The Purpose of Education

What is the purpose of education? This is the central question that agitates scholars, teachers, politicians  and virtually every group within society.  The conventional answer is the acquisition of knowledge   But, perhaps for the reason that there are so many books and branches of knowledge in which we can learn from are multitudinous today, we start to hear more about that the purpose of education is to give children a desire to learn and to teach them how to use their minds and even make the acquiring of facts and knowledge more interesting so that it increases the child's ability to fully engage in a curious manner.

Furthermore, from an early age, I have always been told that education is the key to one's success in life.  This is achieved by studying and working hard in school and eventually get into a good college and end up with a well paying job-profession.  Moreover, it seems to me that education has two-phase function to perform in the life of a child and in society as a whole; the first is utility and the second is culture.  Therefore, education must enable a child to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of the child's life. 

The function or the goal of education, therefore has a variety of meaning and interpretation to many individuals.  For example, a student definition of what is the goal of education can be differ from one from a teacher or even a politician   Thus, I would like to pose a question to further think about:  What is a well-educated child? How and who gets to determine that? 

In the meantime, here is a link from TED, its a talk by Dave Egger-- he talks about WHO should define the purpose of education and also creativity in public schools: http://www.ted.com/talks/dave_eggers_makes_his_ted_prize_wish_once_upon_a_school.html