What’s the True Goal of Education?

I receive a newsletter every week titled Marshall Memo from Kim Marshall at Kim.Marshall8@verizon.net.  It is an educational newsletter that is filled with great information on education and growing students and teachers, and many of the articles and information is very pertinant to coaching.  Coaches, among many other roles, are teachers of the game of basketball.  I love reading articles about education and using them to help myself grow as a coach, a teacher, a leader, and a man.

This article discusses the true goal of education and what we should be looking to get out of our students.

In this Education Week article, author Marc Prensky questions whether learning is the best word for what we want from our schools. Learning is the right word if our aspiration is that students graduate as learned scholars, but that’s not what most of us have in mind for K-12 schools. Learning is important, of course, but it’s a means to an end. “The real goal of education, and of school,” says Rose, “is becoming… Most of us would prefer our children become the very best people they can be, capable of effective thinking, acting, relating, and accomplishing in whatever field they enjoy and have a passion for.”

“We spend so much time and effort looking at test scores, averages, and other petty measurements of ‘learning’ that we have little time or energy left to focus on who our students are (or are not) as individuals,” he says, “what they love or hate, or what drives them. We shouldn't be surprised, then, if they become people we do not like or respect, or if we have concerns about their potential contributions to society… There are probably billions of people in the world who have finished school without becoming what they could have. Some may have acquired knowledge and skills through their education, but have accomplished little or nothing.”

Rather than constantly asking how much students have learned and obsessing about how to measure learning, Rose believes we should be asking, “What did you become that you weren't before? Have you moved in a positive direction to better yourself and society?” He believes teachers should sit down a few times a year and write to students and parents about what each student is becoming. And students should be asking themselves, “Who am I becoming? Have I become a better thinker? If so, in what ways? Am I able to do things I couldn’t before? What is important to me and why? Can I relate comfortably to individuals, in teams and in virtual communities? Can I make the world a better place?”

“If we had different expectations,” Rose concludes, “who knows what our kids might become?”

“The Goal of Education Is Becoming” by Marc Prensky in Education Week, May 7, 2014 (Vol. 33, #30, p. 40, 36), www.edweek.org