Educational assessment

What is the value of education? Of universities and schooling and this abstract concept we like to term "higher education"? Several things have been happening recently that have me thinking about education and WHY it (dumb assertion, I know) really does impact everything you do later on in life.

The obvious answers are there - school teaches you a skill set, the building blocks with which to construct a career and hopefully, a life. Basic math, writing, vocabulary, reading comprehension - SATs and GREs would have you think that these are the things that guarantee success or job placement down the line. But what about those brain teasers, the logic puzzles and different games that we used to play in grade school, the ones that actually taught us more about creativity and problem solving?

I know that with the way the economy and the job market is now, the higher-ups are looking for ways to restructure the education system to better prepare students for the challenges of the real world. And likewise, students are turning toward more practical means of existence; better to sacrifice a dream now in favor of some stability and monetary compensation for the future. This is practical. This is the kind of mentality that will help graduating young adults grasp a more tangible reward for their years of schooling.

But call me impractical, but I think this is the kind of mentality that will hurt us in the long run.

I read an article in the New York Times that mentioned a change in curriculum at several universities, including the elimination of philosophy as a major because it lacks "practicality." My thoughts when I read this were varied - yes, "practially" speaking, it doesn't make sense to major in something that won't yield an immediate skill set.

But if you don't have those courses to learn to THINK and only learn how to do "practical" things, then you wouldn't ever question and invent and see the world in a different light, and then where would humanity as a whole be?

Kant? Utilitarianism? Will these words cease to have any meaning? Social engineering will become a kind of trade. Artists will create for a cause or a cost, but not just for the sake of creating. Writers will be funneled into law schools and textbooks, and psychology will give way to psychiatry. Meds over meditation. Hollow substances over concrete thought.

And then how will decisions be made? This all sounds a little too oddly Giver-like. Kids set into certain jobs early on, learning how to perform a duty in society, taught NOT to think outside the box except for a designated Giver...an elimination of feelings and color and difference. Smooth operations oiled by cooperation and standards of living.

If we don't think for ourselves, we cease to exist. We might have money in the bank, but we'll have lost purpose and drive. When we work for others, we'll not have the capacity to question the why or the how; we'll be too focused on the what.

The value of education is that it provides a solid foundation for creativity. We learn the rules to break them, know the fundamentals to build upon them. Looking back at college, I know for a fact that the classes I got the most out of inspired me to think in ways I wouldn't have thought to think (tongue twister) otherwise. Skills, I can adopt as I go. But thoughts and questions, I need to develop at the get-go.

Classrooms are only vessles, after all. It's what's in them, in the minds within them, that count.