Education

What is the purpose of education? Is it to pass exams? To find a rewarding career? To develop knowledge, skills, and character? Perhaps, to implant a will and facility for learning? All of these assertions are acceptable as a definition for education and demonstrate the diversity about the purpose of learning and teaching. There is not one definition of education that is acceptable to all. It is ambivalent, attached to the beliefs of one's own values and experience. To understand the purpose of education it is important to ask, "Does the individual exist for society, or does society exist for the individual?"  If society needs the individual for its own purposes, then it is concerned with what is taught. The required knowledge in order to function and maintain the needs of society is imparted. Ultimately, this creates a 'doing' person, one who conforms and is respectable in their society. If however, society exists for the individual, then the individual needs to be freed from his/her conditioning to allow a 'being' person to develop. Is it possible to develop a framework for education that incorporates both the needs of society and the uniqueness of the individual? I think so. Surely the outcome of education is to produce: "An integrated person who has acquired the necessary knowledge and skills for everyday interaction; but more so, has attained a quality of mind steeped in compassion, sensitivity and self awareness."