Not an End in Itself
Near my desk at work, I like to post important quotations keep me reflective and inspired. One of these quotations is from an English educator and writer named Sybil Marshall:
“Education must have an end in view, for it is not an end in itself.”
In the current education climate, that strikes me as an important idea to bear in mind. We’re all about student learning and measurable outcomes these days, and sometimes, I think we forget why. The adults can come up with a quick enough answer if we remind them to: our students need critical thinking skills, they need to compete in a global economy, we need to prepare them for jobs that don’t even exist yet, and so on.
The problem is that those reasons don’t resonate with students so much, at least not when presented that way.
So the first sin of omission is that sometimes we are so caught up in helping students develop skills, that we neglect to talk to them about why they need those skills. Or if we do talk about it,