the purpose of education

Why is Education Important and What is the Purpose of Education

“If you can read this, thank a teacher.” It’s a cliche, but it’s true. If it weren’t for education at all levels, you wouldn’t be able to read, write, speak, think critically, make informed decisions, know right from wrong, effectively communicate, or understand how the world works.

Another famous quote that proclaims the importance of education comes from George Orwell, “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

It goes without saying that an educated population advances a society, but why, exactly, do different subsets of education matter? Does physical education really make a difference, and do we need to be spending precious dollars on arts education? Unequivocally, the answer is yes, but continue reading below to find out why.

Why is Early Childhood Education Important

Before we can understand the importance of early childhood education, we should be on the same page about what age early childhood education refers to. Typically, early childhood education encompasses any education a child receives up until the age of eight, or around third grade.

During these initial years of life, children’s brains are growing and learning at a rapid rate, and learning typically comes very easy to them. The purpose of education at this stage is to build a solid foundation for children to build upon for the rest of their lives.

When looking at pre-school, one of the earliest educational opportunities, a meta-analysis of studies on the benefits of early childhood education found that “7–8 of every 10 preschool children did better than the average child in a control or comparison group” when looking at standard measures of intelligence and academic achievement. This makes sense, given that education in those early years sets children up for success.

Another study followed a group of students who were given early high-quality education and compared them to a control group. Years later, the students who were given a high-quality education performed better than the other students in many areas, both academically and socially. These students:

• Scored higher on standardized testing
• Had higher attendance rates
• Had fewer discipline referrals
• Were rated higher by their teachers in terms of behaviors, social interactions, and emotional maturity.

The list of studies showing the importance of early childhood education goes on virtually forever. In addition to the educational advantages students with high-quality early education see, they also often find more pleasure in learning. When parents and teachers instill a love of learning early on, children are more likely to continue to love learning as they go through school.

The better foundation they have from an early age, the more likely students are to find success and not get frustrated. When students struggle due to poor early childhood education, the more likely they are to give up. A solid foundation is protective against falling behind, which is imperative, because once students begin to fall behind, it becomes very hard to catch back up.

In addition to the obvious benefits to each child, multiple studies have also shown that early childhood education programs provide an economic benefit to society as well.

In an article from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the authors Arthur J. Rolnick and Rob Grunewald write, “Investment in human capital breeds economic success not only for those being educated, but also for the overall economy.” Later, they add:

“The quality of life for a child and the contributions the child makes to society as an adult can be traced back to the first few years of life. From birth until about 5 years old a child undergoes tremendous growth and change. If this period of life includes support for growth in cognition, language, motor skills, adaptive skills and social-emotional functioning, the child is more likely to succeed in school and later contribute to society.” Arthur J. Rolnick and Rob Grunewald

Early education also teaches kids how to be students. While it’s true that students shouldn’t be stuck in a desk all day and that they do some of their best learning out in the real world, the reality is that much of our formal education takes place inside a classroom. Early childhood education teaches kids how to learn and how to conduct themselves in a classroom.

Why is Bilingual Education Important

Bilingual education is a necessity for some students who speak a language at home that is different from the language spoken at their school. Although it can be a challenge, it turns out these students are at an advantage compared to their peers, and voluntary bilingual education prepares students to enter a global workforce.

According to an article from NPR , people who are bilingual are better at switching from one task to another, potentially due to their learned ability to switch from one language to the other. It seems their brains become wired to be better at these types of tasks that make up executive function, or “the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully.” ( Harvard )

Understanding a second language often makes it easier to understand your first language as well. In the same NPR article, the author writes about students enrolled in a bilingual education program who showed better performance in reading English than students enrolled in an English-only program.

Jennifer Steele, who observed these students, said “Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, she suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general, aka ‘metalinguistic awareness.’”

I personally experienced this benefit when I was in school. Although I am by no means bilingual, I took a second language, French, in middle school and high school, and I often found that the words I knew in French helped me understand and decipher new words in English. I also better understood the complexities of English grammar and verb forms after learning about them in a second language.

Another obvious benefit of bilingual education is increased opportunities in the workforce. An article for the Chicago Tribune reports that there has been increasing demand for bilingual education starting at an early age, partially due to the demand for bilingual employees. Specifically, the article notes that the following industries look for people who speak more than one language: health care, education, customer service, government, finance, information technology, social services, and law enforcement.

Why is Physical Education Important

A good physical education program can set a child up for a lifetime of healthy habits. When I was in elementary school, I can remember asking what the point of gym class was. By the time I was in high school though, I realized that gym class was one of the most important classes I had ever taken.

In my senior year, I took a strength and conditioning class, and it set me up for a lifetime of treating my body well through exercise and proper nutrition. Without that class, I would have been lost the first time I stepped into a gym on my college campus.

Physical education isn’t just important for older children; even at the preschool level, it’s an essential part of the school day. Spend time around any young child, and you’ll realize that they can’t sit still for long. With so much energy and excitement for exploring the world, they need to keep their bodies moving. One study in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health found that physical education increased both total physical activity and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in preschool children.

An article for Livestrong.com also highlighted the importance of gym class because it increases the amount of physical exercise children get, it increases coordination and flexibility, it produces endorphins that elevate kids’ mood, and it provides important opportunities for kids to socialize with each other.

In addition to teaching kids lifelong skills about moving their bodies, gym class benefits the whole child; in a book titled Educating the Student Body , researchers found “a direct correlation between regular participation in physical activity and health in school-age children, suggesting that physical activity provides important benefits directly to the individual child.” Specifically, they found that physical education is associated with academic benefits, better social and emotional well-being, and that it might even be protective against heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Why is arts and music education important

In a world where education budgets are continually being slashed, arts and music education are tragically often the first to go. For many students, the arts are what gets them to school each day, and without these classes as a creative outlet to look forward to, school can be a major struggle. These classes are a refuge for many students, especially those who don’t excel in a traditional classroom environment.

In addition to being a safe and happy place for students to go during the day, the arts have many other benefits. A study called “SAT Scores of Students Who Study the Arts: What We Can and Cannot Conclude about the Association” for the Journal of Aesthetic Education found that students who take arts courses in high school (including music, theatre, etc.) tend to have higher SAT scores. While standardized test scores aren’t everything, this connection certainly does suggest the arts play an integral part in overall student success.

The Brookings Institution , a nonprofit public policy organization, also found connections between arts education and student success. They conducted a randomized controlled trial to investigate the effect of arts education on students, and found students with more education in the arts had better academic, social, and emotional outcomes than the students with less access to the arts.

In addition to measurable changes like a decrease in disciplinary infractions and an increase in writing scores, they also found that “students who received more arts education experiences are more interested in how other people feel and more likely to want to help people who are treated badly.” In elementary students specifically, they found “increases in arts learning positively and significantly affect students’ school engagement, college aspirations, and their inclinations to draw upon works of art as a means for empathizing with others.”

Why is STEM education important

If you’ve heard anything about education in the last ten years or so, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the push for STEM education, which stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. Schools everywhere seem to be offering more STEM courses, and for good reason.

In a study of pre-service and novice elementary school teachers, 100% agreed that STEM education is important, citing reasons such as:

• Providing a foundation for later academics
• Making connections to everyday life
• Preparing students for jobs
• Promoting higher order thinking

The U.S. Department of Education also offers compelling reasons why STEM education is important:

“In an ever-changing, increasingly complex world, it’s more important than ever that our nation’s youth are prepared to bring knowledge and skills to solve problems, make sense of information, and know how to gather and evaluate evidence to make decisions. These are the kinds of skills that students develop in science, technology, engineering and math—disciplines collectively known as STEM. If we want a nation where our future leaders, neighbors, and workers have the ability to understand and solve some of the complex challenges of today and tomorrow, and to meet the demands of the dynamic and evolving workforce, building students’ skills, content knowledge, and fluency in STEM fields is essential.”

If that weren’t enough to convince you, the Smithsonian Science Education Center echoes a similar sentiment,

We must all recognize that we live in an era of constant scientific discovery and technological change, which directly affects our lives and requires our input as citizens. And we must recognize that as our economy increasingly depends on these revolutionary new advances, many new jobs will be created in STEM fields. If we are to stay competitive as a nation, then we need to build a scientifically literate citizenry and a bank of highly skilled, STEM-literate employees.

Education students in STEM subjects gives them the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in our digital world that changes by the day. Students learn skills they’ll use to take on jobs that don’t even exist yet.

Why is College Education Important

The importance of college education is sometimes called into question for many reasons. According to CNBC , more than one in five college graduates work in jobs that don’t require a degree. Statistics like this make people wonder if it’s worth spending years of their lives going into debt only to land a job they could have gotten without a degree.

While there are of course cases where people don’t use their college degree, the research still suggests that overall, earning a college degree is beneficial. A paper titled “Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs?” revealed that the benefits do, in fact, outweigh the costs. The authors of the academic paper found the following:

“An analysis of the economic returns to college since the 1970s demonstrates that the benefits of both a bachelor’s degree and an associate’s degree still tend to outweigh the costs, with both degrees earning a return of about 15 percent over the past decade. The return has remained high in spite of rising tuition and falling earnings because the wages of those without a college degree have also been falling, keeping the college wage premium near an all-time high while reducing the opportunity cost of going to school.”

There is also no denying that a large majority of very important jobs require higher education. Everybody would agree they wouldn’t want their surgeon or their child’s teacher to walk onto the job straight out of high school.

The college experience shouldn’t be downplayed, either. Whether it’s to have that buffer zone between being a kid and an adult or to have time to study abroad and have shared experiences before entering the “real world,” many people who have gone to college say the college experience is one of the many things that makes college worthwhile.

A report titled “It’s Not Just the Money: The Benefits of College Education to Individuals and to Society” from the University of Maine echoes this sentiment, noting that the monetary benefit of college is often the most cited because it’s objective and easy to measure.

Subjective benefits like the college experience are hard to study because they can mean different things to different people. The report cites a multitude of benefits college graduates see, including higher likelihood of having health insurance, higher likelihood of having a retirement plan, higher likelihood of good health, lower likelihood of being in prison or jail, higher voting turnout, higher self-reportings of happiness, and higher community involvement.

Many of these statistics are the result of correlations, meaning there is a connection between college and the benefits, but that doesn’t mean that attending college causes these benefits. Nonetheless, there is no denying that college can and does have a positive impact on many people.

Suffice it to say that education matters. Studies have shown that those who are more educated are more likely to live longer , live healthier lives , and are even more likely to help strangers . Investing in various types of education from the time children are young ensures that they have a strong foundation and that the whole person is being educated. The more diverse and well-rounded we can make education for children, the better educated they’ll be.

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The Many Purposes of Education

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Each individual teacher has an opinion about what the core purpose of education should be, not only in their own classroom but also in school in general. Many issues occur when differing opinions about the purpose of education collide. It is important to recognize that other people, including many of your coworkers, administrators, and your students' parents might have a different point of view concerning what education should be all about.

Knowledge to Get By

Imbuing students with the knowledge to get by is an old-school belief. It's the idea that schools need to provide students with the knowledge they need to be functional adults in their day-to-day lives. They need to know how to read, write , and do arithmetic. These are the  core topics that form the foundation of a student's education.

Knowledge of Subject Matter Being Taught

The purpose of education to some teachers is to impart knowledge about the subject matter they are teaching without much thought to other classes. While it's important for students to have a firm grasp of each subject, this can sometimes be problematic. When taken to the extreme, these teachers focus on their own subject matter as being more important than what students are learning in other classes. For example, teachers who are unwilling to compromise their own subject matter for the good of the students can cause problems for the school by not being open to cross-curricular activities.

Creating Thoughtful Citizens

The desire to create thoughtful adults might be considered another old-school belief. However, this is held by many individuals, especially within the larger community. Students will someday be a part of a community and need the skills to exist within that society as thoughtful citizens. For example, they will need to be able to vote in presidential elections .

Self Esteem and Confidence

While the self-esteem movement often gets ridiculed, we do want our students to feel confident about their learning abilities. This way, they not only have a firm grasp on each subject but also the confidence to apply that knowledge in everyday life. It's important to nurture a strong balance between encouraging good self-esteem and assuaging unrealistic goals. 

Learn How to Learn

Learning how to learn is one of the key elements of education. Schools need to teach students how to find the information they will need once they leave school. Therefore it is important for future success that the students understand how to find answers to any questions and problems that might arise.

Lifelong Habits for Work

Many of the lessons that schools teach are necessary for success in their students' future lives. As adults, they will need to be able to get to work on time, dress and behave appropriately, and get their work done in a timely manner. These lessons are reinforced on a daily basis in schools around the nation.

Teach Students How to Live

Finally, some individuals look at school in a more holistic manner. Not only do students learn information from their individual subjects, but they also learn life lessons in and out of class. Proper work etiquette should be reinforced in the classroom, students need to learn how to deal with others in a cooperative manner, and they must learn how to acquire the information they might need in the future.

One of the things that many business leaders cite as being necessary for future workers is the ability to work as part of a team and problem solve.

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The Purpose of Education

Morehouse College, 1948

As I engage in the so-called “bull sessions” around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the “brethren” think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.

It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the ligitimate goals of his life.

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

The late Eugene Talmadge, in my opinion, possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America. Moreover, he wore the Phi Beta Kappa key. By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmadge could think critically and intensively; yet he contends that I am an inferior being. Are those the types of men we call educated?

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character–that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.

If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, “brethren!” Be careful, teachers!

"The Purpose of Education"

Author:  King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date:  September 1, 1946 to January 31, 1947 ?

Location:  Atlanta, Ga. ?

Genre:  Published Article

Topic:  Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views

This essay, written sometime during King’s junior year at Morehouse, may be an early draft of the article of the same name published in the  Maroon Tiger . He suggests that education should not only “teach man to think intensively” but also provide “worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.”

Last week we attempted to discuss the purpose of religion. This week our attention moves toward education. I will attempt to answer the question, what is the purpose of education?

To my mind, education has a two-fold function in society. On the one hand it should discipline the mind for sustained and persistent speculation. On the other hand it should integrate human life around central, focusing ideals. It is a tragedy that the latter is often neglected in our educational system.

Education should equip us with the power to think effectively and objectively. To think is one of the hardest things in the world, and to think objectively is still harder. Yet this is the job of education. Education should cause us to rise beyond the horizon of legions of half truth, prejudices and propaganda. Education should enable us to “weigh and consider,” to discern the true from the false, the relevant from the irrelevant, and the real from the unreal. 1  The first function of education, therefore, is to teach man to think intensively. But this is not the whole of education. If education stops here it can be the most dangerous force in society. Some of the greatest criminals in society have been men {who) possessed the power of concentration and reason, but they had no morals. Perhaps the most dangerous periods in civilization have been those periods when there was no moral foundation in society.

Education without morals is like a ship without a compass, merely wandering nowhere. It is not enough to have the power of concentration, but we must have worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. It is not enough to know truth, but we must love truth and sacrifice for it.

1.  “Read not to contradict and confute; nor yet to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider” (Francis Bacon, “Of Studies,” in  The Works of Francis Bacon , ed. James Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath [New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1877], p. 252). King used the phrase “weigh and consider” in three papers written at Crozer Theological Seminary (“Light on the Old Testament from the Ancient Near East,” 14 September–24 November 1948, p. 180 in this volume; “The Sources of Fundamentalism and Liberalism Considered Historically and Psychologically,” 13 September–23 November 1949, p. 237; and Book review of  A Functional Approach to Religious Education  by Ernest J. Chave, 12 September–22 November 1950, p. 355).

Source:  MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954-1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.

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What Is Education? Insights from the World's Greatest Minds

Forty thought-provoking quotes about education..

Posted May 12, 2014 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

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As we seek to refine and reform today’s system of education , we would do well to ask, “What is education?” Our answers may provide insights that get to the heart of what matters for 21st century children and adults alike.

It is important to step back from divisive debates on grades, standardized testing, and teacher evaluation—and really look at the meaning of education. So I decided to do just that—to research the answer to this straightforward, yet complex question.

Looking for wisdom from some of the greatest philosophers, poets, educators, historians, theologians, politicians, and world leaders, I found answers that should not only exist in our history books, but also remain at the core of current education dialogue.

In my work as a developmental psychologist, I constantly struggle to balance the goals of formal education with the goals of raising healthy, happy children who grow to become contributing members of families and society. Along with academic skills, the educational journey from kindergarten through college is a time when young people develop many interconnected abilities.

As you read through the following quotes, you’ll discover common threads that unite the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical aspects of education. For me, good education facilitates the development of an internal compass that guides us through life.

Which quotes resonate most with you? What images of education come to your mind? How can we best integrate the wisdom of the ages to address today’s most pressing education challenges?

If you are a middle or high school teacher, I invite you to have your students write an essay entitled, “What is Education?” After reviewing the famous quotes below and the images they evoke, ask students to develop their very own quote that answers this question. With their unique quote highlighted at the top of their essay, ask them to write about what helps or hinders them from getting the kind of education they seek. I’d love to publish some student quotes, essays, and images in future articles, so please contact me if students are willing to share!

