by Elizabeth Olivier

Created on: February 21, 2009   Last Updated: June 23, 2009

The education community is constantly debating the real goal of education, trying to perfect the expression of education's purpose in a perfect crystallized statement. While there is large disagreement over the phrasing, the idea often revolves around creating "life-long learners" or people who will be able to adapt to change and acquire the knowledge necessary to continually succeed outside the classroom. While a worthwhile and often accomplished ideology, its many failures can be linked to a key flaw in the educational system. In the United States, the schools were never developed for this purpose. While teachers may cling to this goal with the hope that their students will also remember some of the specifics taught in their classroom, our educational system was designed with the goal of producing orderly and productive citizens.

The habitually tardy student looks at the teacher with the detention slip and asks, "What's the big deal? I was almost on time." The big deal is employers who want their workers working when it is time to start instead of running through the door still needing to clock in. There is nothing adaptive about such a lesson. It is a forced conformity to a fairly rigid social custom that increased in importance as the country industrialized.

Another example of education's real goal is the student/teacher relationship. This association parallels that which can be found between an employee and an employer. Most specifically, teachers expect students to complete tasks as instructed without question. Even the most casual classroom structure contains this aspect. A teacher who allows students to perform self-guided tasks still expects them to do as they were told and not just go to sleep at their desk. While teachers may be willing to give some explanation for why the students are performing the activity, the persistent student eventually realizes they must do the activities because an arbitrary authority figure said so. Option of activities still does not mean the activities are optional. Likewise, employers expect employees to work at whatever task they were assigned because they are being paid to do what they are told. Employees who do not understand this concept are quickly replaced with people who better comply.

Then there is the issue of due dates on assignments and time limits on tests. It is important to be able to efficiently use one's time and complete activities on somebody else's schedule, regardless of how arbitrary that schedule

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