Education

I remember, in a Life Skills (ask me what it is sometime) session last year, we were asked this question:

'Why do we study?'

We all (the students) came up with great answers: to improve ourselves, to help the world, to gain knowledge, etc etc and so on and so forth. One said that it was because his parents made him study (cue laugh-track).

The one who asked the question was the Principal of the college, and she said we are all very nice kids, very noble. but we were all wrong. The purpose of an education, the purpose of studying, is so we can make money and earn a living.

I am sure she said this with the best intentions, and that she, with all her experience and knowledge, was just being a realist and trying to prepare us for when we come out into the working world.

But is that the true purpose of an education? Trouble was, we all believed her; I believed her. Oh, heavens, the foolishness of a youth...

I can't help but to wonder at us, the youth of today and the hope of tomorrow, if we all study because we want to earn money. That money is the bottom-line and that this is the purpose of spending 16 to 18 years of our lives, all of it devoted to refining the art-of-making-more-money-than-him.....

I'll leave that for you to think about, but here's a quote I find that summarises the situation well.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.                                                                    - G. M. Trevelyan