What Is Education? Answers from 5th Century BC to the 21 st Century

• The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done. — Jean Piaget, 1896-1980, Swiss developmental psychologist, philosopher
• An education isn't how much you have committed to memory , or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't. — Anatole France, 1844-1924, French poet, novelist
• Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. — Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013, South African President, philanthropist
• The object of education is to teach us to love beauty. — Plato, 424-348 BC, philosopher mathematician
• The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education — Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968, pastor, activist, humanitarian
• Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, physicist
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle, 384-322 BC, Greek philosopher, scientist
• Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life. — Brigham Young, 1801-1877, religious leader
• Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer – into a selflessness which links us with all humanity. — Nancy Astor, 1879-1964, American-born English politician and socialite
• Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Irish poet
• Education is freedom . — Paulo Freire, 1921-1997, Brazilian educator, philosopher
• Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. — John Dewey, 1859-1952, philosopher, psychologist, education reformer
• Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom. — George Washington Carver, 1864-1943, scientist, botanist, educator
• Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer, poet
• The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. — Sydney J. Harris, 1917-1986, journalist
• Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. — Malcolm Forbes, 1919-1990, publisher, politician
• No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure. — Emma Goldman, 1869 – 1940, political activist, writer
• Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. — John W. Gardner, 1912-2002, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson
• Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. — Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, English writer, theologian, poet, philosopher
• Education is the movement from darkness to light. — Allan Bloom, 1930-1992, philosopher, classicist, and academician
• Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know. -- Daniel J. Boorstin, 1914-2004, historian, professor, attorney
• The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. — William S. Burroughs, 1914-1997, novelist, essayist, painter
• The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. -- Robert M. Hutchins, 1899-1977, educational philosopher
• Education is all a matter of building bridges. — Ralph Ellison, 1914-1994, novelist, literary critic, scholar
• What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul. — Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, English essayist, poet, playwright, politician
• Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. — Malcolm X, 1925-1965, minister and human rights activist
• Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students. — Solomon Ortiz, 1937-, former U.S. Representative-TX
• The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education. — Plutarch, 46-120AD, Greek historian, biographer, essayist
• Education is a shared commitment between dedicated teachers, motivated students and enthusiastic parents with high expectations. — Bob Beauprez, 1948-, former member of U.S. House of Representatives-CO
• The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home. — William Temple, 1881-1944, English bishop, teacher
• Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them. — John Ruskin, 1819-1900, English writer, art critic, philanthropist
• Education levels the playing field, allowing everyone to compete. — Joyce Meyer, 1943-, Christian author and speaker
• Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. — B.F. Skinner , 1904-1990, psychologist, behaviorist, social philosopher
• The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers rather than to fill it with the accumulation of others. — Tyron Edwards, 1809-1894, theologian
• Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength of the nation. — John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, 35 th President of the United States
• Education is like a lantern which lights your way in a dark alley. — Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, 1918-2004, President of the United Arab Emirates for 33 years
• When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts. — Dalai Lama, spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism
• Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence . — Robert Frost, 1874-1963, poet
• The secret in education lies in respecting the student. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, essayist, lecturer, and poet
• My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance, but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors. — Maya Angelou, 1928-, author, poet

©2014 Marilyn Price-Mitchell. All rights reserved. Please contact for permission to reprint.

Marilyn Price-Mitchell, Ph.D., is an Institute for Social Innovation Fellow at Fielding Graduate University and author of Tomorrow’s Change Makers.

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• The Hindu tradition
• The introduction of Buddhist influences
• Classical India
• Indian influences on Asia
• Xi (Western) Zhou (1046–771 bce )
• Dong (Eastern) Zhou (770–256 bce )
• Qin autocracy (221–206 bce )
• Scholarship under the Han (206 bce –220 ce )
• Introduction of Buddhism
• Ancient Hebrews
• Education of youth
• Higher education
• The institutions
• Physical education
• The primary school
• Secondary education
• Early Roman education
• Roman modifications
• Education in the later Roman Empire
• Ancient Persia
• Elementary education
• Professional education
• Early Russian education: Kiev and Muscovy
• Influences on Muslim education and culture
• Aims and purposes of Muslim education
• Organization of education
• Major periods of Muslim education and learning
• Influence of Islamic learning on the West
• From the beginnings to the 4th century
• From the 5th to the 8th century
• The Irish and English revivals
• The cultural revival under Charlemagne and his successors
• Influences of the Carolingian renaissance abroad
• Education of the laity in the 9th and 10th centuries
• Monastic schools
• Urban schools
• New curricula and philosophies
• Thomist philosophy
• The Italian universities
• The French universities
• The English universities
• Universities elsewhere in Europe
• General characteristics of medieval universities
• Lay education and the lower schools
• The foundations of Muslim education
• The Mughal period
• The Tang dynasty (618–907 ce )
• The Song (960–1279)
• The Mongol period (1206–1368)
• The Ming period (1368–1644)
• The Manchu period (1644–1911/12)
• The ancient period to the 12th century
• Education of the warriors
• Education in the Tokugawa era
• Effect of early Western contacts
• The Muslim influence
• The secular influence
• Early influences
• Emergence of the new gymnasium
• Nonscholastic traditions
• Dutch humanism
• Juan Luis Vives
• The early English humanists
• Luther and the German Reformation
• The English Reformation
• The French Reformation
• The Calvinist Reformation
• The Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation
• The legacy of the Reformation
• The new scientism and rationalism
• The Protestant demand for universal elementary education
• The pedagogy of Ratke
• The pedagogy of Comenius
• The schools of Gotha
• Courtly education
• The teaching congregations
• Female education
• The Puritan reformers
• Royalist education
• The academies
• John Locke’s empiricism and education as conduct
• Giambattista Vico, critic of Cartesianism
• The condition of the schools and universities
• August Hermann Francke
• Johann Julius Hecker
• The Sensationists
• The Rousseauists
• National education under enlightened rulers
• Spanish and Portuguese America
• French Québec
• New England
• The new academies
• The middle colonies
• The Southern colonies
• Newfoundland and the Maritime Provinces.
• The social and historical setting
• The pedagogy of Pestalozzi
• The influence of Pestalozzi
• The pedagogy of Froebel
• The kindergarten movement
• The psychology and pedagogy of Herbart
• The Herbartians
• Other German theorists
• French theorists
• Spencer’s scientism
• Humboldt’s reforms
• Developments after 1815
• Girls’ schools
• The new German universities
• Development of state education
• Elementary Education Act
• Secondary and higher education
• The educational awakening
• Education for females
• New Zealand
• Education under the East India Company
• Indian universities
• The Meiji Restoration and the assimilation of Western civilization
• Establishment of a national system of education
• The conservative reaction
• Establishment of nationalistic education systems
• Promotion of industrial education
• Social and historical background
• Influence of psychology and other fields on education
• Traditional movements
• Progressive education
• Child-centred education
• Scientific-realist education
• Social-reconstructionist education
• Major trends and problems
• Early 19th to early 20th century
• Education Act of 1944
• The comprehensive movement
• Further education
• Imperial Germany
• Weimar Republic
• Nazi Germany
• Changes after World War II
• The Third Republic
• The Netherlands
• Switzerland
• Expansion of American education
• Curriculum reforms
• Federal involvement in local education
• Changes in higher education
• Professional organizations
• Canadian educational reforms
• The administration of public education
• Before 1917
• The Stalinist years, 1931–53
• The Khrushchev reforms
• From Brezhnev to Gorbachev
• Perestroika and education
• The modernization movement
• Education in the republic
• Education under the Nationalist government
• Education under communism
• Post-Mao education
• Communism and the intellectuals
• Education at the beginning of the century
• Education to 1940
• Education changes during World War II
• Education after World War II
• Pre-independence period
• The postindependence period in India
• The postindependence period in Pakistan
• The postindependence period in Bangladesh
• The postindependence period in Sri Lanka
• South Africa
• General influences and policies of the colonial powers
• Education in Portuguese colonies and former colonies
• German educational policy in Africa
• Education in British colonies and former colonies
• Education in French colonies and former colonies
• Education in Belgian colonies and former colonies
• Problems and tasks of African education in the late 20th century
• Colonialism and its consequences
• The second half of the 20th century
• The Islamic revival
• Migration and the brain drain
• The heritage of independence
• Administration
• Primary education and literacy
• Reform trends
• Malaysia and Singapore
• Philippines
• Education and social cohesion
• Education and social conflict
• Education and personal growth
• Education and civil society
• Education and economic development
• Primary-level school enrollments
• Secondary-level school enrollments
• Tertiary-level school enrollments
• Other developments in formal education
• Literacy as a measure of success
• Access to education
• Implications for socioeconomic status
• Social consequences of education in developing countries
• The role of the state
• Social and family interaction
• Alternative forms of education

What was education like in ancient Athens?

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What does education mean?

Education refers to the discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching and learning in schools or school-like environments, as opposed to various nonformal and informal means of socialization .

Beginning approximately at the end of the 7th or during the 6th century, Athens became the first city-state in ancient Greece to renounce education that was oriented toward the future duties of soldiers. The evolution of Athenian education reflected that of the city itself, which was moving toward increasing democratization.

Research has found that education is the strongest determinant of individuals’ occupational status and chances of success in adult life. However, the correlation between family socioeconomic status and school success or failure appears to have increased worldwide. Long-term trends suggest that as societies industrialize and modernize, social class becomes increasingly important in determining educational outcomes and occupational attainment.

While education is not compulsory in practice everywhere in the world, the right of individuals to an educational program that respects their personality, talents, abilities, and cultural heritage has been upheld in various international agreements, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948; the Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1959; and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966.

Alternative forms of education have developed since the late 20th century, such as distance learning , homeschooling , and many parallel or supplementary systems of education often designated as “nonformal” and “popular.” Religious institutions also instruct the young and old alike in sacred knowledge as well as in the values and skills required for participation in local, national, and transnational societies.

School vouchers have been a hotly debated topic in the United States. Some parents of voucher recipients reported high levels of satisfaction, and studies have found increased voucher student graduation rates. Some studies have found, however, that students using vouchers to attend private schools instead of public ones did not show significantly higher levels of academic achievement. Learn more at ProCon.org.

Should corporal punishment be used in elementary education settings?

Whether corporal punishment should be used in elementary education settings is widely debated. Some say it is the appropriate discipline for certain children when used in moderation because it sets clear boundaries and motivates children to behave in school. Others say can inflict long-lasting physical and mental harm on students while creating an unsafe and violent school environment. For more on the corporal punishment debate, visit ProCon.org .

Should dress codes be implemented and enforced in education settings?

Whether dress codes should be implemented and enforced in education settings is hotly debated. Some argue dress codes enforce decorum and a serious, professional atmosphere conducive to success, as well as promote safety. Others argue dress codes reinforce racist standards of beauty and dress and are are seldom uniformly mandated, often discriminating against women and marginalized groups. For more on the dress code debate, visit ProCon.org .

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education , discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching and learning in schools or school-like environments as opposed to various nonformal and informal means of socialization (e.g., rural development projects and education through parent-child relationships).

(Read Arne Duncan’s Britannica essay on “Education: The Great Equalizer.”)

Education can be thought of as the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society. In this sense, it is equivalent to what social scientists term socialization or enculturation. Children—whether conceived among New Guinea tribespeople, the Renaissance Florentines, or the middle classes of Manhattan—are born without culture . Education is designed to guide them in learning a culture , molding their behaviour in the ways of adulthood , and directing them toward their eventual role in society. In the most primitive cultures , there is often little formal learning—little of what one would ordinarily call school or classes or teachers . Instead, the entire environment and all activities are frequently viewed as school and classes, and many or all adults act as teachers. As societies grow more complex, however, the quantity of knowledge to be passed on from one generation to the next becomes more than any one person can know, and, hence, there must evolve more selective and efficient means of cultural transmission. The outcome is formal education—the school and the specialist called the teacher.

As society becomes ever more complex and schools become ever more institutionalized, educational experience becomes less directly related to daily life, less a matter of showing and learning in the context of the workaday world, and more abstracted from practice, more a matter of distilling, telling, and learning things out of context. This concentration of learning in a formal atmosphere allows children to learn far more of their culture than they are able to do by merely observing and imitating. As society gradually attaches more and more importance to education, it also tries to formulate the overall objectives, content, organization, and strategies of education. Literature becomes laden with advice on the rearing of the younger generation. In short, there develop philosophies and theories of education.

This article discusses the history of education, tracing the evolution of the formal teaching of knowledge and skills from prehistoric and ancient times to the present, and considering the various philosophies that have inspired the resulting systems. Other aspects of education are treated in a number of articles. For a treatment of education as a discipline, including educational organization, teaching methods, and the functions and training of teachers, see teaching ; pedagogy ; and teacher education . For a description of education in various specialized fields, see historiography ; legal education ; medical education ; science, history of . For an analysis of educational philosophy , see education, philosophy of . For an examination of some of the more important aids in education and the dissemination of knowledge, see dictionary ; encyclopaedia ; library ; museum ; printing ; publishing, history of . Some restrictions on educational freedom are discussed in censorship . For an analysis of pupil attributes, see intelligence, human ; learning theory ; psychological testing .

Education in primitive and early civilized cultures

The term education can be applied to primitive cultures only in the sense of enculturation , which is the process of cultural transmission. A primitive person, whose culture is the totality of his universe, has a relatively fixed sense of cultural continuity and timelessness. The model of life is relatively static and absolute, and it is transmitted from one generation to another with little deviation. As for prehistoric education, it can only be inferred from educational practices in surviving primitive cultures.

The purpose of primitive education is thus to guide children to becoming good members of their tribe or band. There is a marked emphasis upon training for citizenship , because primitive people are highly concerned with the growth of individuals as tribal members and the thorough comprehension of their way of life during passage from prepuberty to postpuberty.

Because of the variety in the countless thousands of primitive cultures, it is difficult to describe any standard and uniform characteristics of prepuberty education. Nevertheless, certain things are practiced commonly within cultures. Children actually participate in the social processes of adult activities, and their participatory learning is based upon what the American anthropologist Margaret Mead called empathy , identification, and imitation . Primitive children, before reaching puberty, learn by doing and observing basic technical practices. Their teachers are not strangers but rather their immediate community .

In contrast to the spontaneous and rather unregulated imitations in prepuberty education, postpuberty education in some cultures is strictly standardized and regulated. The teaching personnel may consist of fully initiated men, often unknown to the initiate though they are his relatives in other clans. The initiation may begin with the initiate being abruptly separated from his familial group and sent to a secluded camp where he joins other initiates. The purpose of this separation is to deflect the initiate’s deep attachment away from his family and to establish his emotional and social anchorage in the wider web of his culture.

The initiation “curriculum” does not usually include practical subjects. Instead, it consists of a whole set of cultural values, tribal religion, myths , philosophy, history, rituals, and other knowledge. Primitive people in some cultures regard the body of knowledge constituting the initiation curriculum as most essential to their tribal membership. Within this essential curriculum, religious instruction takes the most prominent place.

What’s the point of education? It’s no longer just about getting a job

Researcher for the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project; and Online Teacher at Education Queensland's IMPACT Centre, The University of Queensland

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Luke Zaphir does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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This essay is part of a series of articles on the future of education.

For much of human history, education has served an important purpose, ensuring we have the tools to survive. People need jobs to eat and to have jobs, they need to learn how to work.

Education has been an essential part of every society. But our world is changing and we’re being forced to change with it. So what is the point of education today?

The ancient Greek model

Some of our oldest accounts of education come from Ancient Greece. In many ways the Greeks modelled a form of education that would endure for thousands of years. It was an incredibly focused system designed for developing statesmen, soldiers and well-informed citizens.

Most boys would have gone to a learning environment similar to a school, although this would have been a place to learn basic literacy until adolescence. At this point, a child would embark on one of two career paths: apprentice or “citizen”.

On the apprentice path, the child would be put under the informal wing of an adult who would teach them a craft. This might be farming, potting or smithing – any career that required training or physical labour.

The path of the full citizen was one of intellectual development. Boys on the path to more academic careers would have private tutors who would foster their knowledge of arts and sciences, as well as develop their thinking skills.

The private tutor-student model of learning would endure for many hundreds of years after this. All male children were expected to go to state-sponsored places called gymnasiums (“school for naked exercise”) with those on a military-citizen career path training in martial arts.

Those on vocational pathways would be strongly encouraged to exercise too, but their training would be simply for good health.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Homer's Iliad

Until this point, there had been little in the way of education for women, the poor and slaves. Women made up half of the population, the poor made up 90% of citizens, and slaves outnumbered citizens 10 or 20 times over .

These marginalised groups would have undergone some education but likely only physical – strong bodies were important for childbearing and manual labour. So, we can safely say education in civilisations like Ancient Greece or Rome was only for rich men.

While we’ve taken a lot from this model, and evolved along the way, we live in a peaceful time compared to the Greeks. So what is it that we want from education today?

We learn to work – the ‘pragmatic purpose’

Today we largely view education as being there to give us knowledge of our place in the world, and the skills to work in it. This view is underpinned by a specific philosophical framework known as pragmatism. Philosopher Charles Peirce – sometimes known as the “father of pragmatism” – developed this theory in the late 1800s.

There has been a long history of philosophies of knowledge and understanding (also known as epistemology). Many early philosophies were based on the idea of an objective, universal truth. For example, the ancient Greeks believed the world was made of only five elements: earth, water, fire, air and aether .

Read more: Where to start reading philosophy?

Peirce, on the other hand, was concerned with understanding the world as a dynamic place. He viewed all knowledge as fallible. He argued we should reject any ideas about an inherent humanity or metaphysical reality.

