What is Education For?

I ran across the following post in Andrew Sullivan's website and it occurred to me that before we can begin to think about textbooks or texts or teacher quality or anything related to assessing education quality, we ought to determine what we mean by "education" and what purpose(s) and education is supposed to serve.

I think I know the answer to this, but do we believe in education for its own sake, or education that is supposed to increase earnings potential? Sullivan links to the following:

You know going back and forth with a few people about this education bubble issue, many thoughts occur to me, but none more important than this: education cannot survive on what I am horrified to find is the generally assumed model, that it exists for the purpose of increasing earning potential. To see an education, college or otherwise, as merely a way to increase the amount of money you make is a terrible corruption and fundamentally unsustainable. Education was never intended that way, and it cannot succeed on those grounds.
It never ceases to amaze and dismay me. This totalizing vision of mankind as homo economus, where absolutely every element of human life is reduced to the exchange of currency and resources, has vast, negative consequences. People see them every day, and yet nobody is willing to walk back from the path we're on.
I wonder if this comment matters for us. I imagine that a high percentage of people in the greater Houston area would argue that education is more essential to earnings potential, and "education for its own sake" is something they'd rather not have their tax dollars spent on. Perhaps we can cynically argue that education has never been for its own sake, it has always created opportunities for one group at the expense of another, but its still worth thinking about.

While we think about assessing the quality of the education our students receive, are we clear about what we want that education to do for our kids?

Collegiate Learning Assessment

I'm useless.

A study of more than 2,300 undergraduates found 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.
Not much is asked of students, either. Half did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week.

. . .

_Overall, the picture doesn't brighten much over four years. After four years, 36 percent of students did not demonstrate significant improvement, compared to 45 percent after two.

_Students who studied alone, read and wrote more, attended more selective schools and majored in traditional arts and sciences majors posted greater learning gains.

_Social engagement generally does not help student performance. Students who spent more time studying with peers showed diminishing growth and students who spent more time in the Greek system had decreased rates of learning, while activities such as working off campus, participating in campus clubs and volunteering did not impact learning.

_Students from families with different levels of parental education enter college with different learning levels but learn at about the same rates while attending college. The racial gap between black and white students going in, however, widens: Black students improve their assessment scores at lower levels than whites.
- College Learning Assessment.
- Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything?
- Academically Adrift.

The PISA Results

From AOLnews:

China has dropped an educational bomb on the United States, according to the results of an international test of 15-year-olds from more than 65 countries and educational systems.

The exam, called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, tracks student performance in reading, mathematics and science. Students in Shanghai outperformed all other students in all three subjects on the 2009 test. Students in Hong Kong scored third highest in mathematics and science, and fourth highest in reading. China was participating in the test for the first time.

Meanwhile, test scores for American students were about average for all participating countries. The scores showed some improvement in science from earlier tests and small comfort in math, where the U.S. caught up to nine countries that previously outperformed it.