Schooling

[angus]

From the political compass...

I vote strongly disagree. Kids should learn much more than simply how to find a job, including being good citizens.

I disagree with the statement as well.  (on principle, I never choose strongly.  it's like saying you're a little bit pregnant, imho.)  citizenship comes to my mind as well, along with learning to communicate and examine our world.  anyway, I think we're on the same page here. 

[angus]

I'll elaborate a bit nclib, as this is something I've thought a great deal about.  your freshman sociology prof may have segregated the thinking on these issues into something called "sociological order" or something like that.  (e.g., if you wear your seatbelt because "it's the law" that's generally considered thinking on a lower sociological order than if you wear your seatbelt because in 87% of all accidents, you are less likely to be seriously injured if you're wearing it.  the exception, of course, being those 13% in which the driver's side door is struck directly.)  anyway, we were taught, and I think the general dogma hasn't changed much, that the manifest function of education is citizenship preparation (and some of citizenship preparation would be division of labor), but that there are many latent functions of education (prolonging adolescence, the chance to score with well-bred and generally well made members of the opposite sex, etc.)  anyway, I'm not sure whether I bought to any of that, but I know that I've always noticed that there are those who see education as a means to an end, and those who see education as an end in itself.  for whatever reason, I naturally fall into the latter category.  anyway, there's no right or wrong answer to the question.  some will agree with the statement and some will disagree.  I did notice at the Boston University Chemical Physics PhD program that, without exception, the chinese all fell into the former category, but I do not think this is an East vs. West phenomenon.  Many Westerners see education as a means to an end as well.  Maybe we can label them as "thinking on a lower sociological order" or maybe they're just pragmatic.  think about it.  I always brag about coming from Poor White Trash, and there's some truth to that.  my grandparents were poor european white trash who could barely speak english when they arrived in this country, but my parents and my own immediate family have never known true poverty.  we've never been without a ride, without a phone, without cable TV, and in a position that we had to forego college in favor of working to pay bills.  so it's easy for a middle class suburban kid like myself to see education not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.  as a way to expand my horizons, as it were.  but if you're from a poor village in the third world, and you get a chance to go to an American university to get a PhD, you may well see it as a ticket to a better life for your family.  there's nothing sociologically inferior or "wrong" with that thinking. 

for whatever its worth.