Purpose And Role Of Education In The United States

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Philosophers as diverse as Aristotle, Plato, and Confucius wrote extensively on the purpose and role of education and schooling in their respective societies. These early thinkers shared many common ideas about what it is that schools should exist to do, but each of them also had their own unique perspectives on the role of schooling within a given culture and civilization. As a nation, their philosophies have had an impact on how we view the purpose of schools in America. In the United States, historically, the purpose of education has evolved according to the needs of society. Education's primary purpose has ranged from instructing youth in religious doctrine, to preparing them to live in a democracy, to assimilating immigrants into mainstream …show more content…
The primary purpose of education and schooling is not so much to prepare students to live a useful life, but to teach them how to live pragmatically and immediately in their current environment. In other words, the role of schooling is to equip individuals with the skills necessary to participate in the social life of their community and to change the nature of the social order as needed or desired. When a student graduates from school they should be able to function in society successfully. In order to accomplish this goal, as a nation we are going to have to tweak our curriculum and change our the …show more content…
The federal No Child Left Behind law (NCLB), has caused schools to "be accountable," which translates into focusing a lot of attention on state standardized testing and results. The attention in turn causes a lot of stress onto teacher and students. Teachers are being forced to teach to the test, instead of getting the privilege to dive fully into their field of study. Also, problems arise when the state test is not aligned with the standards. Students are then tested on skills that may not be part of the curriculum and schools feel pressure to have their students perform well on state tests because these results are published. Since teachers are required to cover all the material on the test, they are forced to move quickly from topic to topic. In order to keep up, students have to memorize material instead of truly learning it and soaking it all in. This should not be our goal as educators. We should be there to expose the students to material that will help them when they
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