Pragmatism sees any concept – belief, science, language, people – as mere components in a set of real-world problems.

In other words, we should believe only what helps us learn about the world and require reasonable justification for our actions. A person might think a ceremony is sacred or has spiritual significance, but the pragmatist would ask: “What effects does this have on the world?”

Education has always served a pragmatic purpose. It is a tool to be used to bring about a specific outcome (or set of outcomes). For the most part, this purpose is economic .

Why go to school? So you can get a job.

Education benefits you personally because you get to have a job, and it benefits society because you contribute to the overall productivity of the country, as well as paying taxes.

But for the economics-based pragmatist, not everyone needs to have the same access to educational opportunities. Societies generally need more farmers than lawyers, or more labourers than politicians, so it’s not important everyone goes to university.

You can, of course, have a pragmatic purpose in solving injustice or creating equality or protecting the environment – but most of these are of secondary importance to making sure we have a strong workforce.

Pragmatism, as a concept, isn’t too difficult to understand, but thinking pragmatically can be tricky. It’s challenging to imagine external perspectives, particularly on problems we deal with ourselves.

How to problem-solve (especially when we are part of the problem) is the purpose of a variant of pragmatism called instrumentalism.

Contemporary society and education

In the early part of the 20th century, John Dewey (a pragmatist philosopher) created a new educational framework. Dewey didn’t believe education was to serve an economic goal. Instead, Dewey argued education should serve an intrinsic purpose : education was a good in itself and children became fully developed as people because of it.

Much of the philosophy of the preceding century – as in the works of Kant, Hegel and Mill – was focused on the duties a person had to themselves and their society. The onus of learning, and fulfilling a citizen’s moral and legal obligations, was on the citizens themselves.

Read more: Explainer: what is inquiry-based learning and how does it help prepare children for the real world?

But in his most famous work, Democracy and Education , Dewey argued our development and citizenship depended on our social environment. This meant a society was responsible for fostering the mental attitudes it wished to see in its citizens.

Dewey’s view was that learning doesn’t just occur with textbooks and timetables. He believed learning happens through interactions with parents, teachers and peers. Learning happens when we talk about movies and discuss our ideas, or when we feel bad for succumbing to peer pressure and reflect on our moral failure.

Learning would still help people get jobs, but this was an incidental outcome in the development of a child’s personhood. So the pragmatic outcome of schools would be to fully develop citizens.

Today’s educational environment is somewhat mixed. One of the two goals of the 2008 Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians is that:

All young Australians become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.

But the Australian Department of Education believes:

By lifting outcomes, the government helps to secure Australia’s economic and social prosperity.

A charitable reading of this is that we still have the economic goal as the pragmatic outcome, but we also want our children to have engaging and meaningful careers. We don’t just want them to work for money but to enjoy what they do. We want them to be fulfilled.

Read more: The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians: what it is and why it needs updating

And this means the educational philosophy of Dewey is becoming more important for contemporary society.

Part of being pragmatic is recognising facts and changes in circumstance. Generally, these facts indicate we should change the way we do things.

On a personal scale, that might be recognising we have poor nutrition and may have to change our diet. On a wider scale, it might require us to recognise our conception of the world is incorrect, that the Earth is round instead of flat.

When this change occurs on a huge scale, it’s called a paradigm shift.

The paradigm shift

Our world may not be as clean-cut as we previously thought. We may choose to be vegetarian to lessen our impact on the environment. But this means we buy quinoa sourced from countries where people can no longer afford to buy a staple, because it’s become a “superfood” in Western kitchens.

If you’re a fan of the show The Good Place, you may remember how this is the exact reason the points system in the afterlife is broken – because life is too complicated for any person to have the perfect score of being good.

All of this is not only confronting to us in a moral sense but also seems to demand we fundamentally alter the way we consume goods.

And climate change is forcing us to reassess how we have lived on this planet for the last hundred years, because it’s clear that way of life isn’t sustainable.

Contemporary ethicist Peter Singer has argued that, given the current political climate, we would only be capable of radically altering our collective behaviour when there has been a massive disruption to our way of life.

If a supply chain is broken by a climate-change-induced disaster, there is no choice but to deal with the new reality. But we shouldn’t be waiting for a disaster to kick us into gear.

Making changes includes seeing ourselves as citizens not only of a community or a country, but also of the world.

Read more: Students striking for climate action are showing the exact skills employers look for

As US philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues, many issues need international cooperation to address . Trade, environment, law and conflict require creative thinking and pragmatism, and we need a different focus in our education systems to bring these about.

Education needs to focus on developing the personhood of children, as well as their capability to engage as citizens (even if current political leaders disagree) .

If you’re taking a certain subject at school or university, have you ever been asked: “But how will that get you a job?” If so, the questioner sees economic goals as the most important outcomes for education.

They’re not necessarily wrong, but it’s also clear that jobs are no longer the only (or most important) reason we learn.

Read the essay on what universities must do to survive disruption and remain relevant.

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The Importance of Purpose in Education

Students can discover a sense of purpose in their learning through questions that lead them to think about their interests.

I recently met with an eighth-grade student who had been accepted to a specialized high school focused on science. I wanted to compliment her on her achievement and learn more about the academic experiences that led to her choice of high school. I already knew her to be a young lady who was determined, hardworking, and intelligent—but I didn’t know what made her tick.

During our discussion, I asked about her experiences in our school. She shared her arc of learning as a student, and gushed about the joy she had as a member of both our after-school band program and our extracurricular drama program.

I asked what had made her choose the high school she had, given that she had strengths in a variety of other areas. She smiled and said, “I’m really fascinated by science and medicine—it makes me curious.”

She planned to continue her pursuits in the arts, but she was clear that her love for science was going to drive her efforts.

I left the conversation inspired as an educational leader. Certainly we have to fulfill mandates and meet educational standards, but so often our students leave our schools uncertain about who they are in the world and without a fully formed sense of purpose. Academics without purpose can be an exercise void of substance.

We can powerfully influence the level of learner actualization in our classrooms if we ask the right questions to help students develop that sense of purpose.

Facilitating Self-Reflection

Asking the right questions develops a deeper understanding of self. How many professionals do you know who would have chosen an alternate career path if they had asked different questions at the start? The same can be said for students in the classroom.

Take a learner who is reluctantly engaged in a project. Maybe they enter into the work with a series of starts and stops, or they ask the teacher for a topic change several times before getting into the meat of the work, only to come up with nothing in the end. What if the student was given an opportunity to reflect on what they’re worried about in an effort to understand what stops them from fully following through?

I’ve seen many students decide early on in their learning life that they were good at one subject and bad at another. These beliefs are often difficult to dismiss. Asking students to identify topics they’re interested in but haven’t tried offers amazing benefits. A deeper dive into this line of questioning may result in an understanding of what stops them in their exploration.

Students need to develop a consistent, self-regulated feedback loop. Effective questions can facilitate this. What is your proudest achievement? What is your biggest failure? What would you do if you knew that failure was not an option? These are the types of questions students need to consider on a regular basis.

The Influence on the Work

The impact on work products in and out of the classroom can be substantial if robust reflective questions are leveraged properly and educators more fully understand students’ interests. Learners can begin to take ownership of their goals and develop authentic growth points.

A standards-driven education can be both highly productive and personally rewarding. There’s no reason to think that these things cannot exist in the same space—but in order for this to happen effectively, students must develop their own path to outcomes of their choosing.

Much the same as a hiker entering the woods, when students begin a project or unit of learning there should be trail markers along the way. In education we’re very good at devising benchmark assessments to collect formative data, but what of the innate and essential learners who are before us?

Teachers should mindfully craft authentic learning reflections along the way for their students. The form need not matter. Pen and paper suffice, as does a rubric, or a Google form. I’ve seen teachers seamlessly incorporate these reflections into student conferences. The point is for students to have a process and a space to consider their life as learners.

Helping Students Find Their Truth

In Hamlet , Polonius famously advises his son, Laertes, “To thine own self be true / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.” But what if our students do not know themselves?

Learners who are authentically true to themselves will explore with abandon. The insights gained from reflective questions can be used by students and teachers to develop links between various subjects and spark interests in multiple curricular areas.

As students tend the garden of self-discovery, new curiosities will naturally arise. The transfer of key understandings and the information that applies to multiple concepts can provide inspiration and clarity to the confused and disaffected learner. For those who are already on a path to their most authentic self, these questions will support a deeper and more rewarding journey.

What Is “Education”?

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Analytic philosophy of education focuses on clarifying such key terms as: “education”, “aims”, “goals”, “objectives”, “overt curriculum”, “covert curriculum”, “null curriculum”, “pedagogical content knowledge”. The understanding of these and other concepts is critical to enable contemporary education to be regarded as a truly professional domain.

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• Pedagogic content knowledge

The world of education—like law, medicine, business, and other spheres—has its own unique language. A discussion of this language is important for principals and teachers, parents, and students in order to facilitate a clear understanding of what education is. In this chapter, I analyze and clarify some key terms with a view to promoting a coherent and more precise educational practice.

Three Ways to Analyze the Term “Education”

There are three kinds of definitions of “education” (Scheffler 1960 ). The first type is called the descriptive . It is a statement that proposes to denote or explain the nature of the meaning of the word called “education” by using a variety of words to explain either what the phenomenon is or how the term is to be understood. This type of definition claims to describe precisely how the word denoted as “education” is most prominently used.

The second type of definition of “education” is the programmatic , which comes to advocate for or prescribe a belief of what education should be or should do. A programmatic definition is less preoccupied with what the phenomenon or language of education is and more concerned with promulgating a particular practice of education that is regarded as desirable. Sometimes prescriptive definitions are expressed in short, clipped sentences such as Pink Floyd’s “We don’t need no education” or the title of Jonathan Kozol’s description of education as Death at an Early Age (Kozol 1985 ). Programmatic definitions are ultimately short slogans or deeply felt preaching about the way education should be.

The third type of definition is the stipulative and its purpose is technical and utilitarian. It is basically a linguistic agreement or pact that enables a discussion to proceed smoothly without forcing a person to each time state, “This is what I mean by the term ‘education.’” It is essentially is a linguistic shortcut, in which one person’s explanation of the word “education” is called Version 1; a second person’s explanation is Version 2, and the third interpretation is called Version 3. This is a kind of a shortcut that enables the discussion to precede at a decent pace.

My concern in this chapter is the descriptive mode, namely, the endeavor to arrive at a clear and generally agreed-upon statement of what the word “education” means. My aim is to refer to terms that are generally used in everyday speech and to attempts to search for viable and relevant definitions that reflect as accurately as possible the common language usage of the term. There is a technique that students and some academics use in the attempt to understand the term, namely, to trace it back to its original linguistic roots. There are times when this is helpful, but very often this can be misleading, since the way it once was used does not necessarily help us understand the way it is used today. The contemporary word “education” is sometimes traced to the Latin root educare , which means “to train” or “to mold”. Based on this linguistic root, some people like to argue that training or molding is what education today should be. At the same time, the Latin word educere means “to lead out”, which suggests a totally different understanding of “education” as a process aimed at that freeing the person from the prison of ignorance. Generally, it is my sense that the technique of tracing back to former linguistic roots is more useful for understanding ways in which terms were understood in the past rather than helping us to grasp what they mean today.

Some Contemporary Meanings

Let’s now look at some diverse definitions of “education”. One understanding of the term is the conscious effort to equip the unequipped young with facts, knowledge, and skills that will enable them to function as adults in a specific society. This is often called the socialization model.

A second usage of the word “education” understands it as exposure to, understanding of, and practice in skillsets that a person needs to be able to function in contemporary culture. This notion is sometimes called the acculturation model.

A third notion of education focuses on the development of reflective thinking and feeling abilities so that the young will be able to carve out how they wish to exist. This model is sometimes known as the liberal or person-centered model of education.

A Proposed Definition of “Education”

I have found the discussion of diverse meanings of education to be very fruitful because it helps me see the world through different lenses and, particularly, enables me to think about and consider diverse meanings and practices of the dynamics of education. At the same time, since I believe that education is a practice, and in practice we need some very specific tools and toolkits to help us proceed, I have searched over time for a definition of “education” that I regard as both descriptively and programmatically useful for the educational practitioner. Ultimately, the definition that I regard as the most useful was shaped by Lawrence Cremin, who is regarded as the most distinguished historian of twentieth-century education:

Education is the deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to transmit, provoke or acquire knowledge, values, attitudes, skills or sensibilities as well as any learning that results from the effort (Cremin, Public Education , p. 27)

This broad-based definition indicates that education is a purposeful activity. The word “education” is reserved for frameworks created with the considered and conscious intent to educate. This definition also understands education as a process and not a place. It is a purposeful activity that can happen within a wide range of frameworks and not only in buildings called schools. Moreover, this intentional activity does not only transmit knowledge, but it also is concerned with values, attitudes, skills, and sensibilities. Education is an activity which takes place in many diverse venues and is intended to develop knowledge, understanding, valuing, growing, caring, and behaving. It can happen “when you sit in your house, and when you go on the way, and when you lie down and when you rise” (Deuteronomy, 6:7). While contemporary societies have denoted schools as the agency responsible for education, in fact, education far transcends the certificates of achievement received from pre-school, elementary, secondary, and collegiate frameworks.

“Aims”, “Goals”, “Objectives”

The concept of education invites the question “Education for what?” What is the purpose of education? While the terms, “aims”, “goals”, and “objectives” of education are sometimes used interchangeably, philosophers of education describe three distinct activities related to “purpose”: Aims, Goals, Objectives = AGO (Noddings 2007 ).

“Aims” refer to the most general ideals, values, or principles, which a person, institution, or society regards as the ultimate desideratum of education. Aims are value statements which designate certain principles or values as the ultimate aspiration. Aims describe both the ideal target of an educational institution as well at its ultimate desired outcomes or achievements. Educational aims ultimately frame the overall direction of an educational system or institution.

“Goals” refer to a second stage, which is derivative from aims and focuses on contents and topics that should be studied so as to enable students to understand and actualize core ideals explicit in aims. Goals translate aims into specific contents or stepping-stones that should be part of the educational process. If one of the aims of twentieth-century American schooling was to teach a set of shared values for its diverse populations in order to socialize them into a core American society, then its goal was to provide them with skillsets such as language, science, and mathematics, which were then regarded as contents critical to enable realization of the larger shared American creed.

The word “objectives” refers to the most practical stage, which is the actual teaching materials—books textbooks, maps, videos, and visual aids—used in the classroom each day, week, and month in a year. These are the infamous “lesson plans” which are an hour by hour mapping out of how teachers will spend every single day in the classroom.

This AGO framework can be a useful structure for analyzing education, from its most abstract goals to its most immediate daily application. Moreover, if implemented properly, it would seem to reflect a useful dynamic from theory to practice. Unfortunately, in reality, what often happens is that aims and goals are skipped over and objectives—daily blueprints, and lesson plans—become the main preoccupation. Because of a multitude of exigencies, the thoughtful paradigm of aims, goals, and objectives is often neglected at the expense of “getting through the day” in practice.

Three Notions of “Curriculum”

An important term in the study of education is “curriculum”, which popularly refers to the overall subjects or contents of schooling. As the field of curriculum studies developed into a rigorous academic area of study in schools of education, broader understandings of the term were to emerge (Pinar et al. 1995 ).

One of the important sophistications in the study of curriculum has been the notion of overt, covert, and null curricula. The “overt curriculum” refers to the clearly stated and enunciated objectives, contents, subjects, topics, books, and resources, which are the official frameworks, and requirements of a school and its teachers. It is the approved and mandated contents that shape a school’s operation.

The “covert” curriculum refers to attitudes, values, and behaviors that characterize the norms of daily life in schools beyond the subjects formally taught in a classroom. The covert curriculum is the unspoken “culture’” shaped by a multitude of forces and factors. What is the décor of the school? What do the halls look like? What type examinations are given? What is the nature of student interaction? The covert curriculum refers to the multiple features of a school culture very much shaped by the lives, habits, and “lingo” of students which have significant impact on the actual rhythm and flow of daily school life.

The “null” curriculum refers to the books, subjects, topics, and artifacts that are consciously and purposefully not part of the school curriculum. This may include partial or no discussion of the history of indigenous populations in the teaching of American history. It includes the list of books, sources, ands ideas that have very consciously not been chosen in the formal curriculum. All education requires selection, and the topics not chosen—and why—are just as important as those that have been chosen. Indeed, there are political, racial, gender, aesthetic, moral, and spiritual issues that significantly shape the overt, covert, and null curriculum of each and every type of schooling.

