What is the purpose of education?

The one continuing purpose of education, since ancient times, has been to bring people to as full a realization as possible of what it is to be a human being. Other statements of educational purpose have also been widely accepted: to develop the intellect, to serve social needs, to contribute to the economy, to create an effective work force, to prepare students for a job or career, to promote a particular social or political system. These purposes offered are undesirably curbed in scope, and in some instances they conflict with the comprehensive purpose I have indicated; they imply a distorted human existence. The wideranging purpose includes all of them, and goes beyond them, for it seeks to encompass all the dimensions of human experience. —Arthur W. Foshay, “The Curriculum Matrix: Transcendence and Mathematics,” Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 1991.

(Available at: https://files.ascd.org/staticfiles/ascd/pdf/journal)

What is the purpose of education?

The one continuing purpose of education, since ancient times, has been to bring people to as full a realization as possible of what it is to be a human being. Other statements of educational purpose have also been widely accepted: to develop the intellect, to serve social needs, to contribute to the economy, to create an effective work force, to prepare students for a job or career, to promote a particular social or political system. These purposes offered are undesirably curbed in scope, and in some instances they conflict with the comprehensive purpose I have indicated; they imply a distorted human existence. The wideranging purpose includes all of them, and goes beyond them, for it seeks to encompass all the dimensions of human experience. —Arthur W. Foshay, “The Curriculum Matrix: Transcendence and Mathematics,” Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 1991.

(Available at: https://files.ascd.org/staticfiles/ascd/pdf/journal)

Media and Education in the digital age

The idea that education is a fundamentally political process construes education as a process in which a number of participants compete for a variety of goals, depending on the nature of the issues at stake. A classical tradition in political science defines the core aspect of this process as a competition for control over the distribution of values in society. In this perspective, the study of politics is, in practice, the study of ‘who gets what, when and how’ (Lasswell, 1950). Seen as political process, the study of education is the study of who gets what, when and how in the competition for control over the future of society. This includes the study of the main cleavages, or the fault lines defined by relevant issues at the core of the competition between the main actors, the strategies, or the moves through which main actors try to gain political influence and the nature of the stake. While shared in political studies and also in critical contributions to the analysis of education (Youdell, 2011) this position seems nevertheless far from mainstream in much of the current discussion on media and education. For too many, education is a technical problem: one which has to do primarily with the effective management of available resources, with the identification and implementation of costefficient educational models, curricula and technologies.

(Available at: https://library.oapen.org. Adapted.)

Language use is one of the last places where prejudice remains socially acceptable. It can even have official approval, as we see in attempts to suppress slang and dialects at school. Banning words is not a sound educational strategy. As Michael Rosen points out, schools have been trying this for more than 100 years to no avail. Research shows that gradual transition towards standard English works better. But because dialect prejudice is so prevalent, this must be done in such a way that children understand there’s nothing inherently wrong with their natural expression. Language prejudices seem more resistant to change than other kinds of prejudice. Members of the majority culture, the most powerful group, who would be quite willing to accept and champion equality in other social and educational domains, may continue to reject the legitimacy of a dialect other than their own. The high level of dialect prejudice found toward vernacular dialects by both mainstream and vernacular speakers is a fact that must be confronted honestly and openly by those involved in education about language and dialects. The key to attitudinal changes lies in developing a genuine respect for the integrity of the diverse varieties of English. Knowledge about dialects can reduce misconceptions about language in general and the accompanying negative attitudes about some dialects.

(Available at: Carolyn Temple Adger, Walt Wolfram, and Donna Christian, Dialects in Schools and Communities, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2007. Julia Snell, “Saying No to 'Gizit' Is Plain Prejudice”. The Independent. February 09, 2013. Adapted.)

Language use is one of the last places where prejudice remains socially acceptable. It can even have official approval, as we see in attempts to suppress slang and dialects at school. Banning words is not a sound educational strategy. As Michael Rosen points out, schools have been trying this for more than 100 years to no avail. Research shows that gradual transition towards standard English works better. But because dialect prejudice is so prevalent, this must be done in such a way that children understand there’s nothing inherently wrong with their natural expression. Language prejudices seem more resistant to change than other kinds of prejudice. Members of the majority culture, the most powerful group, who would be quite willing to accept and champion equality in other social and educational domains, may continue to reject the legitimacy of a dialect other than their own. The high level of dialect prejudice found toward vernacular dialects by both mainstream and vernacular speakers is a fact that must be confronted honestly and openly by those involved in education about language and dialects. The key to attitudinal changes lies in developing a genuine respect for the integrity of the diverse varieties of English. Knowledge about dialects can reduce misconceptions about language in general and the accompanying negative attitudes about some dialects.

(Available at: Carolyn Temple Adger, Walt Wolfram, and Donna Christian, Dialects in Schools and Communities, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2007. Julia Snell, “Saying No to 'Gizit' Is Plain Prejudice”. The Independent. February 09, 2013. Adapted.)

Language use is one of the last places where prejudice remains socially acceptable. It can even have official approval, as we see in attempts to suppress slang and dialects at school. Banning words is not a sound educational strategy. As Michael Rosen points out, schools have been trying this for more than 100 years to no avail. Research shows that gradual transition towards standard English works better. But because dialect prejudice is so prevalent, this must be done in such a way that children understand there’s nothing inherently wrong with their natural expression. Language prejudices seem more resistant to change than other kinds of prejudice. Members of the majority culture, the most powerful group, who would be quite willing to accept and champion equality in other social and educational domains, may continue to reject the legitimacy of a dialect other than their own. The high level of dialect prejudice found toward vernacular dialects by both mainstream and vernacular speakers is a fact that must be confronted honestly and openly by those involved in education about language and dialects. The key to attitudinal changes lies in developing a genuine respect for the integrity of the diverse varieties of English. Knowledge about dialects can reduce misconceptions about language in general and the accompanying negative attitudes about some dialects.

(Available at: Carolyn Temple Adger, Walt Wolfram, and Donna Christian, Dialects in Schools and Communities, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2007. Julia Snell, “Saying No to 'Gizit' Is Plain Prejudice”. The Independent. February 09, 2013. Adapted.)