life. Broadly, it is meaningful to conceptualize the main functions of education within a timeline, with basic and higher education often conceptualized as educating children, youth, and life-long learners respectively. In this sense, education can be broadly divided into two fields, namely education for childhood, or children, and education for adults. In their purpose, these fields can and may frequently intersect within pedagogical practice, learning theory, and cognitive and/or developmental psychology.

4. The Intersection of Education and Personal Development

According to Warnock, then, an important part of being educated is the development of one’s personality and the development of one’s emotional, intellectual, and moral sensibilities. Furthermore, the cultivation of the intellect and of creativity are indicators of a good and complete education and align with the goals of liberal education as outlined in section 2: at its heart is the belief that “knowledge, learning, and the life of the mind are of value.” In this way, Warnock is indicative of philosophers who describe the aim of education as involving the related goals of well-roundedness, creativity, personal growth, and the realization of each student’s full potential. Thus, Warnock suggests that one good reason to be educated is for your own personal development, so that you might grow intellectually, emotionally, and morally.

Educational theories frequently explore the relationships between technology, economy, and work, adopting perspectives like progressivism, Marxism, libertarianism, and vocationalism. While these perspectives tell us much about how education functions, they do not explore various key educational purposes. One of these key functions is, of course, personal development. Mary Warnock mentions the importance of personal development in education when she states that “Education cannot be limited to the acquisition of basic skills or the imposition of a particular direction on a child’s interest and abilities. It is important that a child is helped to develop all his capacities to the full.”

5. Challenges and Future Directions in Achieving the Purpose of Education

In conclusion, several fields have already proposed innovative beginner strategies that foster community-based and shared learning, LLL, and lifelong learning competences. The values and goals enhance a desirable and fruitful rebalancing among teaching, learning and researching actions, leading to a harmonization of formal, non-formal and informal education as interdependent and recursive processes. The right updating of education as multi-layered integrative and co-evolutive processes will reinforce the educational community. Knowing and understanding the changing collective complex thinking of people about the major global issues potentially increase the transdisciplinary principles and methods that characterize the learning milieu. The whole learning model proposed based on global classrooms and communities of practice is theoretically and practically sustained by a student-centered, competency-based approach, and by up-to-date learning research and educational philosophy and psychology principles and results. Institutions and people from various places volunteered to play the game to explore the necessary learning tools to promote a prosperous path for their local collective action towards have participants of the close future.

It is necessary to consider how the purpose of education might be able to change over time. Future research could systematically develop different education futures or scenarios and explore the models describing education changes, preferred, aspirable and probable features within them. Research from an educational standpoint can capture a societal learning process, driven by climate change and other social issues. We need to make a differentiated, normative judgment, which we admit could change in case of critical interventions, on what type of education we want, not only for now, not only for primary and secondary education, but also for higher education, technical and professional training and innovative learning. Indeed, educational systems and the learning needs of society have greatly evolved in less than fifty years and thus, we should be ready for future changes. A clear model of the purpose of education could help to identify contexts of meaningful learning and challenging education scenarios.