Purpose of Education Free Essays

The purpose of education is to give to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable. † – Plato †¢ â€Å"Education is preparation to live completely. † – Herbert Spencer †¢ â€Å"A complete and generous education fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war. We will write a custom essay sample on Purpose of Education or any similar topic only for you Order Now † – John Milton †¢ â€Å"Education seeks, by social stimulus, guidance, and control, to develop the natural powers of the child, so as to render him able and disposed to lead a healthy, happy, and morally worthy life. – Sully †¢ â€Å"Education is the preparation of the individual for reciprocal union with society; the preparation of the individual so that he can help his fellow-men and in return receive and appreciate their help. † – W. T. Harris †¢ â€Å"Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. † – Malcolm Forbes †¢ â€Å"It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time — for we are bound by that — but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time. † – T. S. Eliot †¢ â€Å"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. – G. K. Chesterton †¢ à ¢â‚¬Å"Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom. † – George Washington Carver †¢ â€Å"Education is the process by which one mind forms another mind, and one heart, another heart. † – Jules Simon †¢ â€Å"A complete education ought to preserve the pupil’s bodily health and strength, and give him command over his mental and muscular powers, increase his quickness and sharpness of perception, form in him the habit of prompt and accurate judgment, lead to delicacy and depth in every right feeling, and make him inflexible in his conscientious and steadfast devotion to all his duties. – Thomas Hill †¢ â€Å"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. † – Robert Frost †¢ â€Å"The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. † – Robert M. Hutchins †¢ â€Å"Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible. † – Robert M. Hutchins †¢ â€Å"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. † – Martin Luther King, Jr. †¢ â€Å"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. † – Martin Luther King, Jr. †¢ â€Å"Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery. – Horace Mann †¢ â€Å"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 do know and what you don’t. † – Anatole France †¢ â€Å"He who opens a school door, closes a prison. † – Victor Hugo †¢ â€Å"The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn. † – Alvin Toffler †¢ â€Å"Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity. – Aristotle How to cite Purpose of Education, Essay examples Purpose of Education Free Essays string(206) " critically of educational institutions in her article entitled â€Å"Formulating new criteria for teacher candidate selection† because of their lack of teaching the correct methods that best help students\." John Travolta Earl Sullivan Writing 121 28 February 2013 The Right Path When I first started school I did not understand the purpose of my education. I saw it as another thing I was forced to do. All children are forced to go to school and I think that because we have no choice our childhood image of education ends up blurry. We will write a custom essay sample on Purpose of Education or any similar topic only for you Order Now Generally when people are forced to do something against their will they develop a lack of motivation for the activity. I think this explains why many kids in elementary schools have decided that school is a waste of time and that they don’t enjoy it. Since children are required to attend school up until age 16 in the U. S. many kids don’t realize how lucky they are to be participating in a free education. Young people in other parts of the Earth have to pay thousands of dollars if they want to become educated. These people pay for their education because they understand how much it can positively benefit their lives. I wish I had learned earlier that education is the most important tool for survival. In Earl Shorris’ article entitled â€Å"In the Hands of the Restless Poor† he explains that rich people have been educated by the humanities and the poor people in his class weren’t. Shorris believes that with education in the humanities the students in his class will begin to understand that learning is their best tool for survival, not guns or knives. The purpose of education is surrounded by the need for survival. Over the course of human history many new practices of medicine have been developed. It is essential that people be educated in how to stop bleeding from a wound or how to give someone the heimlich maneuver. If for whatever reason humans need to gather food in the wilderness it is important to know which food is okay to eat and which is poisonous. Many people who are not educated develop obesity because they don’t care about the information they might have heard about the risks of eating unhealthy items like fast food and products containing high fructose corn syrup. Shorris believes that education is essential for helping people get out of poverty. Shorris explains that people who are educated in the humanities have gained leverage over the people who haven’t. I mean that with education in the humanities the people in his class were able to become political. Political in this context means understanding how to communicate with other people for mutual or singular benefit. The people with political minds know how to communicate during an interview so they have a much higher chance of receiving that job. Learning how to be political can help a students experience in school. These students are not embarrassed to ask questions when they don’t understand assignments. I think that Shorris is teaching his readers how to have the confidence to ask teachers, adults, and peers questions. With the ability to ask questions people are able to learn more from their educators because when people are first introduced to a new concept it is difficult to completely understand the idea. The only way to fully comprehend is by asking the right questions. Shorris teaches us that education should be the key to getting out of an impoverished lifestyle. From learning how to ask questions lifelong learners are able to learn even more from their education. Asking questions can clarify understanding and help people understand the full concept. I agree that education should be used as a way to escape from poverty. The only problem with education being an escape route from poverty is that it takes a lot of time and effort before people see any results. Some people in poverty might not see any changes in their lives, money wise, until much later after they graduate from college. Since many teenagers don’t want to wait ten or fifteen years until they graduate from college they turn to gang life. They see gang life as a way to be able to support themselves and their family quickly. The problem with gang life is that the members become trapped by a surround of force. This means that once they are a gang member they have a rough time quitting their gang and adjusting back to civilian life. This is unlike the force that Shorris speaks about relating to being poor because many gang members have lives of luxury. It is related to Shorris’ idea because I imagine that being in a gang is like being on another planet. The gang members see no alternative lifestyle to gangs because many of them will be killed if they try to leave. If gang members leave their gangs they don’t know any alternative to making money besides crime and they have trouble fitting back into society. If they managed to collect any