Purpose of Education

FINAL DRAFT
PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

It is very easy to take education for granted and overlook how significant it is in life and the impact it has on people the world and the future. Children go to school everyday not realizing that this place really serves a purpose in their life and future. In order for education to really matter and make a difference, it must provide a nurturing supportive environment that gives cultivates ideas, build on passions and develop individual skills. For this to happen, schools must challenge for students to grow intellectually and socially to prosper in the future, teach common morals and human values.
The first and foremost purpose of education is to give everyone an opportunity as a means to succeed in life by providing the perfect place for critical thinking and for personal opinions to develop. As Emerson puts it “every young man is born with some determination in his nature and is a potential genius” (a). Education is a way of enlightening the thought of an individual a way of fostering that inner genius in everybody. It is to create a spark and create the sense of realization about the purpose of life, world and the universe. By having the skill of critical thinking, people will be able to do things with logic and reason why the other things are illogical. It should help learners to discriminate the knowledge and ignorance in the world, light and dark, space and time, life and death, world and unworldly, illustration and illusion, finite and infinite, etc. Education is what life is offering us. It is the concept of uniqueness with every teaching with every individual. This will allow people to foster own ideas. No one person will have same input and same output. School is a place “where people go when they are not satisfied with their “real world” lives and want a change” (c). Kyoko supports this idea that a school should be the place where students will cultivate their ideas and prepare themselves for the world outside of school. Schools should produce student that are different and individuals that learn how to succeed in their own way. With this knowledge of critical thinking and logic, students will be able to develop reasoning skills that will come into great use in the future.
In combination with teaching students the importance of critical thinking, an education should develop social skills as well. School plays a big part in the social development of a child. This is the place where children are exposed to people other than their family and learn how to interact with them. With this in mind, schools must create and maintain a safe, educational, and healthy social connections for the students between their peers and teachers. It should be obvious that in life, having social skills is pretty essential in making friends, business deals, succeeding in job interviews etc. So, developing a good social environment in a school is equally as important as having a good analytical thinking program. Communication skills also comes intact with social skills Good social skills require good communication skills. Because we communicate verbally and nonverbally, both of these types of skills contribute to how well students relate to their peers. It is pretty obvious that good social skills are critical to successful functioning in life. These skills enable us to know what to say, how to make good choices, and how to behave in diverse situations. The extent to which children and adolescents possess good social skills can influence their academic performance, behavior, and social and family relationships. Without providing a safe environment for social skills to develop, schools will fail in giving kids the opportunity to succeed in the future which is the ultimate purpose of the school.
Education systems also need to produce people of a future society that is civilized and moral. Many of the problems we face today—corruption, injustice, oppression, poverty, etc.—are man-made, i.e. they are largely traceable, directly or indirectly, to the education system that produced the people who start the problems. Like James Baldwin said, “man is a social animal and cannot exist without a society.”(b) Education in his eyes should “civilize” the child. The rulers who sell out to foreign powers and subjugate their people; the bureaucrats who enforce laws based on injustice; the generals who wage war against their own people; the businessmen who exploit and cheat; the journalists who lie, sensationalize, and promote indecencies; they are all educated people, in many cases highly educated people but obvious with bad morals. So, in order to create a good society with people that value honesty, trust and responsibility, schools must teach this and provide a place that only accepts these kinds of behaviors.
The purpose of education is to enable individuals to reach their full potential as human beings, individually and as members of a society. This means that individuals should receive an education that will enable them to think and act intelligently and purposefully. Knowing knowledge is different from knowing fact and school should value the importance of critical thinking, building social skills, and the quality of morals. So as a 21st century school, having all these qualities in mind will give students the perfect opportunity to foster and grow for preparations for the future.

Sources a.) Shea, Rene%u0301e Hausmann., Lawrence Scanlon, and Robin Dissin. Aufses. "From Education." The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing and Rhetoric. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. Print.

b.) Shea, Rene%u0301e Hausmann., Lawrence Scanlon, and Robin Dissin. Aufses. "James Baldwin: A Talk to Teachers." The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing and Rhetoric. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. Print.

c.) Shea, Rene%u0301e Hausmann., Lawrence Scanlon, and Robin Dissin. Aufses. "Kyoko Mori: School." The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing and Rhetoric. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. Print.