The Purpose of Public Education
Posted: 2011.01.12 (22:56)
This quarter, I'm taking two lower-division humanities classes to fulfill general education requirements. One of these classes is Intro to Education. Our very first assignment was to answer a survey which was focused on the question in this thread's poll. We didn't have much dialogue about it in class, which disappointed me, so now I'd like to take this bitch apart with you guys.
Our class of 300 students answered the following, sorted by popularity:
I chose #1: "To ensure all students develop a basic proficiency in core subjects".
The survey also came with two prompts, which I've attempted to recreate from memory because I no longer have access to the original survey, and which I answered with the following:
Explain your choice for the primary focus of education:
Our class of 300 students answered the following, sorted by popularity:
- To develop students' ability to think rationally and critically: 20.2%
- To ensure all students develop a basic proficiency in core subjects: 19.7%
- To provide students with a range of opportunities and experiences: 10.8%
- To prepare all students for entrance to higher education (college): 8.9%
- To offer all students an opportunity to gain advanced proficiency in core subjects: 7.0%
- To provide students with the education needed for their future occupations: 7.0%
- To ensure all students develop an advanced proficiency in core subjects: 5.6%
- To teach morals and values: 4.2%
- To nourish students' souls and help them find personal fulfillment: 4.2%
- To offer all students an opportunity to gain basic proficiency in core subjects: 3.3%
- To help students find their life's work: 3.3%
- To prepare students to be good citizens in a democratic society: 2.3%
- To rectify social inequities: 1.4%
- To provide a shared "American" experience for all students: 0.9%
- To provide students with marketable skills: 0.9%
I chose #1: "To ensure all students develop a basic proficiency in core subjects".
The survey also came with two prompts, which I've attempted to recreate from memory because I no longer have access to the original survey, and which I answered with the following:
Explain your choice for the primary focus of education:
What do you believe are the obstacles (if there are any) in the way of fulfilling this purpose?Public education is funded by taxes, and therefore its purpose should be focused on providing the greatest benefit to the country's population in the most egalitarian manner possible. Since the average level of education has historically shown to be an outstanding positive influence on virtually all other aspects of a society, this is the purpose for which the population's tax dollars are put to their most effective use.
To prescribe to the public education system the goal to provide an _advanced_ proficiency in core subjects, however, is highly unrealistic and in some ways self-defeating, primarily because it necessarily assumes that all core subjects are equally deserving of the funding an "advanced" program would receive (where deservedness is measured by their positive societal influence). The "free market" approach to higher learning that comes as a consequence of allowing students to choose their field of study in post-secondary education allows for much more accurate determination of each academic subject's worth to society; "important" fields of study will pull in more funding and attention than subjects which become more stale and irrelevant.
Ensuring a basic proficiency in core subjects will result in a gradual improvement in what society considers "basic" proficiency, whereas forcing all students to have an advanced proficiency will only cause the value of "advanced" proficiency to regress toward the mean.
The (optional) second priority of public education should be to _offer_, rather than _require_, advanced proficiency in core subjects. A progressive egalitarian system should offer _opportunity_ for success as equally as possible, instead of limiting students with high potential for academic achievement by anchoring them to the lowest common denominator. A society's prodigees and revolutionary thinkers can meaningfully raise social standards all on their own; they should be given every opportunity to fulfill their potential through accelerated learning programs.
For related reasons, primary and secondary public education should pay no mind whatsoever to industry. While any society needs drones, it should never be explicitly intended that they be produced; instead, they will result in droves directly from their own low achievement potential. Until such time as they graduate from their respective secondary education institutions and fail to earn a place in post-secondary education, they should be given as much opportunity and encouragement to succeed as any other student.
Since level of education and criminal activity have a strong negative correlation, it seems more likely that focus on education will naturally produce a more moral population than the miserable failures that are Drug Abuse Resistance Education and Bible Study. Flattening social inequalities and personal fulfillment also tend to follow level of education; there is little requirement that these should be a focus (although I'm somewhat expecting to be proven quite wrong on this point when Prof. Curry lectures). Similarly, critical thinking is more of a requirement to succeed in academia in the first place, and it should therefore be expected that it will be taught indirectly anyway.
The phrase "American experience" has ceased to mean much of anything in particular since the turn of the 20th century.
In recent decades, an unfortunately significant proportion of American culture has become anti-intellectual. We need to put much more focus on encouraging academic achievement and reverse this trend as quickly as possible. I don't have many ideas for seeding future generations with this sort of motivation because I'm not much of a sociologist, but I firmly believe that one major source of the problem is the set of qualifications (or lack thereof) we accept in our politicians. The fact that we have as many anti-science, evolution-denying ignoramuses in charge of policy-making, particularly educational policies, is atrocious. The fact that there are more than zero of them in positions of power and influence is a travesty. The theater of American politics is little more than a circus, and this critically undermines social progress.