profit from drug money they won’t be able to use most of it because it will be linked to a drug organization. Even though gang life may seem like a shortcut to a rich lifestyle, it will actually take much longer than an education because of the dirty money, chances of a prison sentence, and the high risk of death. With an education, people are able to learn about the world and what it takes to be wealthy without the risk of a person overdosing on heroin that you sold them. For example one might learn in school about non-profit organizations and devote their lives to helping other people get on the right path to success. Earl Shorris made an effort to recruit top notch teachers for his Clemente Classroom. His class was well organized but without great teachers he feared that his students would not benefit from the teaching. He was very fortunate that these teachers decided to volunteer their time. Carol Stevens talks very critically of educational institutions in her article entitled â€Å"Formulating new criteria for teacher candidate selection† because of their lack of teaching the correct methods that best help students. You read "Purpose of Education" in category "Papers" She complains that institutions develop requirements that makes them look better in the public eye, instead they need to develop curriculums that focus on proper techniques that can help individual students more than the collective group. Stevens is focusing on a rush of new teachers being hired in the year 2000, but her article can relate to any hiring process that teaching administrators go through. It is important that we have some of our brightest minds in our country being teachers. A sad fact is that a majority of our very intelligent citizens do not pursue a teaching career because of the low wages. Since we don’t have the smartest of smart being enrolled in teacher education programs at universities, Stevens writes that our programs need to be even more precise so that our incoming teachers fully understand how to positively change their student’s lives. When it boils down to the, basics it is the teacher’s responsibility to educate their students. Whether a teacher succeeds or fails at making a difference depends on the techniques they learned in college. An incorrect teaching method would be an educator who treats their students like they are fused together as one person. Educators like this don’t think about individual students and different methods of teaching. A poor educator will teach one method to the whole class and be surprised when numerous students don’t understand the concepts. Due to poor teacher training a teacher might believe that the problem lies in their student’s intelligence instead of their teaching methods. It t is an educators job to teach the students that education is a key part of survival. It should not be forgotten that no matter how great of an education a teacher has or the advanced teaching methods they use, students in their class will not learn anything if they don’t listen and work hard. It is also every individual’s responsibility to understand that we will not learn if we are not motivated to absorb information. Stevens argues that school districts hiring teachers, and institutions accepting people as education majors have different requirements for being accepted and she says this is a problem because they are viewed as dangers to the overall skill of teachers in America. If we have teachers that aren’t prepared to be teachers then no student will be able to see what education can do for them. Education is supposed to be a ticket to survival. That ticket will not help you if the pilot does not know the proper way to fly the plane. Education should be a key to survival for us and Stevens goes one step further into this theory by making the point that America needs more higher quality teachers if we want our educational system to play an even bigger role in helping our citizens find success. Stevens does not like how only forty-three states in America require potential teachers to take a licensing test. She wants all fifty states to require a test so incoming teachers can prove the knowledge they’ve learned. Stevens believes that teachers are the main people who have the responsibility of educating us and that it is their duty to properly educate us. She believes that an important method of educating students is being able to communicate verbally with them. I think that verbal communication is important because face to face conversations gives students an opportunity to be more personal with their teachers and once a more personal relationship is created, a student will have ask more questions and become motivated to listen to what their teachers have to say. Stevens discusses the advantages of having an organized lesson plan. Without a termly lesson plan a teacher will not be able to properly educate their students because they didn’t plan their class time correctly. With a lack of time, the students will not have a chance to fully understand the more complicated ideas in the classroom. Stevens believes that education needs to be appropriate for age and grade level. This is a problem that many new educators encounter during their first few years of teaching especially if they have chosen to be an elementary teacher or middle school teacher. Proper teaching instruction must be developed by teachers so that the age level they are teaching is able to understand what is going on. If teachers know how to become more personal with their students, have organized lesson plans and use those lesson plans for the age group they are teaching, then education becomes a ticket to survival for their students. With these proper teaching methods the students will be able learn at a good rate and become successful productive members of society. Shorris had great teachers in his Clemente Class and I think if he accepted worse teachers half of the original sixteen people who graduated from the class would have failed the class. I think that recruiting great teachers into that field of employment will help our intelligence as a nation because I believe that a student can become motivated to learn with the help of an educator who invests their time in their students life. I remember in fourth grade I didn’t have very much motivation to excel but when I got to fifth grade a great teacher named Mrs. Kenyon helped me become a better student by being strict. She was strict meaning she cared if we didn’t do our work, she wanted us to excel. She brought out the best student in me by making me work really hard to get the good grades that I wanted. I carried this work ethic through middle school, and picked it back up in college when I began understanding how important my education was. Mrs. Kenyon taught me that education is my ticket to survival, my shot at a life with endless opportunities. If Mrs. Kenyon hadn’t been taught how to communicate with her fifth grade students so well over the course of her life I don’t think that I would have been able to pick up the pieces of my life that I broke during high school. When I had motivation to become educated, I was able to realize how much potential I had. She showed me how much potential I have as a student and as a person. Now in my college days I am learning many things from my new teachers. I don’t think I would understand these great college facts if I hadn’t learned about the knowledgeable rewards I receive when I work hard on my school work. Mrs. Kenyon taught me about the rewards because she learned how to be a great teacher in school. I believe Mrs. Kenyon is the teacher that Carol Stevens is drawing a picture of in her article. How to cite Purpose of Education, Papers