What is the purpose of education?
Well, of course that raises more questions:
What is education? I refer you to the stained glass window above see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_%28Chittenden_Memorial_Window or my interpretation that it is an activity involving serious angels and though which light can shine.
Whose purpose are we talking about? Well I think we just have to agree that there is a variety of purposes, and I’ll say more about that later.
Why are we asking the question?
Purpos/ed seems to about working to raise the position of education on the political agenda. It also seems to be located within the learning technology community. This suggests to me that educational funding is seen to be under threat and that the role of technology in education is important.
Fred Garnett referred us to Mike Wesch’s inspirational ideas on the need for educators and learners to (re)gain a sense of the purpose of education. Stephen Downes and Lou McGill showed how educational system can go awry.
Ewan McIntosh persuaded me that we should be “giving up the artificial reins we as teachers, parents and governments use to strangle those passions and the creativity that lends itself to their growth.” Other contributors stress the need for passion and creativity, and the agency of learners (and teachers).
My own view
Passion about solving the current problems in education and excitement about the possibilities offered by web and network technologies can tempt us to think that current educational systems can somehow be replaced by technology. This could be a risky experiment!
Conscious of a slightly anti-teaching tone creeping into debates about networked learning, I ran an online seminar where participants explored the role of teachers in learning networks and what happens when they disappear. My conclusion was that good teachers know when to disappear, or give up the artificial reins.
My two applications did not result in a National Teaching Fellowship but the reflective writing I did for them helped me develop my philosophy of education, based on my experiences as student, mother, teacher and researcher in secondary, further and higher education. So I do believe that thinking about and questioning the hows and whys are very important parts of education. Education is in constant flux: within families, institutions, networked publics. Keri Facer stressed the “urgent need to have a serious public debate about the purpose of education that builds bridges between students, educators and the wider public”. Perhaps the purpose of education is to construct a participatory dialogue about the purpose of education: a dialogue that makes a difference to what learners experience throughout their lives.
Education has four pillars: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. I believe its impact depends on its ability to enable all of us to shape it. Purpos/ed is doing a great job of involving educators in the dialogue – the next challenge is to involve the learners.
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