These three terms alert us to the complicated nature of curriculum development. While there is a popular phrase that refers to an individual “writing a curriculum’”, in fact, curriculum development has become a specialized domain that involves subject matter experts classroom teachers, and educational leadership, and requires extensive deliberation, field testing, revision, and production. It is one of the most exciting and, at the same time most demanding of fields in contemporary education.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)

An important dimension of education is what is commonly known as “pedagogy”, which is understood as the methodologies or the ways in which teaching should happen. Footnote 1 This is obviously a critical dimension of education because it is about what educators teach and how students learn—which are the ultimate domain of education. Pedagogy (sometimes called the “science of teaching”) is the assumption that there are universal patterns and procedures in teaching which should constitute an important part of academic teacher training. There were, and there still are, some general courses on pedagogy in university departments of education which reflect the assumption that there is a core set of methodologies generally appropriate for all sorts of teaching. Twentieth-century philosophers in multiple fields of study—for example, physics, mathematics, literature, and economics—began to focus on the notions of “realms of meaning” or “spheres of knowledge”, which led to the general consensus that there is a diversity of pedagogic methodologies that derive from the many different spheres of knowledge. This kind of thinking made it clear that because of the significant differences between science, mathematics, history, literature, and philosophy, there could be no one overall pedagogy appropriate for all subjects; consequently, such courses as “principles of pedagogy” were misleading. In the 1980s, through the innovative work of a group of educators of whom Professor Lee Shulman was a central figure, an important concept was to emerge which has had a profound effect on styles of teaching (Shulman 1986 ). This research led to the term “pedagogical content knowledge” (PCK). PCK refers to the fact that diverse spheres of knowledge utilize diverse methodologies of researching and understanding and therefore require diverse practices of teaching. In other words, the way a teacher teaches the subject depends on the nature of the subject and that all subjects are not the same. Just as it is clear that the ways we teach someone to drive a car or to learn how to swim have their own characteristics, so it is clear that the teaching of mathematics must differ from the teaching of literature, which differs from the teaching of civics, which differs from the teaching of languages. This notion indicates that one must be wary of general principles of “how to teach” and that quality teaching begins with and is related to an understanding of the subject matter being taught. To teach chemistry or physics one has to understand the role of experimentation. In teaching literature, one has to understand the importance of simile, metaphor, plot, and theme. PCK was to have a major impact particularly in the experimental subject areas, although there were also important implications for teaching literature and other areas. At the heart of PCK is the notion that methodology or “what to do” flows from the content one teaches, and the content one teaches ultimately flows from the “why” of education. In other words, education is an integrated dynamic in which the “why” affects the “what” and the “what” affects the “how”.

I learned about the importance of PCK during my travels over the years to all sorts of Jewish schools. One of the most prominent subjects (typically in the early years of elementary school) I observed was the teaching of Genesis Chapter 12 which describes a conversation between God and Abraham in which God makes a covenant—a legal agreement—with Abraham, that if he follows God’s ways, Abraham will be given a certain body of land for himself and for his children in perpetuity. How one teaches this section depends upon how one understands the nature of this ancient source. If this text is a verifiable history book (which was the mode that I observed in so many schools), it will be taught in one way; if this text is not a history book but rather a philosophical or theological work with profound religious, moral, and human messages, it will be taught in a totally different way. These two understandings result in dramatically diverse pedagogies and messages, depending on whether the text in Genesis 12 was presented as an authoritative history or a profound philosophy.

The contemporary language of education includes some key concepts—“schooling”, “aims”, “goals”, “curriculum”, and “pedagogy”—whose meanings are very important to the practice of education in schools and beyond. This conclusion suggests that the fields of education and Jewish education in the twenty-first century are sophisticated domains which call for serious deliberation and study by prospective educators. The educators of our young deserve the same level of training, investment, and rigor that we expect from the doctors who treat our bodies or from the engineers who build the bridges on which we travel. Education in the twenty-first century is a critical sphere that calls for deep reflection, training, and passion.

Adult education specialist Malcolm Knowles suggested that the term “pedagogy” be used to refer to the teaching of children and that the term “andragogy” be used to denote adult learning. (Knowles 2020 ).

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Noddings, Nel. 2007. “Aims, Goals, and Objectives” Encounters on Education . Vol 8, Fall, 2007, pp. 7–15.

Pinar, William Reynolds, William, Slattery, Taubman, Peter. 1995. Understanding Curriculum . (Peter Lang).

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Chazan, B. (2022). What Is “Education”?. In: Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83925-3_3

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Philosophy of Education

Philosophy of education is the branch of applied or practical philosophy concerned with the nature and aims of education and the philosophical problems arising from educational theory and practice. Because that practice is ubiquitous in and across human societies, its social and individual manifestations so varied, and its influence so profound, the subject is wide-ranging, involving issues in ethics and social/political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, and other areas of philosophy. Because it looks both inward to the parent discipline and outward to educational practice and the social, legal, and institutional contexts in which it takes place, philosophy of education concerns itself with both sides of the traditional theory/practice divide. Its subject matter includes both basic philosophical issues (e.g., the nature of the knowledge worth teaching, the character of educational equality and justice, etc.) and problems concerning specific educational policies and practices (e.g., the desirability of standardized curricula and testing, the social, economic, legal and moral dimensions of specific funding arrangements, the justification of curriculum decisions, etc.). In all this the philosopher of education prizes conceptual clarity, argumentative rigor, the fair-minded consideration of the interests of all involved in or affected by educational efforts and arrangements, and informed and well-reasoned valuation of educational aims and interventions.

Philosophy of education has a long and distinguished history in the Western philosophical tradition, from Socrates’ battles with the sophists to the present day. Many of the most distinguished figures in that tradition incorporated educational concerns into their broader philosophical agendas (Curren 2000, 2018; Rorty 1998). While that history is not the focus here, it is worth noting that the ideals of reasoned inquiry championed by Socrates and his descendants have long informed the view that education should foster in all students, to the extent possible, the disposition to seek reasons and the ability to evaluate them cogently, and to be guided by their evaluations in matters of belief, action and judgment. This view, that education centrally involves the fostering of reason or rationality, has with varying articulations and qualifications been embraced by most of those historical figures; it continues to be defended by contemporary philosophers of education as well (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2007, 2017). As with any philosophical thesis it is controversial; some dimensions of the controversy are explored below.

This entry is a selective survey of important contemporary work in Anglophone philosophy of education; it does not treat in detail recent scholarship outside that context.

1. Problems in Delineating the Field

2. analytic philosophy of education and its influence, 3.1 the content of the curriculum and the aims and functions of schooling, 3.2 social, political and moral philosophy, 3.3 social epistemology, virtue epistemology, and the epistemology of education, 3.4 philosophical disputes concerning empirical education research, 4. concluding remarks, other internet resources, related entries.

The inward/outward looking nature of the field of philosophy of education alluded to above makes the task of delineating the field, of giving an over-all picture of the intellectual landscape, somewhat complicated (for a detailed account of this topography, see Phillips 1985, 2010). Suffice it to say that some philosophers, as well as focusing inward on the abstract philosophical issues that concern them, are drawn outwards to discuss or comment on issues that are more commonly regarded as falling within the purview of professional educators, educational researchers, policy-makers and the like. (An example is Michael Scriven, who in his early career was a prominent philosopher of science; later he became a central figure in the development of the field of evaluation of educational and social programs. See Scriven 1991a, 1991b.) At the same time, there are professionals in the educational or closely related spheres who are drawn to discuss one or another of the philosophical issues that they encounter in the course of their work. (An example here is the behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner, the central figure in the development of operant conditioning and programmed learning, who in works such as Walden Two (1948) and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1972) grappled—albeit controversially—with major philosophical issues that were related to his work.)

What makes the field even more amorphous is the existence of works on educational topics, written by well-regarded philosophers who have made major contributions to their discipline; these educational reflections have little or no philosophical content, illustrating the truth that philosophers do not always write philosophy. However, despite this, works in this genre have often been treated as contributions to philosophy of education. (Examples include John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education [1693] and Bertrand Russell’s rollicking pieces written primarily to raise funds to support a progressive school he ran with his wife. (See Park 1965.)

Finally, as indicated earlier, the domain of education is vast, the issues it raises are almost overwhelmingly numerous and are of great complexity, and the social significance of the field is second to none. These features make the phenomena and problems of education of great interest to a wide range of socially-concerned intellectuals, who bring with them their own favored conceptual frameworks—concepts, theories and ideologies, methods of analysis and argumentation, metaphysical and other assumptions, and the like. It is not surprising that scholars who work in this broad genre also find a home in the field of philosophy of education.

As a result of these various factors, the significant intellectual and social trends of the past few centuries, together with the significant developments in philosophy, all have had an impact on the content of arguments and methods of argumentation in philosophy of education—Marxism, psycho-analysis, existentialism, phenomenology, positivism, post-modernism, pragmatism, neo-liberalism, the several waves of feminism, analytic philosophy in both its ordinary language and more formal guises, are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Conceptual analysis, careful assessment of arguments, the rooting out of ambiguity, the drawing of clarifying distinctions—all of which are at least part of the philosophical toolkit—have been respected activities within philosophy from the dawn of the field. No doubt it somewhat over-simplifies the complex path of intellectual history to suggest that what happened in the twentieth century—early on, in the home discipline itself, and with a lag of a decade or more in philosophy of education—is that philosophical analysis came to be viewed by some scholars as being the major philosophical activity (or set of activities), or even as being the only viable or reputable activity. In any case, as they gained prominence and for a time hegemonic influence during the rise of analytic philosophy early in the twentieth century analytic techniques came to dominate philosophy of education in the middle third of that century (Curren, Robertson, & Hager 2003).

The pioneering work in the modern period entirely in an analytic mode was the short monograph by C.D. Hardie, Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory (1941; reissued in 1962). In his Introduction, Hardie (who had studied with C.D. Broad and I.A. Richards) made it clear that he was putting all his eggs into the ordinary-language-analysis basket:

The Cambridge analytical school, led by Moore, Broad and Wittgenstein, has attempted so to analyse propositions that it will always be apparent whether the disagreement between philosophers is one concerning matters of fact, or is one concerning the use of words, or is, as is frequently the case, a purely emotive one. It is time, I think, that a similar attitude became common in the field of educational theory. (Hardie 1962: xix)

About a decade after the end of the Second World War the floodgates opened and a stream of work in the analytic mode appeared; the following is merely a sample. D. J. O’Connor published An Introduction to Philosophy of Education (1957) in which, among other things, he argued that the word “theory” as it is used in educational contexts is merely a courtesy title, for educational theories are nothing like what bear this title in the natural sciences. Israel Scheffler, who became the paramount philosopher of education in North America, produced a number of important works including The Language of Education (1960), which contained clarifying and influential analyses of definitions (he distinguished reportive, stipulative, and programmatic types) and the logic of slogans (often these are literally meaningless, and, he argued, should be seen as truncated arguments), Conditions of Knowledge (1965), still the best introduction to the epistemological side of philosophy of education, and Reason and Teaching (1973 [1989]), which in a wide-ranging and influential series of essays makes the case for regarding the fostering of rationality/critical thinking as a fundamental educational ideal (cf. Siegel 2016). B. O. Smith and R. H. Ennis edited the volume Language and Concepts in Education (1961); and R.D. Archambault edited Philosophical Analysis and Education (1965), consisting of essays by a number of prominent British writers, most notably R. S. Peters (whose status in Britain paralleled that of Scheffler in the United States), Paul Hirst, and John Wilson. Topics covered in the Archambault volume were typical of those that became the “bread and butter” of analytic philosophy of education (APE) throughout the English-speaking world—education as a process of initiation, liberal education, the nature of knowledge, types of teaching, and instruction versus indoctrination.

Among the most influential products of APE was the analysis developed by Hirst and Peters (1970) and Peters (1973) of the concept of education itself. Using as a touchstone “normal English usage,” it was concluded that a person who has been educated (rather than instructed or indoctrinated) has been (i) changed for the better; (ii) this change has involved the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual skills and the development of understanding; and (iii) the person has come to care for, or be committed to, the domains of knowledge and skill into which he or she has been initiated. The method used by Hirst and Peters comes across clearly in their handling of the analogy with the concept of “reform”, one they sometimes drew upon for expository purposes. A criminal who has been reformed has changed for the better, and has developed a commitment to the new mode of life (if one or other of these conditions does not hold, a speaker of standard English would not say the criminal has been reformed). Clearly the analogy with reform breaks down with respect to the knowledge and understanding conditions. Elsewhere Peters developed the fruitful notion of “education as initiation”.

The concept of indoctrination was also of great interest to analytic philosophers of education, for, it was argued, getting clear about precisely what constitutes indoctrination also would serve to clarify the border that demarcates it from acceptable educational processes. Thus, whether or not an instructional episode was a case of indoctrination was determined by the content taught, the intention of the instructor, the methods of instruction used, the outcomes of the instruction, or by some combination of these. Adherents of the different analyses used the same general type of argument to make their case, namely, appeal to normal and aberrant usage. Unfortunately, ordinary language analysis did not lead to unanimity of opinion about where this border was located, and rival analyses of the concept were put forward (Snook 1972). The danger of restricting analysis to ordinary language (“normal English usage”) was recognized early on by Scheffler, whose preferred view of analysis emphasized

first, its greater sophistication as regards language, and the interpenetration of language and inquiry, second, its attempt to follow the modern example of the sciences in empirical spirit, in rigor, in attention to detail, in respect for alternatives, and in objectivity of method, and third, its use of techniques of symbolic logic brought to full development only in the last fifty years… It is…this union of scientific spirit and logical method applied toward the clarification of basic ideas that characterizes current analytic philosophy [and that ought to characterize analytic philosophy of education]. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 9–10])

After a period of dominance, for a number of important reasons the influence of APE went into decline. First, there were growing criticisms that the work of analytic philosophers of education had become focused upon minutiae and in the main was bereft of practical import. (It is worth noting that a 1966 article in Time , reprinted in Lucas 1969, had put forward the same criticism of mainstream philosophy.) Second, in the early 1970’s radical students in Britain accused Peters’ brand of linguistic analysis of conservatism, and of tacitly giving support to “traditional values”—they raised the issue of whose English usage was being analyzed?

Third, criticisms of language analysis in mainstream philosophy had been mounting for some time, and finally after a lag of many years were reaching the attention of philosophers of education; there even had been a surprising degree of interest on the part of the general reading public in the United Kingdom as early as 1959, when Gilbert Ryle, editor of the journal Mind , refused to commission a review of Ernest Gellner’s Words and Things (1959)—a detailed and quite acerbic critique of Wittgenstein’s philosophy and its espousal of ordinary language analysis. (Ryle argued that Gellner’s book was too insulting, a view that drew Bertrand Russell into the fray on Gellner’s side—in the daily press, no less; Russell produced a list of insulting remarks drawn from the work of great philosophers of the past. See Mehta 1963.)

Richard Peters had been given warning that all was not well with APE at a conference in Canada in 1966; after delivering a paper on “The aims of education: A conceptual inquiry” that was based on ordinary language analysis, a philosopher in the audience (William Dray) asked Peters “ whose concepts do we analyze?” Dray went on to suggest that different people, and different groups within society, have different concepts of education. Five years before the radical students raised the same issue, Dray pointed to the possibility that what Peters had presented under the guise of a “logical analysis” was nothing but the favored usage of a certain class of persons—a class that Peters happened to identify with (see Peters 1973, where to the editor’s credit the interaction with Dray is reprinted).

Fourth, during the decade of the seventies when these various critiques of analytic philosophy were in the process of eroding its luster, a spate of translations from the Continent stimulated some philosophers of education in Britain and North America to set out in new directions, and to adopt a new style of writing and argumentation. Key works by Gadamer, Foucault and Derrida appeared in English, and these were followed in 1984 by Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition . The classic works of Heidegger and Husserl also found new admirers; and feminist philosophers of education were finding their voices—Maxine Greene published a number of pieces in the 1970s and 1980s, including The Dialectic of Freedom (1988); the influential book by Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , appeared the same year as the work by Lyotard, followed a year later by Jane Roland Martin’s Reclaiming a Conversation . In more recent years all these trends have continued. APE was and is no longer the center of interest, although, as indicated below, it still retains its voice.

3. Areas of Contemporary Activity

As was stressed at the outset, the field of education is huge and contains within it a virtually inexhaustible number of issues that are of philosophical interest. To attempt comprehensive coverage of how philosophers of education have been working within this thicket would be a quixotic task for a large single volume and is out of the question for a solitary encyclopedia entry. Nevertheless, a valiant attempt to give an overview was made in A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Curren 2003), which contains more than six-hundred pages divided into forty-five chapters each of which surveys a subfield of work. The following random selection of chapter topics gives a sense of the enormous scope of the field: Sex education, special education, science education, aesthetic education, theories of teaching and learning, religious education, knowledge, truth and learning, cultivating reason, the measurement of learning, multicultural education, education and the politics of identity, education and standards of living, motivation and classroom management, feminism, critical theory, postmodernism, romanticism, the purposes of universities, affirmative action in higher education, and professional education. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education (Siegel 2009) contains a similarly broad range of articles on (among other things) the epistemic and moral aims of education, liberal education and its imminent demise, thinking and reasoning, fallibilism and fallibility, indoctrination, authenticity, the development of rationality, Socratic teaching, educating the imagination, caring and empathy in moral education, the limits of moral education, the cultivation of character, values education, curriculum and the value of knowledge, education and democracy, art and education, science education and religious toleration, constructivism and scientific methods, multicultural education, prejudice, authority and the interests of children, and on pragmatist, feminist, and postmodernist approaches to philosophy of education.

Given this enormous range, there is no non-arbitrary way to select a small number of topics for further discussion, nor can the topics that are chosen be pursued in great depth. The choice of those below has been made with an eye to highlighting contemporary work that makes solid contact with and contributes to important discussions in general philosophy and/or the academic educational and educational research communities.

