The simple answer to this question is that education doesn’t have a single purpose. If you are learning to drive a car, communicate effectively in a foreign language, or rewire your house there is in each case a practical end and a simple measure of whether you have achieved that. The point in each of these specific examples of education is to acquire an adequate level of proficiency to function.

But what is the general point of education? That’s not straightforward at all. If we focus ons the point of school education, it still isn’t easy to answer. Yet there is a cluster of aims that I believe schooling should have. These include achieving basic literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking skills - these all empower individuals to learn for themselves. There should be a place for science, art, literature, and sport. School education should socialise children in a way that develops their ability to co-operate with a range of different people, some of whom may have very different backgrounds from their own. Children should emerge with an understanding of key features of their own culture and of some other cultures. Their creativity should be encouraged. The point of education is not to turn children in to ambulant data banks, but to nurture and help develop their abilities both as inquirers and as moral agents. Education should encourage us to think for ourselves and to care about others.

Nigel Warburton

Written by Nigel Warburton

Edited by Nigel Warburton