The first of the three goals of schooling in the text is “The Political Goal.” This goal deals with how schools are run and how children should be taught in regard to politics. Throughout our nation’s history, there have been many ideas on how our children should be educated. George Washington proposed an elitist idea that was based mostly on political and economic standing (pg. 12). Thomas Jefferson proposed a meritocracy style of education (pg. 13), This way, everyone gets an equal education. Jefferson’s idea most closely resembles how today’s education system works. Public schools try to give a fair and equal education to everyone. Schools also try not to promote religion or politics. However, there are cases where hierarchies are established among students and where political and religious issues are brought into the learning environment. Our public schools today try to offer equal and unbiased education to all children, but it is hard to do considering the diversity this nation has reached.
The second goal is “The Social Goal.” With this goal, children are to learn good social behavior in school along with social teachings at home. As time passed, religion was separated from the state. This basically made three areas of social learning for children: home, church, and school. Horace Mann, father of public schools, thought certain morals could be taught in school to better help the future of our nation’s society. The problem was that his morals were mostly Protestant. This caused much uproar among other religions and nonreligious groups, with the Catholic Church being the biggest (pg. 19). While schools tried to be neutral on these religious issues, they also introduced classes such as home economics to help teach students (especially women at the time) the basics of running a home. Schools today still try to remain neutral on religious grounds with the separation of church and state while still having classes that teach social skills. Unfortunately, with today’s economic crisis, classes such as home economics are being cut because they are not considered to be as important as classes such as math and science.
The third and final goal is “The Economic Goal.” The basic structure of this goal, according to Mann’s ideas of “human capital” and “equality of opportunity” (pg. 27), is that as children receive an equal education in school, when they graduate they can all, rich and poor, compete for jobs equally. The goal is to get all children on the same level in school, then sort them out through the education process into whatever professions they are best at. This will eventually help the community as a whole with everyone being able to work after graduation. Even with today’s economic problems, where companies are hiring cheaper foreign labor that American workers must compete against, schools are educating so that when students graduate, they will be able to go for higher paying jobs and not have to compete with foreign labor. These better quality job opportunities are good for the American economy on the world market. If students can be made to apply themselves and stay in school, this could be the most successful of the three goals.
September 23, 2009, Three Goals of Education
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