The issue of what should be taught to students at all levels of education—the issue of curriculum content—obviously is a fundamental one, and it is an extraordinarily difficult one with which to grapple. In tackling it, care needs to be taken to distinguish between education and schooling—for although education can occur in schools, so can mis-education, and many other things can take place there that are educationally orthogonal (such as the provision of free or subsidized lunches and the development of social networks); and it also must be recognized that education can occur in the home, in libraries and museums, in churches and clubs, in solitary interaction with the public media, and the like.

In developing a curriculum (whether in a specific subject area, or more broadly as the whole range of offerings in an educational institution or system), a number of difficult decisions need to be made. Issues such as the proper ordering or sequencing of topics in the chosen subject, the time to be allocated to each topic, the lab work or excursions or projects that are appropriate for particular topics, can all be regarded as technical issues best resolved either by educationists who have a depth of experience with the target age group or by experts in the psychology of learning and the like. But there are deeper issues, ones concerning the validity of the justifications that have been given for including/excluding particular subjects or topics in the offerings of formal educational institutions. (Why should evolution or creation “science” be included, or excluded, as a topic within the standard high school subject Biology? Is the justification that is given for teaching Economics in some schools coherent and convincing? Do the justifications for including/excluding materials on birth control, patriotism, the Holocaust or wartime atrocities in the curriculum in some school districts stand up to critical scrutiny?)

The different justifications for particular items of curriculum content that have been put forward by philosophers and others since Plato’s pioneering efforts all draw, explicitly or implicitly, upon the positions that the respective theorists hold about at least three sets of issues.

First, what are the aims and/or functions of education (aims and functions are not necessarily the same)? Many aims have been proposed; a short list includes the production of knowledge and knowledgeable students, the fostering of curiosity and inquisitiveness, the enhancement of understanding, the enlargement of the imagination, the civilizing of students, the fostering of rationality and/or autonomy, and the development in students of care, concern and associated dispositions and attitudes (see Siegel 2007 for a longer list). The justifications offered for all such aims have been controversial, and alternative justifications of a single proposed aim can provoke philosophical controversy. Consider the aim of autonomy. Aristotle asked, what constitutes the good life and/or human flourishing, such that education should foster these (Curren 2013)? These two formulations are related, for it is arguable that our educational institutions should aim to equip individuals to pursue this good life—although this is not obvious, both because it is not clear that there is one conception of the good or flourishing life that is the good or flourishing life for everyone, and it is not clear that this is a question that should be settled in advance rather than determined by students for themselves. Thus, for example, if our view of human flourishing includes the capacity to think and act autonomously, then the case can be made that educational institutions—and their curricula—should aim to prepare, or help to prepare, autonomous individuals. A rival justification of the aim of autonomy, associated with Kant, champions the educational fostering of autonomy not on the basis of its contribution to human flourishing, but rather the obligation to treat students with respect as persons (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988). Still others urge the fostering of autonomy on the basis of students’ fundamental interests, in ways that draw upon both Aristotelian and Kantian conceptual resources (Brighouse 2005, 2009). It is also possible to reject the fostering of autonomy as an educational aim (Hand 2006).

Assuming that the aim can be justified, how students should be helped to become autonomous or develop a conception of the good life and pursue it is of course not immediately obvious, and much philosophical ink has been spilled on the general question of how best to determine curriculum content. One influential line of argument was developed by Paul Hirst, who argued that knowledge is essential for developing and then pursuing a conception of the good life, and because logical analysis shows, he argued, that there are seven basic forms of knowledge, the case can be made that the function of the curriculum is to introduce students to each of these forms (Hirst 1965; see Phillips 1987: ch. 11). Another, suggested by Scheffler, is that curriculum content should be selected so as “to help the learner attain maximum self-sufficiency as economically as possible.” The relevant sorts of economy include those of resources, teacher effort, student effort, and the generalizability or transfer value of content, while the self-sufficiency in question includes

self-awareness, imaginative weighing of alternative courses of action, understanding of other people’s choices and ways of life, decisiveness without rigidity, emancipation from stereotyped ways of thinking and perceiving…empathy… intuition, criticism and independent judgment. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 123–5])

Both impose important constraints on the curricular content to be taught.

Second, is it justifiable to treat the curriculum of an educational institution as a vehicle for furthering the socio-political interests and goals of a dominant group, or any particular group, including one’s own; and relatedly, is it justifiable to design the curriculum so that it serves as an instrument of control or of social engineering? In the closing decades of the twentieth century there were numerous discussions of curriculum theory, particularly from Marxist and postmodern perspectives, that offered the sobering analysis that in many educational systems, including those in Western democracies, the curriculum did indeed reflect and serve the interests of powerful cultural elites. What to do about this situation (if it is indeed the situation of contemporary educational institutions) is far from clear and is the focus of much work at the interface of philosophy of education and social/political philosophy, some of which is discussed in the next section. A closely related question is this: ought educational institutions be designed to further pre-determined social ends, or rather to enable students to competently evaluate all such ends? Scheffler argued that we should opt for the latter: we must

surrender the idea of shaping or molding the mind of the pupil. The function of education…is rather to liberate the mind, strengthen its critical powers, [and] inform it with knowledge and the capacity for independent inquiry. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 139])

Third, should educational programs at the elementary and secondary levels be made up of a number of disparate offerings, so that individuals with different interests and abilities and affinities for learning can pursue curricula that are suitable? Or should every student pursue the same curriculum as far as each is able?—a curriculum, it should be noted, that in past cases nearly always was based on the needs or interests of those students who were academically inclined or were destined for elite social roles. Mortimer Adler and others in the late twentieth century sometimes used the aphorism “the best education for the best is the best education for all.”

The thinking here can be explicated in terms of the analogy of an out-of-control virulent disease, for which there is only one type of medicine available; taking a large dose of this medicine is extremely beneficial, and the hope is that taking only a little—while less effective—is better than taking none at all. Medically, this is dubious, while the educational version—forcing students to work, until they exit the system, on topics that do not interest them and for which they have no facility or motivation—has even less merit. (For a critique of Adler and his Paideia Proposal , see Noddings 2015.) It is interesting to compare the modern “one curriculum track for all” position with Plato’s system outlined in the Republic , according to which all students—and importantly this included girls—set out on the same course of study. Over time, as they moved up the educational ladder it would become obvious that some had reached the limit imposed upon them by nature, and they would be directed off into appropriate social roles in which they would find fulfillment, for their abilities would match the demands of these roles. Those who continued on with their education would eventually become members of the ruling class of Guardians.

The publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971 was the most notable event in the history of political philosophy over the last century. The book spurred a period of ferment in political philosophy that included, among other things, new research on educationally fundamental themes. The principles of justice in educational distribution have perhaps been the dominant theme in this literature, and Rawls’s influence on its development has been pervasive.

Rawls’s theory of justice made so-called “fair equality of opportunity” one of its constitutive principles. Fair equality of opportunity entailed that the distribution of education would not put the children of those who currently occupied coveted social positions at any competitive advantage over other, equally talented and motivated children seeking the qualifications for those positions (Rawls 1971: 72–75). Its purpose was to prevent socio-economic differences from hardening into social castes that were perpetuated across generations. One obvious criticism of fair equality of opportunity is that it does not prohibit an educational distribution that lavished resources on the most talented children while offering minimal opportunities to others. So long as untalented students from wealthy families were assigned opportunities no better than those available to their untalented peers among the poor, no breach of the principle would occur. Even the most moderate egalitarians might find such a distributive regime to be intuitively repugnant.

Repugnance might be mitigated somewhat by the ways in which the overall structure of Rawls’s conception of justice protects the interests of those who fare badly in educational competition. All citizens must enjoy the same basic liberties, and equal liberty always has moral priority over equal opportunity: the former can never be compromised to advance the latter. Further, inequality in the distribution of income and wealth are permitted only to the degree that it serves the interests of the least advantaged group in society. But even with these qualifications, fair equality of opportunity is arguably less than really fair to anyone. The fact that their education should secure ends other than access to the most selective social positions—ends such as artistic appreciation, the kind of self-knowledge that humanistic study can furnish, or civic virtue—is deemed irrelevant according to Rawls’s principle. But surely it is relevant, given that a principle of educational justice must be responsive to the full range of educationally important goods.

Suppose we revise our account of the goods included in educational distribution so that aesthetic appreciation, say, and the necessary understanding and virtue for conscientious citizenship count for just as much as job-related skills. An interesting implication of doing so is that the rationale for requiring equality under any just distribution becomes decreasingly clear. That is because job-related skills are positional whereas the other educational goods are not (Hollis 1982). If you and I both aspire to a career in business management for which we are equally qualified, any increase in your job-related skills is a corresponding disadvantage to me unless I can catch up. Positional goods have a competitive structure by definition, though the ends of civic or aesthetic education do not fit that structure. If you and I aspire to be good citizens and are equal in civic understanding and virtue, an advance in your civic education is no disadvantage to me. On the contrary, it is easier to be a good citizen the better other citizens learn to be. At the very least, so far as non-positional goods figure in our conception of what counts as a good education, the moral stakes of inequality are thereby lowered.

In fact, an emerging alternative to fair equality of opportunity is a principle that stipulates some benchmark of adequacy in achievement or opportunity as the relevant standard of distribution. But it is misleading to represent this as a contrast between egalitarian and sufficientarian conceptions. Philosophically serious interpretations of adequacy derive from the ideal of equal citizenship (Satz 2007; Anderson 2007). Then again, fair equality of opportunity in Rawls’s theory is derived from a more fundamental ideal of equality among citizens. This was arguably true in A Theory of Justice but it is certainly true in his later work (Dworkin 1977: 150–183; Rawls 1993). So, both Rawls’s principle and the emerging alternative share an egalitarian foundation. The debate between adherents of equal opportunity and those misnamed as sufficientarians is certainly not over (e.g., Brighouse & Swift 2009; Jacobs 2010; Warnick 2015). Further progress will likely hinge on explicating the most compelling conception of the egalitarian foundation from which distributive principles are to be inferred. Another Rawls-inspired alternative is that a “prioritarian” distribution of achievement or opportunity might turn out to be the best principle we can come up with—i.e., one that favors the interests of the least advantaged students (Schouten 2012).

The publication of Rawls’s Political Liberalism in 1993 signaled a decisive turning point in his thinking about justice. In his earlier book, the theory of justice had been presented as if it were universally valid. But Rawls had come to think that any theory of justice presented as such was open to reasonable rejection. A more circumspect approach to justification would seek grounds for justice as fairness in an overlapping consensus between the many reasonable values and doctrines that thrive in a democratic political culture. Rawls argued that such a culture is informed by a shared ideal of free and equal citizenship that provided a new, distinctively democratic framework for justifying a conception of justice. The shift to political liberalism involved little revision on Rawls’s part to the content of the principles he favored. But the salience it gave to questions about citizenship in the fabric of liberal political theory had important educational implications. How was the ideal of free and equal citizenship to be instantiated in education in a way that accommodated the range of reasonable values and doctrines encompassed in an overlapping consensus? Political Liberalism has inspired a range of answers to that question (cf. Callan 1997; Clayton 2006; Bull 2008).

Other philosophers besides Rawls in the 1990s took up a cluster of questions about civic education, and not always from a liberal perspective. Alasdair Macintyre’s After Virtue (1984) strongly influenced the development of communitarian political theory which, as its very name might suggest, argued that the cultivation of community could preempt many of the problems with conflicting individual rights at the core of liberalism. As a full-standing alternative to liberalism, communitarianism might have little to recommend it. But it was a spur for liberal philosophers to think about how communities could be built and sustained to support the more familiar projects of liberal politics (e.g., Strike 2010). Furthermore, its arguments often converged with those advanced by feminist exponents of the ethic of care (Noddings 1984; Gilligan 1982). Noddings’ work is particularly notable because she inferred a cogent and radical agenda for the reform of schools from her conception of care (Noddings 1992).

One persistent controversy in citizenship theory has been about whether patriotism is correctly deemed a virtue, given our obligations to those who are not our fellow citizens in an increasingly interdependent world and the sordid history of xenophobia with which modern nation states are associated. The controversy is partly about what we should teach in our schools and is commonly discussed by philosophers in that context (Galston 1991; Ben-Porath 2006; Callan 2006; Miller 2007; Curren & Dorn 2018). The controversy is related to a deeper and more pervasive question about how morally or intellectually taxing the best conception of our citizenship should be. The more taxing it is, the more constraining its derivative conception of civic education will be. Contemporary political philosophers offer divergent arguments about these matters. For example, Gutmann and Thompson claim that citizens of diverse democracies need to “understand the diverse ways of life of their fellow citizens” (Gutmann & Thompson 1996: 66). The need arises from the obligation of reciprocity which they (like Rawls) believe to be integral to citizenship. Because I must seek to cooperate with others politically on terms that make sense from their moral perspective as well as my own, I must be ready to enter that perspective imaginatively so as to grasp its distinctive content. Many such perspectives prosper in liberal democracies, and so the task of reciprocal understanding is necessarily onerous. Still, our actions qua deliberative citizen must be grounded in such reciprocity if political cooperation on terms acceptable to us as (diversely) morally motivated citizens is to be possible at all. This is tantamount to an imperative to think autonomously inside the role of citizen because I cannot close-mindedly resist critical consideration of moral views alien to my own without flouting my responsibilities as a deliberative citizen.

Civic education does not exhaust the domain of moral education, even though the more robust conceptions of equal citizenship have far-reaching implications for just relations in civil society and the family. The study of moral education has traditionally taken its bearings from normative ethics rather than political philosophy, and this is largely true of work undertaken in recent decades. The major development here has been the revival of virtue ethics as an alternative to the deontological and consequentialist theories that dominated discussion for much of the twentieth century.

The defining idea of virtue ethics is that our criterion of moral right and wrong must derive from a conception of how the ideally virtuous agent would distinguish between the two. Virtue ethics is thus an alternative to both consequentialism and deontology which locate the relevant criterion in producing good consequences or meeting the requirements of moral duty respectively. The debate about the comparative merits of these theories is not resolved, but from an educational perspective that may be less important than it has sometimes seemed to antagonists in the debate. To be sure, adjudicating between rival theories in normative ethics might shed light on how best to construe the process of moral education, and philosophical reflection on the process might help us to adjudicate between the theories. There has been extensive work on habituation and virtue, largely inspired by Aristotle (Burnyeat 1980; Peters 1981). But whether this does anything to establish the superiority of virtue ethics over its competitors is far from obvious. Other aspects of moral education—in particular, the paired processes of role-modelling and identification—deserve much more scrutiny than they have received (Audi 2017; Kristjánsson 2015, 2017).

Related to the issues concerning the aims and functions of education and schooling rehearsed above are those involving the specifically epistemic aims of education and attendant issues treated by social and virtue epistemologists. (The papers collected in Kotzee 2013 and Baehr 2016 highlight the current and growing interactions among social epistemologists, virtue epistemologists, and philosophers of education.)

There is, first, a lively debate concerning putative epistemic aims. Alvin Goldman argues that truth (or knowledge understood in the “weak” sense of true belief) is the fundamental epistemic aim of education (Goldman 1999). Others, including the majority of historically significant philosophers of education, hold that critical thinking or rationality and rational belief (or knowledge in the “strong” sense that includes justification) is the basic epistemic educational aim (Bailin & Siegel 2003; Scheffler 1965, 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2005, 2017). Catherine Z. Elgin (1999a,b) and Duncan Pritchard (2013, 2016; Carter & Pritchard 2017) have independently urged that understanding is the basic aim. Pritchard’s view combines understanding with intellectual virtue ; Jason Baehr (2011) systematically defends the fostering of the intellectual virtues as the fundamental epistemic aim of education. This cluster of views continues to engender ongoing discussion and debate. (Its complex literature is collected in Carter and Kotzee 2015, summarized in Siegel 2018, and helpfully analyzed in Watson 2016.)

A further controversy concerns the places of testimony and trust in the classroom: In what circumstances if any ought students to trust their teachers’ pronouncements, and why? Here the epistemology of education is informed by social epistemology, specifically the epistemology of testimony; the familiar reductionism/anti-reductionism controversy there is applicable to students and teachers. Anti-reductionists, who regard testimony as a basic source of justification, may with equanimity approve of students’ taking their teachers’ word at face value and believing what they say; reductionists may balk. Does teacher testimony itself constitute good reason for student belief?

The correct answer here seems clearly enough to be “it depends”. For very young children who have yet to acquire or develop the ability to subject teacher declarations to critical scrutiny, there seems to be little alternative to accepting what their teachers tell them. For older and more cognitively sophisticated students there seem to be more options: they can assess them for plausibility, compare them with other opinions, assess the teachers’ proffered reasons, subject them to independent evaluation, etc. Regarding “the teacher says that p ” as itself a good reason to believe it appears moreover to contravene the widely shared conviction that an important educational aim is helping students to become able to evaluate candidate beliefs for themselves and believe accordingly. That said, all sides agree that sometimes believers, including students, have good reasons simply to trust what others tell them. There is thus more work to do here by both social epistemologists and philosophers of education (for further discussion see Goldberg 2013; Siegel 2005, 2018).

