The Nature of Education

What is the Nature of Education? What is the purpose of Education? Is it to "foster a love of learning" or is it to provide children with the tools to do things in society, including learning new skills to be functional? To some this may seem an innocuous question or a pointless one since the end result is the same, isn't it? In an ideal world, I would certainly hope that the end result is the same. However as I see it, both the end results are different and the processes used are different.

The end result of fostering learning lovers is a population of young people who enjoy learning about anything. I am going to assume the hope is that young people will then have no inhibitions about learning anything new that they might need in the future. Really? I enjoyed primary school. I enjoyed parts of secondary school. I would say that I like, if not love learning about new things. However I actively procrastinate when I'm faced with needing to learn anything I find boring, pointless, or difficult/tedious. The end result of fostering learning lovers is just that: people who love learning. That doesn't necessarily mean that they can do, or even want to do.

How about teaching the core skills required to be functional in a multitude of jobs? This way at the very least, young adults (not the euphemism for children) have the option of taking any job that comes their way or to learn the skills needed to take on a job. It sounds archaic, but this was the purpose of the first education institutes developed during the Industrial Revolution. To get those children to at least the minimum level of functionality in society. At that time, it was to serve industry and companies. However did it also serve those children? As educators, shouldn't we be thinking about which serves children better: to love learning, or to be at least minimally functional?

I write as if they are two different things because the way I see it, the teaching approaches are fundamentally different. One requires a relaxed pace of teaching, and making sure to provide a wide range of enjoyable experiences to learn from. The keyword there being enjoyable. The other approach requires programmes/progressions of learning that build upon each other to meet a target level of ability.

Children are similar to adults, some will love learning, some with hate it, and some will be indifferent. In fact children are possibly more prone to enjoy learning than adults since all young need to learn the skills required of adulthood. If they already possess this attitude, then why bother trying to foster it? Why not change the methods of teaching, so that this natural curiosity isn't taken away from children while still learning the core skills?

There are people like Prince Ea espousing that the current approach to education is broken (see the video) and that school didn't teach the skills needed for everyday life. Really? Did he not learn to read? Did he not learn to think in different ways? Did he not learn information as a base to build, or in his case, to re-build from? How is he even a thinker of that level if school didn't teach him some fundamental thinking skills?

Sure, he is talking mainly about the American high school system. However to blatantly ignore the fact that he can do what he can because of school is also wrong.

School can never teach "the skills needed for the future". We cannot know the future. We can predict, but mostly we will be wrong. No one predicted YouTube and therefore "YouTuber" as a career pathway. No one predicted computer miniaturisation, 3D printing and their cost dropping to the point where MakerSpaces and "Maker" being a career pathway. No one predicted social media and "Influencer" as a career pathway. What skills do these all have in common? The abilities to read, analyse numbers, understand trends in people/populations, and plan. In other words, reading, writing, maths, history, science, critical thinking. Despite my desire to rag on influencers, the successful ones admittedly know how to manipulate people's perceptions and give them what they want...critical thinking of a kind.

Back to the point, Education or teachers at least, cannot teach the skills needed in the future. We can however, teach the fundamental skills needed to learn and adapt in the future regardless of whether a person loves what they're doing or not.