By ALBERT CANO
Staff Writer
I believe that the main purpose of education should be to prepare us for the real-life problems we will face in the world rather than only expanding our academic solutions or shaping us into good citizens. I’ve gathered my reasoning from “Why We Desperately Need To Bring Back Vocational Training In Schools.” by Nicholas Wyman, “ The purpose of Education ” by Martin Luther King Jr, and “What’s the purpose of education in the 21st Century” by Arthur Camins.
Dr. King is explaining his thoughts on education when he says, “It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and society: the one utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more officiant, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.”(King). We as students need to be taught the way to achieve our goals in school rather than just academics like it is now. With just academics, we can only get so far if we aren’t taught any skills with them. Dr. King then says the effects of having critical thinking with no morals when he states, “But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.”(King). When someone has all of the knowledge it is really a waste when they were not taught any skills to go with it. If everyone in our society is educated with just book smarts we won’t be able to function altogether because our whole life isn’t based on what we learn in school.
Everyone is always told they should go to college and that is why we go to school but, “The latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS) show that 68% of high school students attend college. That means over 30% graduate with neither academic nor job skills.” (Wyman). Students are coming out of high school with no academics and with no job skills because we aren’t really taught how to deal with real-life problems. We are taught about math we will never use again or biology facts we forget after a month. Some students though just don’t pay attention because what we learn seems useless to us after we get out of high school. Our society is changing and we can see that when the article states, “The U.S. has changed. The manufacturing sector is growing and modernizing, creating a wealth of challenging, well-paying highly skilled jobs for those with the skills to do them. …high school has bred a skills shortage in manufacturing today.”(Wyman). High school has led to us not being taught the skills needed for some of the jobs that people could do if they were just taught at a younger age but instead there is a shortage of skillful workers. If we were taught real-world problems we would be more likely to find a way to take care of ourselves rather than wasting so many of our young years studying.
Other countries are developing their younger people more than the U.S. and we can see that when Camins states, “Over the last 50 years, anxiety about competition with the Soviet Union, Japan, and China for global economic, military and political dominance have supported the periodic calls for more effective workforce development.”(Camins). Other countries are developing their young people for the workforce better and we are still doing the same thing. Although some argue that academics or citizenship is more important because academics help with everything else but I feel as if it doesn’t and when we are taught real skills that also helps with citizenship, it is actually true that we should be taught the skills for real-world problems because that is what is going to be the most useful to us as people. Even individuals with academic skills aren’t guaranteed to get a good job if they don’t have any skill so that is why I believe being taught real-world problems is more important. In conclusion, those who are only taught academics don’t always have the skills to succeed in life while someone who is taught to deal with their problems has a higher chance to succeed in their life as they are more able to adapt as a person rather than knowing random math equations or chemistry formulas which some people may use but I don’t think it is meant for everyone to learn.