A further cluster of questions, of long-standing interest to philosophers of education, concerns indoctrination : How if at all does it differ from legitimate teaching? Is it inevitable, and if so is it not always necessarily bad? First, what is it? As we saw earlier, extant analyses focus on the aims or intentions of the indoctrinator, the methods employed, or the content transmitted. If the indoctrination is successful, all have the result that students/victims either don’t, won’t, or can’t subject the indoctrinated material to proper epistemic evaluation. In this way it produces both belief that is evidentially unsupported or contravened and uncritical dispositions to believe. It might seem obvious that indoctrination, so understood, is educationally undesirable. But it equally seems that very young children, at least, have no alternative but to believe sans evidence; they have yet to acquire the dispositions to seek and evaluate evidence, or the abilities to recognize evidence or evaluate it. Thus we seem driven to the views that indoctrination is both unavoidable and yet bad and to be avoided. It is not obvious how this conundrum is best handled. One option is to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable indoctrination. Another is to distinguish between indoctrination (which is always bad) and non-indoctrinating belief inculcation, the latter being such that students are taught some things without reasons (the alphabet, the numbers, how to read and count, etc.), but in such a way that critical evaluation of all such material (and everything else) is prized and fostered (Siegel 1988: ch. 5). In the end the distinctions required by the two options might be extensionally equivalent (Siegel 2018).

Education, it is generally granted, fosters belief : in the typical propositional case, Smith teaches Jones that p , and if all goes well Jones learns it and comes to believe it. Education also has the task of fostering open-mindedness and an appreciation of our fallibility : All the theorists mentioned thus far, especially those in the critical thinking and intellectual virtue camps, urge their importance. But these two might seem at odds. If Jones (fully) believes that p , can she also be open-minded about it? Can she believe, for example, that earthquakes are caused by the movements of tectonic plates, while also believing that perhaps they aren’t? This cluster of italicized notions requires careful handling; it is helpfully discussed by Jonathan Adler (2002, 2003), who recommends regarding the latter two as meta-attitudes concerning one’s first-order beliefs rather than lessened degrees of belief or commitments to those beliefs.

Other traditional epistemological worries that impinge upon the epistemology of education concern (a) absolutism , pluralism and relativism with respect to knowledge, truth and justification as these relate to what is taught, (b) the character and status of group epistemologies and the prospects for understanding such epistemic goods “universalistically” in the face of “particularist” challenges, (c) the relation between “knowledge-how” and “knowledge-that” and their respective places in the curriculum, (d) concerns raised by multiculturalism and the inclusion/exclusion of marginalized perspectives in curriculum content and the classroom, and (e) further issues concerning teaching and learning. (There is more here than can be briefly summarized; for more references and systematic treatment cf. Bailin & Siegel 2003; Carter & Kotzee 2015; Cleverley & Phillips 1986; Robertson 2009; Siegel 2004, 2017; and Watson 2016.)

The educational research enterprise has been criticized for a century or more by politicians, policymakers, administrators, curriculum developers, teachers, philosophers of education, and by researchers themselves—but the criticisms have been contradictory. Charges of being “too ivory tower and theory-oriented” are found alongside “too focused on practice and too atheoretical”; but in light of the views of John Dewey and William James that the function of theory is to guide intelligent practice and problem-solving, it is becoming more fashionable to hold that the “theory v. practice” dichotomy is a false one. (For an illuminating account of the historical development of educational research and its tribulations, see Lagemann 2000.)

A similar trend can be discerned with respect to the long warfare between two rival groups of research methods—on one hand quantitative/statistical approaches to research, and on the other hand the qualitative/ethnographic family. (The choice of labels here is not entirely risk-free, for they have been contested; furthermore the first approach is quite often associated with “experimental” studies, and the latter with “case studies”, but this is an over-simplification.) For several decades these two rival methodological camps were treated by researchers and a few philosophers of education as being rival paradigms (Kuhn’s ideas, albeit in a very loose form, have been influential in the field of educational research), and the dispute between them was commonly referred to as “the paradigm wars”. In essence the issue at stake was epistemological: members of the quantitative/experimental camp believed that only their methods could lead to well-warranted knowledge claims, especially about the causal factors at play in educational phenomena, and on the whole they regarded qualitative methods as lacking in rigor; on the other hand the adherents of qualitative/ethnographic approaches held that the other camp was too “positivistic” and was operating with an inadequate view of causation in human affairs—one that ignored the role of motives and reasons, possession of relevant background knowledge, awareness of cultural norms, and the like. Few if any commentators in the “paradigm wars” suggested that there was anything prohibiting the use of both approaches in the one research program—provided that if both were used, they were used only sequentially or in parallel, for they were underwritten by different epistemologies and hence could not be blended together. But recently the trend has been towards rapprochement, towards the view that the two methodological families are, in fact, compatible and are not at all like paradigms in the Kuhnian sense(s) of the term; the melding of the two approaches is often called “mixed methods research”, and it is growing in popularity. (For more detailed discussion of these “wars” see Howe 2003 and Phillips 2009.)

The most lively contemporary debates about education research, however, were set in motion around the turn of the millennium when the US Federal Government moved in the direction of funding only rigorously scientific educational research—the kind that could establish causal factors which could then guide the development of practically effective policies. (It was held that such a causal knowledge base was available for medical decision-making.) The definition of “rigorously scientific”, however, was decided by politicians and not by the research community, and it was given in terms of the use of a specific research method—the net effect being that the only research projects to receive Federal funding were those that carried out randomized controlled experiments or field trials (RFTs). It has become common over the last decade to refer to the RFT as the “gold standard” methodology.

The National Research Council (NRC)—an arm of the US National Academies of Science—issued a report, influenced by postpostivistic philosophy of science (NRC 2002), that argued that this criterion was far too narrow. Numerous essays have appeared subsequently that point out how the “gold standard” account of scientific rigor distorts the history of science, how the complex nature of the relation between evidence and policy-making has been distorted and made to appear overly simple (for instance the role of value-judgments in linking empirical findings to policy directives is often overlooked), and qualitative researchers have insisted upon the scientific nature of their work. Nevertheless, and possibly because it tried to be balanced and supported the use of RFTs in some research contexts, the NRC report has been the subject of symposia in four journals, where it has been supported by a few and attacked from a variety of philosophical fronts: Its authors were positivists, they erroneously believed that educational inquiry could be value neutral and that it could ignore the ways in which the exercise of power constrains the research process, they misunderstood the nature of educational phenomena, and so on. This cluster of issues continues to be debated by educational researchers and by philosophers of education and of science, and often involves basic topics in philosophy of science: the constitution of warranting evidence, the nature of theories and of confirmation and explanation, etc. Nancy Cartwright’s important recent work on causation, evidence, and evidence-based policy adds layers of both philosophical sophistication and real world practical analysis to the central issues just discussed (Cartwright & Hardie 2012, Cartwright 2013; cf. Kvernbekk 2015 for an overview of the controversies regarding evidence in the education and philosophy of education literatures).

As stressed earlier, it is impossible to do justice to the whole field of philosophy of education in a single encyclopedia entry. Different countries around the world have their own intellectual traditions and their own ways of institutionalizing philosophy of education in the academic universe, and no discussion of any of this appears in the present essay. But even in the Anglo-American world there is such a diversity of approaches that any author attempting to produce a synoptic account will quickly run into the borders of his or her competence. Clearly this has happened in the present case.

Fortunately, in the last thirty years or so resources have become available that significantly alleviate these problems. There has been a flood of encyclopedia entries, both on the field as a whole and also on many specific topics not well-covered in the present essay (see, as a sample, Burbules 1994; Chambliss 1996b; Curren 1998, 2018; Phillips 1985, 2010; Siegel 2007; Smeyers 1994), two “Encyclopedias” (Chambliss 1996a; Phillips 2014), a “Guide” (Blake, Smeyers, Smith, & Standish 2003), a “Companion” (Curren 2003), two “Handbooks” (Siegel 2009; Bailey, Barrow, Carr, & McCarthy 2010), a comprehensive anthology (Curren 2007), a dictionary of key concepts in the field (Winch & Gingell 1999), and a good textbook or two (Carr 2003; Noddings 2015). In addition there are numerous volumes both of reprinted selections and of specially commissioned essays on specific topics, some of which were given short shrift here (for another sampling see A. Rorty 1998, Stone 1994), and several international journals, including Theory and Research in Education , Journal of Philosophy of Education , Educational Theory , Studies in Philosophy and Education , and Educational Philosophy and Theory . Thus there is more than enough material available to keep the interested reader busy.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

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autonomy: personal | Dewey, John | feminist philosophy, interventions: ethics | feminist philosophy, interventions: liberal feminism | feminist philosophy, interventions: political philosophy | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on autonomy | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on disability | Foucault, Michel | Gadamer, Hans-Georg | liberalism | Locke, John | Lyotard, Jean François | -->ordinary language --> | Plato | postmodernism | Rawls, John | rights: of children | Rousseau, Jean Jacques

Acknowledgments

The authors and editors would like to thank Randall Curren for sending a number of constructive suggestions for the Summer 2018 update of this entry.

Copyright © 2018 by Harvey Siegel D.C. Phillips Eamonn Callan

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Why understanding the historical purposes of modern schooling matters today

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, ghulam omar qargha and ghulam omar qargha fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education emily markovich morris emily markovich morris fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education.

May 22, 2023

This commentary is the second of a three-part series on (1) why it is important to define the purpose of education , (2) how historical forces have interacted to shape the purposes of today’s modern schooling systems, and (3) the role of power in reshaping how the purpose of school is taken up by global education actors in policy and practice .

Last month, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed acknowledged that achieving the goal of quality education for all by 2030 is unlikely due to the “ triple crisis in education ” many countries face—”equity and inclusion, quality, and relevance.” Ensuring education systems are relevant requires reflecting on the historical purposes of schooling and examining how those purposes have evolved in different contexts. Having dialogues about what relevant, inclusive, and quality education means for diverse communities and societies is a critical part of the quest to transform education .

In this commentary, we discuss how the purposes of modern schooling are tied to the legacies of colonization and highlight how modern schooling has obscured and silenced other forms and purposes of education as it has spread. We also argue that it is critical to acknowledge the traditions of learning that predate modern schooling to understand where we want to move as a global community in transforming education. Appreciating the rich mosaic of educational histories and purposes builds on the strengths of educational systems in different localities and allows us to ensure transformation efforts center relevance alongside inclusion, equity, and quality.

Schooling is not synonymous with education

The term “school” is often used interchangeably with “education,” but there are some important distinctions. Education encompasses not only formal schooling but also nonformal and informal learning. Nonformal education refers to intentional and institutionalized learning that is often an “ addition, alternative, and/or a complement to formal schooling ,” such as community-based education programs for out-of-school youth and adults. Informal learning encompasses learning that is not institutionalized , such as learning a trade or skill from a family member or education that takes place organically through hobbies and recreational activities. All three forms are vital to our educational ecosystems and histories, but in this commentary, the focus is on the history of formal schooling that often has more narrow purposes than the wider field of education.

Appreciating the rich mosaic of educational histories and purposes builds on the strengths of educational systems in different localities and allows us to ensure transformation efforts center relevance alongside inclusion, equity, and quality.

Formal schooling began to take shape around the 18th century. However, numerous education systems, such as religious, civil service, apprenticeship, and indigenous systems, have existed for thousands of years. These pre-existing systems focused on the enrichment of the self, community, and society as their primary purposes. For example, the Keju system in China (dating to 206 BCE) and the dabiristan civil servant schools in present-day Afghanistan and Iran (dating to the 3rd century) aimed to prepare well-rounded civil servants by teaching students a wide range of subjects, including religious texts, literature, philosophy, history, administrative documents, cooking, and archery.

The artes liberalis (liberal arts) program, dating back to ancient Greece and Rome, taught broad-based curricula focused on grammar, rhetoric, and logic, as well as geometry, astronomy, and music. Apprenticeships and guilds from ancient civilizations in Egypt, Greece, and Rome provided vocational training and gave students spiritual and moral grounding. Madrassas in the Muslim world continue to teach sacred texts, grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, medicine, and music as a healing science.

The rise of modern schooling 

Modern schooling primarily originated in Europe to build national identities for newly formed nation-states and to replace the Catholic Church’s political and social reign after The Thirty Years’ War (~1610-1648). The purpose of schooling in the 17th century was largely to create loyal subjects to the newly formed nation-states rather than the monarchies. It focused on assimilation, homogenization, and building national identities through standardized language and bringing together strangers to create a unified national identity for fostering social control and political legitimacy rather than democratic civic engagement as we understand it today. The Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation (~1685-1815) across the European empire emphasized education as a means to prepare good citizens. Protestant leaders like Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Amos Comenius (1592-1670)—from Germany and what is now the Czech Republic—called for mass schooling to make religious texts widely available. Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke (1632-1704) and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) argued for a secular government founded on citizen loyalty to the nation rather than the Catholic church. Modern schooling “assume(d) a primary responsibility for the moral, cultural, and political development of the nation ( Andy Green , p. 80).” As such, inclusive and equitable quality education for all —as we ground the purpose today in Sustainable Development Goal 4—was less about human rights and more about building national and religious influence and learning.

The purpose of school turned more toward economic development in Great Britain and across Europe and the United States before and during the Industrial Revolution (1820–1840). The Scottish philosopher, Adam Smith (1723-1790), known as the “Father of Economics” and the “Father of Capitalism,” advocated for mass schooling as a condition for the proper functioning of a free-market economy. Later, North American economists and sociologists Walt Rostow (1916-2003), Alex Inkeles (1920-2010), and Theodore Shultz (1902-1998) argued that modern schooling provided individuals with the skills and knowledge necessary to participate in the modern economy, and was vital to the economic development of nation-states. These arguments led to the human capital theory , which economists like Milton Friedman have used to advocate for the deregulation and privatization of schools to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of schooling. Advocacy for increased parental choice, competition, and accountability resulting from these privatization movements remain deeply rooted in our public discourse and debates on schooling today.

The increased emphasis on economics did not imply that national identity was no longer a focal point in education. John Dewey’s writings emphasize that schooling maintained its primary objective of preparing students for their societal roles by functioning as micro-communities that replicated the typical conditions of society.

The expansion of modern schooling

Although the formation and evolution of modern schooling are rooted in the histories of Europe, North America, and other parts of the Global North, today, almost every nation-state in the world has adopted the model as its official form of education. In most countries under colonial influence, the colonizing forces used  modern schooling  to develop a workforce in the colony, spread culture and values, control the local populations from opposing colonial rule, and create a sense of national unity among colonized peoples. After the rise of nation-states, schooling became a tool for modernizing, developing, and globalizing.

As modern schooling was intentionally spread and dispersed by colonial forces  within Europe and across the world , the result was often the displacement and repressing of existing education models and philosophies of education. This global expansion needs more systematic dialogue about how and which purposes of schooling were assumed in the process. As Julius K. Nyerere, the first president of independent Tanzania, said , “The education provided by the colonial government in the two countries which now form Tanzania had a different purpose. It was not designed to prepare young people for service of their country; instead, it was motivated by a desire to inculcate the values of a colonial society and train individuals for service of the colonial state” (p. 2-3). In more recent writings, climate-focused scholars argue that adopting modern schooling paradigms, like that of John Dewey’s educational philosophy, has transferred a global modernist conception of human agency that urges  humans to colonize nature .

In foreign aid and donor agenda and relationships , purposes of education are often implicit instead of explicitly named and questioned. Although efforts are essential to bringing communities around the world together toward a common goal in education, we must recognize the critical dialogues on modern schooling that have been vibrant and dynamic across the rise of modern schooling.

Furthering a critical dialogue on modern schooling

Throughout history, critics of modern schooling have challenged the positioning of schools for  building national identities and civic engagement , and  economic development . These critiques can be seen in Indigenous education movements, as discussed in Linda Tuhiwahi Smith’s foundational work on decolonizing methodologies and Paolo Freire’s work on critical dialogues in education in Brazil and Latin America. They are part of the language reclamation movements in education across Africa led by Ngugi wa’ Thiongo and others, and efforts to decolonize curriculum .

The deputy secretary-general emphasized reimagining and transforming education systems to make them “ fit for purpose .” This requires a deliberate appreciation of and dialogue on the diverse purposes of education and the various existing models of education systems, both historically and presently. We must question how our efforts to “ fix systems ” often prioritize specific purposes and narrowly focus on schooling as sole avenue for education. If we do not acknowledge how different purposes of education have been privileged through history with the rise and spread of modern schooling, then we risk the possibility of reproducing a colonial model of teaching and learning with narrow purposes. Expanding our purposes will make schooling even more inclusive and high-quality, and most certainly more relevant for the times.

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What Is The Purpose Of Education?

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education (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

By Kim Jones, CEO, Curriki

From an early age, we’ve been told that education is the key to one’s success in life . Study hard! Get good grades! Go to college!  And by making education freely available to all children, we’re giving everyone an equal opportunity to succeed in life. But the path to success and even middle-class existence is no longer so straightforward, if indeed it ever was.

At OAS 2006 , a notable conference, the well-known professor and visionary scholar Nicholas Negroponte stated,

“No matter what global problem you are dreading, whether it's the elimination of poverty, whether it's the creation of peace, whether its solving environmental energy problems, the solution- whatever it is- multiple solutions, the solutions always include education, never is it without an education component and sometimes cannot be done without education.” And he went on to state, “The children should be making things. The children should be writing computer programs. They should be learning by doing. The thing is not to learn excel or such programs, it is to learn to learn.”

