The Purpose of Education
In their annual poll of the public’s attitude toward public education, what prompted the well-respected PDK (Phi Delta Kappa) association’s new question about the purpose of education?
And how is it the question asks about the main goal of a public school education while the website, and discussion that followed, shifts the conversation to the purpose of education?
Just semantics? Maybe. But, did you know that one definition of semantics is “a deliberate distortion or twisting of meaning, as in advertising, propaganda, etc.”?Purpose is the reason for which something is done.
Goal is an aim or desired result.
And because struggles in the education reform war continually demonstrate that words are determining outcomes of our battles, we should pay close attention. Words have become the weapon of choice against an unsuspecting public.
The words of reform sold us a perceived need to reform a whole system. The realityis that we needed to only reform the schools in our country that needed re-forming — high-poverty, low-performing schools. We had already identified them before the 1980’s.
The truth? Test-based accountability methods changed nothing. And school choice only reshuffled the deck.
But let’s look at the question of the hour…
….and look at what one long-time. …long, long time… education-and-the-economy expert, The Purpose of Education - The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People: