I have been thinking about faith schools and their role in broader society. To judge if faith schools are beneficial or harmful, I keep coming back to the question: “what is the purpose of education?” An answer to this would drive how the school operates and the selection procedure for admissions. In an even broader context, the purpose of education can be determined by the question “what is the meaning of life?” which obviously has no unanimous response. A better starting point might be “should we have universal education?” The Justification for our answer would inform us of the purpose of education.

The answer “education should fulfill pupils potential” is vague of course – they should fulfill their potential to do what exactly?

An obvious answer is “to make the pupil a valuable member of society“, which causes me to roll my eyes and sigh. Why should be suppose society as it stands should be the final goal of our lives? All we are doing is indoctrinating our children in our line of thinking.

Education “to prepare for work” should not be the final goal either. Not all interactions in our lives are commercial exchanges. We should have a broader view than serving the work place. I admit we might want this as a secondary objective of education – unless we want to abolish capitalism. But let us take things one step at a time!

I am thinking the purpose of education is to skill development of the student. There are various areas of development that I will consider separately, although I would admit there is some unavoidable overlap.

Skills (Motor and intellectual)

“necessary skills so that a particular function could be performed”. Of course learning how to perform a task requires some knowledge with which to practice the skill but the knowledge is not the goal, it is the means of learning a skill. The underlying skill in most academic subjects is critical thinking but this ironically seems to be absent in the population at large!

Of course an anti-realist probably would consider skills as just a type of knowledge! :) But talking and reading – is that within each language game or the foundation of the game? If it is a prerequisite for all language games, we have evidence that langauge is a skill.

Knowledge (Verbal information)

…which is traditionally called education. Or brainwashing. Verbal information is ripe to be understood by Wittgenstein’s theory as a socially constructed interpretations. Although knowledge is necessary to practice students skills, it should not be the goal. For example in English speaking countries, Shakespeare is regarded as required reading in schools. We would not consider someone who is unaware of Shakespeare as educated. But someone who is from a non-english speaking culture, this is obviously not a requirement for education. The same principle holds of the knowledge of history, social science, (theology!), scientific theories, etc – some knowledge should be taught but the knowledge is the “means” not the “end”. Endless exams that assess knowledge are therefore misguided.

After all, most verbal knowledge is in books. Just go to the library if you need it? Finding the book containing the knowledge you want is a skill anyway…

Attitudes, values and cognition

The only clear pattern in peoples values, all around the world, is the fact that they disagree. For example a conservative disagrees with a liberal on what is considered good and bad. In an extreme case, a cannibal disagrees with a vegetarian on what is a good diet. I admit there are some commonalities in value systems, but there are no universally agreed values at all. This immediately poises a choice: do we have different values taught in different schools or do we avoid talking about values all together? Should a school have a unified value system (e.g. faith schools) or a diverse system of values?

Since the purpose of schools is skill development, why do we need to involve values? Like knowledge, one particular value system is just brainwashing and indoctrination. Values are not the primary purpose of education and should not drive policy. If it was, we would have schools that transform into Sunday schools.

But most people imitate people in positions of authority. It is unavoidable that the values of the teachers will influence students. We must be aware how a school environment will unavoidably shape people. And in my subjective value system, students should be encouraged to think for themselves.

My argument is this: to avoid unnecessary indoctrination and to encourage independent thinking, students should be exposed to a mixture of value systems in the teaching staff and other students. Therefore faith schools are a bad thing.

Anti Citizen One (who happens to be an instructor in a certain extreme sport)