It’s Personal

But what is the purpose of education? Is education about preparing students for a specific career? Or is it about teaching students lifelong values, discipline, and the ability to explore new ideas and to think independently?

Over the decades, the following have all been goals of education :

• To prepare children for citizenship
• To cultivate a skilled workforce
• To teach cultural literacy
• To help students become critical thinkers
• To help students compete in a global marketplace

While these are related goals, they demonstrate the diversity of expectations and prioritization that society and its educators must manage.

Education does not have a single purpose; it serves multiple objectives, and the relative importance of each of these objectives can be very personal.  The varied emphasis is a result of the diverse economic, social, spiritual, cultural, and political realities of our individual lives.  Likewise, how we deliver instruction 1 , and how we measure success in school as a predictive indicator of our future success in society and, indeed, one could argue the metrics for society’s success as a whole, must be updated to match.

It’s Ever Changing

In his book, A Whole New Mind , Daniel Pink argues that, as a society, we have transcended the so-called Knowledge Age and are now in a Conceptual Age where our problems no longer have a single verifiable answer. Success in the Knowledge Age was mainly determined by a “SAT-ocracy”: a series of tests throughout the education system that required logic and analysis to identify a single correct answer. This does not meet the needs of the Conceptual Age, which requires creativity, innovation and design skills. He further asserts that education is still firmly geared towards the needs of the Information Age, a quickly disappearing era.  It’s as if our children are moving along an assembly line, where we diligently instill math, reading, and science skills and then test them to see how much they retained, making sure they meet all the “standards” of production.  Today, a successful member of society must bring something different to the table. Individuals are valued for their unique contributions and their ability to think creatively, take initiative and incorporate a global perspective into their decisions.

The Trillion Dollar Question 

With a widespread awareness of the basic frame conditions outlined above, the question is when is our mainstream education system going to adapt to the needs of our post-modern society ?

I believe that we all have a role to play in coming up with a satisfactory answer to this question.

• Curriki believes that post-modern education requires drawing on a much wider range of sources for curricular materials in the personalized pursuit of knowledge. This means going well beyond the textbook. We are pleased to be a leader in hosting thousands upon thousands of curated open source educational resources, available to anyone on the planet with an Internet connection.  Already over 7 million individuals – educators, students, parents, and lifelong learners - have accessed materials at Curriki.org .
• This article is written in collaboration with the Future of Education research initiative.
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What you need to know about the right to education

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that education is a fundamental human right for everyone and this right was further detailed in the Convention against Discrimination in Education. What exactly does that mean?

Why is education a fundamental human right?

The right to education is a human right and indispensable for the exercise of other human rights.

• Quality education aims to ensure the development of a fully-rounded human being.
• It is one of the most powerful tools in lifting socially excluded children and adults out of poverty and into society. UNESCO data shows that if all adults completed secondary education, globally the number of poor people could be reduced by more than half.
• It narrows the gender gap for girls and women. A UN study showed that each year of schooling reduces the probability of infant mortality by 5 to 10 per cent.
• For this human right to work there must be equality of opportunity, universal access, and enforceable and monitored quality standards.

What does the right to education entail?

• Primary education that is free, compulsory and universal
• Secondary education, including technical and vocational, that is generally available, accessible to all and progressively free
• Higher education, accessible to all on the basis of individual capacity and progressively free
• Fundamental education for individuals who have not completed education
• Professional training opportunities
• Equal quality of education through minimum standards
• Quality teaching and supplies for teachers
• Adequate fellowship system and material condition for teaching staff
• Freedom of choice

What is the current situation?

• About 258 million children and youth are out of school, according to UIS data for the school year ending in 2018. The total includes 59 million children of primary school age, 62 million of lower secondary school age and 138 million of upper secondary age.

155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education

• Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education
• 8.2% of primary school age children does not go to primary school  Only six in ten young people will be finishing secondary school in 2030 The youth literacy rate (15-24) is of 91.73%, meaning 102 million youth lack basic literacy skills.

  How is the right to education ensured?

The right to education is established by two means - normative international instruments and political commitments by governments. A solid international framework of conventions and treaties exist to protect the right to education and States that sign up to them agree to respect, protect and fulfil this right.

How does UNESCO work to ensure the right to education?

UNESCO develops, monitors and promotes education norms and standards to guarantee the right to education at country level and advance the aims of the Education 2030 Agenda. It works to ensure States' legal obligations are reflected in national legal frameworks and translated into concrete policies.

• Monitoring the implementation of the right to education at country level
• Supporting States to establish solid national frameworks creating the legal foundation and conditions for sustainable quality education for all
• Advocating on the right to education principles and legal obligations through research and studies on key issues
• Maintaining global online tools on the right to education
• Enhancing capacities, reporting mechanisms and awareness on key challenges
• Developing partnerships and networks around key issues

  How is the right to education monitored and enforced by UNESCO?

• UNESCO's Constitution requires Member States to regularly report on measures to implement standard-setting instruments at country level through regular consultations.
• Through collaboration with UN human rights bodies, UNESCO addresses recommendations to countries to improve the situation of the right to education at national level.
• Through the dedicated online Observatory , UNESCO takes stock of the implementation of the right to education in 195 States.
• Through its interactive Atlas , UNESCO monitors the implementation right to education of girls and women in countries
• Based on its monitoring work, UNESCO provides technical assistance and policy advice to Member States that seek to review, develop, improve and reform their legal and policy frameworks.

What happens if States do not fulfil obligations?

• International human rights instruments have established a solid normative framework for the right to education. This is not an empty declaration of intent as its provisions are legally binding. All countries in the world have ratified at least one treaty covering certain aspects of the right to education. This means that all States are held to account, through legal mechanisms.
• Enforcement of the right to education: At international level, human rights' mechanisms are competent to receive individual complaints and have settled right to education breaches this way.
• Justiciability of the right to education: Where their right to education has been violated, citizens must be able to have legal recourse before the law courts or administrative tribunals.

  What are the major challenges to ensure the right to education?

• Providing free and compulsory education to all
• 155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education.
• Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education.
• Eliminating inequalities and disparities in education

While only 4% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school in low-income countries, 36% of the richest do. In lower-middle-income countries, the gap is even wider: while only 14% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school, 72% of the richest do.

• Migration and displacement

According to a 2019 UNHCR report, of the 7.1 million refugee children of school age, 3.7 million - more than half - do not go to school. 

• Privatization and its impact on the right to education

States need to strike a balance between educational freedom and ensuring everyone receives a quality education.

• Financing of education

The Education 2030 Agenda requires States to allocate at least 4-6 per cent of GDP and/or at least 15-20 per cent of public expenditure to education.

• Quality imperatives and valuing the teaching profession

Two-thirds of the estimated 617 million children and adolescents who cannot read a simple sentence or manage a basic mathematics calculation are in the classroom.

• Say no to discrimination in education! - #RightToEducation campaign

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HerAtlas: Monitoring the right to education for girls and women HerAtlas: Background, rationale and objectives 12 March 2024

HerAtlas: Monitoring the right to education for girls and women HerAtlas: Disclaimer and terms of use 12 March 2024

Other recent news

• Catholic University Homepage

The Higher Purpose of Higher Education Celebrated at the Annual Mass of the Holy Spirit

By Mariana Barillas

The campus community gathered for today’s Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, an annual celebration of the beginning of the academic year at The Catholic University of America. The liturgy was broadcast live on EWTN and livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube .

Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Archbishop of Washington and University Chancellor, was the principal celebrant and homilist. University Chaplain and Vice President for Ministry and Mission Father Aquinas Guilbeau, OP, Basilica Rector and University Trustee Monsignor Walter Rossi, Canon Law School Dean Monsignor Ronny Jenkins, and Theological College Rector Gladstone Stevens, PSS, were among the concelebrants. 

The Mass of the Holy Spirit is traditionally celebrated to ask for guidance, wisdom, and inspiration for the year’s endeavors. During the homily, Cardinal Gregory explained the transformative effect of the Holy Spirit’s grace in all aspects of our lives.

“When we summon the Holy Spirit into our lives, He comes with full force to help us with all the challenges we might face,” said Cardinal Gregory. This year, His Eminence prayed especially for the Spirit to inspire healing and harmony among all peoples. 

“Ours is a special request for the graces that only God’s spirit can provide for our country and every heart,” said Cardinal Gregory. 

The Catholic University of America, as the national university of the Catholic Church in the United States, is the only institution in the country with ecclesiastical faculties granting canonical degrees in three disciplines: canon law , philosophy , and theology . 

During the Mass, five new faculty members from the School of Philosophy and the School of Theology and Religious Studies — Giacomo Fornasieri, Joseph Wood, Jonathan Martin Ciraulo, Katja Hess, and Brother Thomas Piolata, OFM.Cap. — received canonical authorization to teach in the name of the Church. 

After the Mass, University President Peter Kilpatrick shared his reflections of the Mass as a renewal of the community’s commitment to the highest calling of higher education. He spoke of this July’s National Eucharistic Congress — of which the University was a premier sponsor — and his joy in seeing a similar shared spirit of thanksgiving, prayer, and worship at the Mass of the Holy Spirit. 

“We experience that same unity here today, unity we beg the Holy Spirit to give us as we begin this year,” he said. “Let us support one another in following Him Who is the Truth, and Who makes us one with Him and the Father, by submitting ourselves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” 

Take a deeper dive into the meaning of the Mass of the Holy Spirit at The Catholic University of America.

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Article contents

The city beautiful movement, 1890–1920.

• John D. Fairfield John D. Fairfield Department of History, Xavier University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.558
• Published online: 26 April 2018

The City Beautiful movement arose in the 1890s in response to the accumulating dirt and disorder in industrial cities, which threatened economic efficiency and social peace. City Beautiful advocates believed that better sanitation, improved circulation of traffic, monumental civic centers, parks, parkways, public spaces, civic art, and the reduction of outdoor advertising would make cities throughout the United States more profitable and harmonious. Engaging architects and planners, businessmen and professionals, and social reformers and journalists, the City Beautiful movement expressed a boosterish desire for landscape beauty and civic grandeur, but also raised aspirations for a more humane and functional city. “Mean streets make mean people,” wrote the movement’s publicist and leading theorist, Charles Mulford Robinson, encapsulating the belief in positive environmentalism that drove the movement. Combining the parks and boulevards of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted with the neoclassical architecture of Daniel H. Burnham’s White City at the Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition in 1893, the City Beautiful movement also encouraged a view of the metropolis as a delicate organism that could be improved by bold, comprehensive planning. Two organizations, the American Park and Outdoor Art Association (founded in 1897) and the American League for Civic Improvements (founded in 1900), provided the movement with a national presence. But the movement also depended on the work of civic-minded women and men in nearly 2,500 municipal improvement associations scattered across the nation. Reaching its zenith in Burnham’s remaking of Washington, D.C., and his coauthored Plan of Chicago (1909), the movement slowly declined in favor of the “City Efficient” and a more technocratic city-planning profession. Aside from a legacy of still-treasured urban spaces and structures, the City Beautiful movement contributed to a range of urban reforms, from civic education and municipal housekeeping to city planning and regionalism.

• city planning
• municipal reform
• urban beautification
• public sculpture
• World’s Columbian Exposition
• urban aesthetics
• Frederick Law Olmsted
• Daniel H. Burnham
• Charles Mulford Robinson

