Thinking About the Purpose of Education

Chris Corrigan bounces off of Doug's comments about the absurdity of assuming that every kid should be going to university after high school for a four-year degree. I liked Doug's approach, but Chris takes it to a deeper level:

"The most important thing we can offer children, whether in school or not, is an ongoing reflective conversation that facilitates their own understanding of their own learning style. This meta-learning trumps all the content we can stuff into their skulls because it encourages them to engage with the act of making meaning out of the world, a critical skill for evaluating one's own place in society, and the contexts in which one operates."

Robert Paterson was thinking along similar lines a couple of weeks ago (and I like Chris's simple comment there too) when he wrote: "What would it be like to acknowledge that a child has everything he needs within him and that society's great task is to help him find his true self?" Ahh, I'm a sucker for big questions like that....