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 --> --> --> --> -->  HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT NRCC?   CALL (540) 674-3600  REQUEST INFO  EMAIL  ASK AN ADVISOR -->  5251 College Drive  Dublin, VA 24084  (540) 674-3600  Toll Free: 866-462-6722  Fax: (540) 674-3642   -->  782 New River Road NW, Suite 400  Christiansburg, VA 24073  (540) 674-3610  Fax: (540) 674-7128     © NEW RIVER COMMUNITY COLLEGE and general questions about the college to
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	Aug 31, 2024   2024-2025 Student Handbook     2024-2025 Student Handbook New River Community College (NRCC), a member of the Virginia Community College System, subscribes to the tenets set forth in the system’s mission statement: “We give everyone the opportunity to learn and develop the right skills so lives and communities are strengthened.” In addition, NRCC is committed to the ideal that communities are strengthened when all members are offered opportunities to develop their skills and knowledge, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, culture, social class, economic status, age, gender, sexual orientation, personal identity or physical or mental capability. NRCC strives to support individuals in understanding and embracing their roles as citizens while enhancing their sense of self-esteem, personal security and autonomy. In meeting the educational needs of the New River Valley, the college assumes a responsibility to provide educational opportunities through collaborative efforts with local industries, businesses, government institutions and non-profit organizations. NRCC also seeks to strengthen lives by promoting regional economic development and is dedicated to engaging in partnerships with higher education institutions, public schools and other entities. In fulfilling its mission, NRCC offers a variety of certificate, diploma, associate degree and workforce development programs. The institution is committed to assisting students with decisions concerning their educational, career and personal goals and being a place that brings together people of disparate experience while fostering community and cultural enrichment. 2015 Review completed   2020 Review by faculty, staff and college constituencies (January) Community input survey (February-March) Review by College Board (June)   2025 Review by faculty, staff and college constituencies (January) Reveiw by College Board (March)   2030 Review by faculty, staff and college constituencies (January) Community input survey (February-March) Review by College Board (June)   2035 Review by faculty, staff and college constituencies (January) Review by College Board (March) As needed Additional review within 12 months of any revision of the Virginia Community College System mission statement Virginia Community College System Mission Statement Statement of mission. We give everyone the opportunity to learn and develop the right skills so lives and communities are strengthened. Complete 2021: Six Year Strategic Plan for Virginia’s Community Colleges Virginia’s community colleges serve an estimated 400,000 people across the state. The opportunities we provide include some of the most cutting-edge and highly-demanded training and education available. But, simply accessing those opportunities is no longer enough. You have to earn a credential to make it count toward a career. Over the next ten years, Virginia will need to fill 1.5 million jobs. The majority of these jobs will require a postsecondary credential - an associate’s degree and the certifications and licensures that are our bread-and-butter. To accommodate the demand for these middle-skill-level jobs (more than a high school degree but less than a bachelor’s), Virginia’s Community Colleges are embarking on a new six-year strategic plan to triple the number of credentials that our students earn by the year 2021. Tripling the number of credentials that our students earn is the single goal in this strategic plan.  Increase VCCS fall admissions applications from 110,000 to 130,000 by 2017.     Increase the number of students who enroll after applying to 60 percent systemwide.     Increase overall Fall-to-Spring retention to 71 percent systemwide and increase overall Fall-to-Fall retention to 60 percent systemwide.     Increase overall associates degrees, certificates and career certificates by 6,000 over FY2015. Collect information on top business-demanded industry certifications and licenses offered at each college, and the number of students earning them. Increase the number of percent and students for which the college obtains evidence of industry certification or license completion.     Secure resources for outcome-based funding formula for workforce credentials. Secure funding for philanthropic and other investments for the Rural Virginia Horseshoe Initiative. Identify and implement efficiencies in college and system office operations. Kevin Vick, CEA’s new president, wants to share the purpose he found as an educator Kevin Vick moved to Colorado in 1993 and quickly found the ski slopes. Six years later, he was skiing 100 days a year and in the summers went mountain biking and rock climbing. He loved being outdoors, but he felt like something was missing from his life. “I didn’t feel like I was having a real great purpose,” he said. “Or I was really making a difference.” He turned to teaching and found his purpose helping students as a social studies teacher and prep football coach. He also taught other educators to advocate for themselves and organized them to better their work conditions. Now, in his 24th year as an educator, Vick, 55, who has taught at Doherty High School, has taken over as president of the Colorado Education Association , the state’s largest teachers union. He wants to use his platform to make sure Coloradans know how much hard work and dedication educators put into their jobs. He also wants to share his belief that teaching is full of purpose and teachers make a difference every day. “I think people need to understand just how rewarding education is and how admirable the people that are in it really are,” he said. “They’re trying to make students better, Colorado better, and, ultimately, the world better.” Vick recently talked with Chalkbeat Colorado about his new position as president. Vick is stepping out of the vice president role As the former vice president of CEA, Vick worked closely with former President Amie Baca-Oehlert. “You kind of serve at the pleasure of the president,” Vick said. “So whatever Amie needed, I was managing.” He doesn’t plan big changes to the priorities of the union, which has 40,000 members statewide. As a former Colorado Springs Education Association president, Vick says he cares about empowering teachers to have a voice and bargain at the local level. Vick also cares about how testing and state accountability impact teachers and students. He feels accountability has created a one-size-fits-all approach. More consideration should be given to the challenges that happen in classrooms. “Schools are threatened by sanctioning from the state to produce results, regardless of what the students may be experiencing in that environment,” he said. “This creates a lot of disconnect for the teacher, because of their expertise, they know where a student should be. But they’re not able to because of the larger policy pressures.” Vick will also have to tackle new issues in education that his predecessors did not, such as technology such as cellphones and artificial intelligence. Both are tools that can help teachers, but both must be used responsibly, he said. For instance, Vick understands the debate around cellphones and that they can be disruptive. But many teachers have innovative ways of using cellphones in the classroom, he said. Districts should consider how teachers teach before making broad policies, he added. Workplace conditions are especially important to Vick School is a workplace, Vick said. Vick believes better work environments start with pay, and many teachers have a hard time making ends meet on their salaries. Educators can barely afford to cover their health care, he said. Colorado and other states have struggled to keep teachers in the classroom because of pay, and many educators end up working multiple jobs because they don’t earn enough teaching. “Educators do get better every year of their career,” he said. “They just get a higher skill level every year. And so we need to keep them in as long as possible.” Vick will continue to push for more state education funding This week, Vick appeared before lawmakers this week during a special session to help secure a deal that could avoid two ballot initiative s that many predicted would devastate schools and government services. The special session called by Gov. Jared Polis was meant to help preserve education funding while also striking a deal on property tax relief. Vick defended the property tax deal to fend off the ballot initiatives. And for years, CEA has been a constant in legislative committees, especially when it comes to calling for increased school funding. This year, Colorado lawmakers ended the practice of withholding money from schools to pay for other priorities . Not much will change there with Vick. He said he supports a statewide ballot initiative to boost school funding. “We feel that the timing is pretty good right now to make that case to voters that our schools do deserve better and our kids deserve better,” he said. Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at [email protected] . New Colorado Education Association President Kevin Vick shares how he will approach the job as he replaces Amie Baca-Oehlert. U.S. officials say the MDE misled districts about what they were entitled to provide for students with disabilities during COVID closures. Days above 90 degrees on the heat index are expected to quadruple over the next two decades, meaning more closures for Detroit public schools The superintendent is expected to make school closure recommendations on Nov. 7 and the school board is set to vote on them Nov. 21. Memphis-Shelby County Schools violated Title IX by not adequately responding to complaints of sexual harassment and assault of students over a three-year period, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights announced. The updated application process grew out of a board resolution affirming its desire to collaborate with schools of all kinds, including charters. 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While every effort has been made to ensure that the material on FederalRegister.gov is accurately displayed, consistent with the official SGML-based PDF version on govinfo.gov, those relying on it for legal research should verify their results against an official edition of the Federal Register. Until the ACFR grants it official status, the XML rendition of the daily Federal Register on FederalRegister.gov does not provide legal notice to the public or judicial notice to the courts. Design Updates: As part of our ongoing effort to make FederalRegister.gov more accessible and easier to use we've enlarged the space available to the document content and moved all document related data into the utility bar on the left of the document. Read more in our feature announcement . Request for Information on Identifying and Tracking Data Related to Early Childhood Education Providers A Notice by the Education Department on 06/20/2024 This document has been published in the Federal Register . Use the PDF linked in the document sidebar for the official electronic format. Document Details Published Content - Document Details Agency Department of Education Agency/Docket Number Docket ID ED-2024-OPE-0072 Document Citation 89 FR 51878 Document Number 2024-13446 Document Type Notice Pages 51878-51880 (3 pages) Publication Date 06/20/2024 Published Content - Document Details View printed version (PDF) Document Dates Published Content - Document Dates Comments Close 07/22/2024 Dates Text We must receive your comments by July 22, 2024. Published Content - Document Dates This table of contents is a navigational tool, processed from the headings within the legal text of Federal Register documents. This repetition of headings to form internal navigation links has no substantive legal effect. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Supplementary information:. Comments are no longer being accepted. See DATES for details. 285 comments have been received at Regulations.gov. 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Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at regulations.gov. However, if you require an accommodation or cannot otherwise submit your comments via regulations.gov, please ( print page 51879) contact the program contact person listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT . The Department will not accept comments by email or by fax. To ensure that the Department does not receive duplicate copies, please submit your comments only once. Additionally, please include the Docket ID at the top of your comments. Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to www.regulations.gov to submit your comments electronically. Information on using Regulations.gov, including instructions for accessing agency documents, submitting comments, and viewing the docket, is available on the site under the “FAQ” tab. Privacy Note: The Department's policy for comments received from members of the public is to make these submissions available for public viewing in their entirety on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov . Therefore, commenters should be careful to include in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly available. We encourage, but do not require, that each respondent include their name, title, institution or affiliation, and the name, title, mailing and email addresses, and telephone number of a contact person for the institution or affiliation, if any. Greg Marak. Telephone: (202) 401-6250. You may also email your questions to [email protected] , but as described above, comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at regulations.gov. If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1. Background: Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program in 2007 as part of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, Public Law 110-84 , to encourage individuals to enter into and remain employed in public service professions. The program alleviates financial burdens associated with Federal Direct Loans for borrowers working for certain public service providers by forgiving all remaining loan balances following 10 years of public service while the borrower makes qualifying student loan payments. Since its creation in 2007, PSLF has been available to borrowers working for government at all levels, non-profit organizations that are tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and other non-profits that provide at least one of the specific services listed in the statute. This includes early care educators who work in the public sector or for non-profit organizations. A significant share of early care educators, however, are not considered public sector or non-profit employees and current regulations do not provide a pathway for their eligibility for PSLF. Data from the National Survey of Early Care and Education, conducted by the Department of Health and Human Service's Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, estimates that extending PSLF eligibility to early childhood education (ECE) workers regardless of the tax status of their employer would allow more than 450,000 additional ECE workers to earn credit toward PSLF—about 68,000 who work in home-based settings and 390,000 who work in center-based settings—if they have student loans. [ 1 ] This reflects roughly one-third of the overall ECE workforce. On July 13, 2022, the Department published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register ( 87 FR 41878 ). [ 2 ] In the NPRM, the Department proposed improvements to PSLF that reduce regulatory and administrative barriers that have historically made it more difficult for borrowers to make progress toward forgiveness under PSLF. This included simplifying criteria to help borrowers certify employment, helping borrowers earn progress toward PSLF for months that did not count before, and providing borrowers with more opportunities to correct problems with PSLF. Additionally, in the NPRM, the Department asked directed questions about the possibility of allowing ECE providers who are private for-profit businesses to be considered eligible employers for the purposes of PSLF. In response, the Department received many detailed comments about early childhood education as well as a range of comments in support of making other for-profit employers eligible to serve as qualifying employers for PSLF for individuals in certain occupations. On November 1, 2022, the Secretary published final regulations  [ 3 ] in the Federal Register . Those final regulations did not include regulations regarding whether, and under what circumstances, private for-profit ECE providers employing borrowers working as early childhood educators, should be treated as qualifying employers for PSLF. [ 4 ] Solicitation of Comments: Early care educators are among the lowest-paid workers in the country; and the Administration has committed through Executive Order 14095 , to better supporting the care workforce. [ 5 ] The E.O. states that investments in the care workforce are foundational to helping to retain care workers and improving health and educational outcomes for those in their care. The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to gather information about ECE providers. This RFI and the comments received in response to this RFI will not be considered as part the Affordability and Student Loans proposed rule ( 87 FR 41878 ) and any subsequent related final rules. The comments received in response to this RFI will not be used as part of the rulemaking related to the treatment of for-profit employers, including ECE providers, and eligibility for PSLF. Instead, the feedback from this RFI will help inform the Department's understanding of different approaches that might be considered when implementing non-rulemaking solutions related to this issue. Given the operational and implementation hurdles associated with PSLF, the Department is interested in understanding whether there are ways that eligibility could be streamlined if all ECEs became eligible. The Department is soliciting information and data from the public on how the Department could determine employer eligibility and related considerations if for-profit ECE employers were to be considered eligible employers if they provided one of the services listed in the statute. The Department encourages ( print page 51880) comments from researchers, academics, policy experts, and other individuals familiar with ECE employer data; organizations that work directly with ECE workers; State and Tribal government officials who oversee and administer ECE programs; ECE practitioners; and other members of the public. The Department will review all comments received, but does not intend to respond to comments. The Department seeks feedback on the following questions: (1) The Department has always relied upon employer identification numbers (EINs) to identify whether an employer is a non-profit under IRC 501(c)(3). This approach has allowed the Department to create a comprehensive list of eligible employers and use a consistent identifier system. However, some for-profit businesses may be sole proprietors or other providers that do not have an EIN. Are there other uniform sources that the Department might consider using for determinations of qualifying employers? (2) If there are not other uniform sources, how should the Department address eligibility determinations of a for-profit ECE employer? (3) If in consultation with the Department, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), issued a voluntary Public Records Act request from the States to create a nationwide registry of EINs of ECE providers, are State and Tribal agencies that oversee and administer ECE programs in a position to collect this information? Do commenters believe that all States would provide this information? Are there any additional considerations the Department should be aware of should HHS issue this request? (4) What feedback can be provided concerning the time it would take a State or Tribe to undertake the collection of EINs for licensed and regulated providers, including the process, privacy, administrative, or other considerations that the Department should take into account? (5) Should the Department consider a process that relies on unique identifiers associated with licensure as opposed to EINs to identify eligible employers? This is a request for information only. This RFI is not a request for proposals and does not commit the Department to take any future administrative, contractual, regulatory, or other action. The Department will not pay for any information or costs that you may incur in responding to this RFI. Any documents and information submitted in response to this RFI become the property of the U.S. Government and will not be returned. 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You may also access documents of the Department published in the Federal Register by using the article search feature at www.federalregister.gov . Specifically, through the advanced search feature at this site, you can limit your search to documents published by the Department. Nasser Paydar, Assistant Secretary, Office of Postsecondary Education. 1.  These estimates are from the Administration for Children and Families' National Survey of Early Care and Education, both the 2019 Home-Based NSECE chartbook and the 2019 Center-Based NSECE chartbook. These data show that approximately three-fourths of home-based providers had at least some college, and 72 percent of for-profit ECE workers had some college or higher. 2.   https://www.federalregister.gov/​documents/​2022/​07/​13/​2022-14631/​student-assistance-general-provisions-federal-perkins-loan-program-federal-family-education-loan . 3.   https://www.federalregister.gov/​documents/​2022/​11/​01/​2022-23447/​institutional-eligibility-under-the-higher-education-act-of-1965-as-amended-student-assistance . 4.  Section 103(8) of the Higher Education Act contains a definition of ”early childhood education program” that includes public preschool, Head Start, and State licensed and regulated child care programs. It does not speak to the tax-status of providers. Unlike the public Kindergarten through 12th grade system, which provides free access to education for all age-eligible children and youth, there is no parallel system for our country's youngest children. As a result, ECE is delivered through a system of mixed delivery that includes public programs, non-profit settings, and for-profit settings. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/​ecd/​policy-guidance/​dear-colleague-letter-mixed-delivery . The vast majority of ECE settings are home-based, and do not carry non-profit tax designations. Compensation across settings is low generally, regardless of the tax-status of the ECE provider. https://www.bls.gov/​oes/​current/​oes_​va.htm . 5.   Federal Register : Increasing Access to High-Quality Care and Supporting Caregivers. [ FR Doc. 2024-13446 Filed 6-18-24; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4000-01-P Executive Orders Reader Aids Information. About This Site Legal Status Accessibility No Fear Act Continuity Information 441 IMAGES Chris Hedges Quote: “The true purpose of education is to make minds PPT What is the Purpose of Education? Unlocking the Secrets: The Evolving Purpose of Education Today Malcolm S. Forbes Quote: “The purpose of education is to replace an Malcolm S. Forbes Quote: “The purpose of education is to replace an VIDEO What's the Point? Finding Purpose and Meaning #christianinspiration Find Your Purpose_ Embrace the Power of Meaningful Living 10 Minute Guide to All Arguments for God's Existence Explained (REACTION) Proving God exists using math (React) #MathAndFaith #ScienceAndSpirituality #CosmicTruths Philosophical Health: A Practical Introduction (Book Trailer) COMMENTS "The Purpose of Education" Read King's article from 1947 on the purpose of education, where he argues that it should combine utility, culture, and moral development. He criticizes the former governor of Georgia, Eugene Talmadge, for having a Phi Beta Kappa key but no character. 4 Core Purposes of Education, According to Sir Ken Robinson The author argues that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. He proposes four core purposes of education: personal, cultural, economic, and social. Why is Education Important and What is the Purpose of Education Learn about the benefits and purposes of education at different levels, from early childhood to bilingual and physical education. Find out how education affects academic achievement, cognitive development, social skills, and economic success. 7 Core Purposes for Education Explore seven core purposes for education, from knowledge to get by to teaching students how to live. Learn how different opinions and perspectives can affect the classroom and the school community. The purpose of education Education should enable one to think critically and to achieve legitimate goals, according to King. He criticizes the narrow and exploitative views of education and argues for its moral and social dimensions. "The Purpose of Education" King argues that education should discipline the mind and integrate human life around central ideals. He criticizes education without morals and advocates for thinking intensively and objectively. What Is Education? Insights from the World's Greatest Minds Explore the meaning of education from the perspectives of philosophers, poets, educators, and world leaders. Find insights on the goals, values, and challenges of education for 21st century learners. Education Education is the transmission of culture and knowledge from one generation to another through formal and informal means. Learn about the history, types, and philosophies of education, as well as the role of education in society and the individual. What's the point of education? It's no longer just about getting a job Education has always served a pragmatic purpose. It is a tool to be used to bring about a specific outcome (or set of outcomes). For the most part, this purpose is economic . In the quest to transform education, putting purpose at the ... Education as culturally and spiritually sustaining is one of the purposes that receives insufficient attention in global education conversations. This purpose is critical to the past, present, and ... The Importance of Purpose in Education The Importance of Purpose in Education. Students can discover a sense of purpose in their learning through questions that lead them to think about their interests. I recently met with an eighth-grade student who had been accepted to a specialized high school focused on science. I wanted to compliment her on her achievement and learn more about ... What Are We Doing? Reflecting on the Purpose of Education ... The question of purpose, or the point of education, has a long history in writing on education and continues to be a site of controversy and debate. Whelen critiques the approaches taken by two authors, Nel Noddings and Gert Biesta, to the question: what is education... What Is "Education"? This chapter explores the meaning and purpose of education from a philosophical perspective. It defines education as a deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to transmit, provoke or acquire knowledge, values, attitudes, skills or sensibilities. Why Is Education Important? Generally speaking, they all tie closely to a person's goals in life and to their future well-being. Below are some of the other most common reasons education is so important: Education helps a person hone their communication skills by learning how to read, write, speak and listen. Education develops critical thinking. Philosophy of Education Philosophy of Education. Philosophy of education is the branch of applied or practical philosophy concerned with the nature and aims of education and the philosophical problems arising from educational theory and practice. Because that practice is ubiquitous in and across human societies, its social and individual manifestations so varied, and ... About education UNESCO is the only UN agency with a mandate to cover all aspects of education. It leads the Global Education 2030 Agenda and works to ensure education is a human right for all throughout life. Why understanding the historical purposes of modern ... This commentary is the second of a three-part series on (1) why it is important to define the purpose of education, (2) how historical forces have interacted to shape the purposes of today's ... What Is The Purpose Of Education? Education does not have a single purpose; it serves multiple objectives, and the relative importance of each of these objectives can be very personal. The varied emphasis is a result of the ... What you need to know about the right to education The right to education is a human right and indispensable for the exercise of other human rights. Quality education aims to ensure the development of a fully-rounded human being. It is one of the most powerful tools in lifting socially excluded children and adults out of poverty and into society. UNESCO data shows that if all adults completed ... Full article: What is the purpose of education? A context for early Whilst the purpose of Education is multi-faceted and may be contested, Education is a right. Given SGD Target 4.2, there is now global consensus that ECE is part of Education (UN Citation 2015). The value of the articles in this issue - and in the International Journal of Early Years Education as a whole - in terms of advancing knowledge ... What's the purpose of education in the 21st century? February 12, 2015 at 5:00 a.m. EST. What is the purpose of education? The question came into stark relief when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recently tried to quietly change the century-old mission ... Community education Community Education, also known as Community-Based Education or Community Learning & Development, or Development Education is an organization's programs to promote learning and social development work with individuals and groups in their communities using a range of formal and informal methods. A common defining feature is that programmes and ... The Higher Purpose of Higher Education Celebrated at the Annual Mass of After the Mass, University President Peter Kilpatrick shared his reflections of the Mass as a renewal of the community's commitment to the highest calling of higher education. He spoke of this July's National Eucharistic Congress — of which the University was a premier sponsor — and his joy in seeing a similar shared spirit of ... Youth Voice In Community Schools The purpose of this guide is to illuminate best practices for meaningful engagement of youth in Community Schools and to recognize youth voice as a community asset that can help advance more equitable school systems. Youth voice plays an important role in redesigning how public education functions. The City Beautiful Movement, 1890-1920 Aside from a legacy of still-treasured urban spaces and structures, the City Beautiful movement contributed to a range of urban reforms, from civic education and municipal housekeeping to city planning and regionalism. NRCC's Mission/Purpose and VCCS Mission Statement New River Community College Mission/Purpose. ... to strengthen lives by promoting regional economic development and is dedicated to engaging in partnerships with higher education institutions, public schools and other entities. In fulfilling its mission, NRCC offers a variety of certificate, diploma, associate degree and workforce development ... Meet the Colorado Education Association's new president Kevin Vick Kevin Vick moved to Colorado in 1993 and quickly found the ski slopes. Six years later, he was skiing 100 days a year and in the summers went mountain biking and rock climbing. He loved being ... Request for Information on Identifying and Tracking Data Related to AGENCY: Office of Postsecondary Education, Department of Education. ACTION: Request for information. SUMMARY: This notice is a request for information in the form of written comments that include information, research, and suggestions regarding operational aspects of the possible inclusion of for-profit early childhood education providers as eligible employers for the purpose of Public Service ... essay homework paper phd project resume review speech study thesis