The Purpose of Education

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how the purpose of education should be to develop not only the intellectual aspect of the children, but also their moral and emotional qualities. It explains that schools should not just churn out human beings with verbal and computational skills to acquire jobs in the real world, but should build on the children's innate desire to learn and explore. Thus, teachers should create learning activities that fully engage the interest of the students in order to capitalize on their natural desire to learn. This paper shows how, in reality, educators are split into two camps in their beliefs about educating children-- tradition versus constructivism. In the traditional system the teacher is the only active agent in the classroom transmitting knowledge to students who are expected to absorb information passively. On the other hand, in the constructivist model, collaborative and interactive methods are used to encourage students to challenge and consider different perspectives. In this paper, these two models are discussed and analyzed for their effectiveness in educating and motivating children to learn.

From the Paper:

"Young children have an inherent ability and desire to explore and learn about the world. Therefore, in some ways, they learn many things on their own, especially through play. In fantasy play, the children act out different roles and create their dream world (Balke, 1997, p. 356). Without being instructed and directed to perform a specific task with a particular object, the children can discover new dimensions to an activity by themselves. For example, playfully banging on a keyboard can lead to the discovery of music (Balke, 1997, p. 357). By trial and error, they acquire important knowledge in their exploratory activities. In addition, when children play together, they learn to play with one another, thus picking up social skills and learning to resolve conflicts (Balke, 1997, p. 358). Teachers can contribute to the process by providing them with a safe and creative atmosphere that is designed to stimulate their imagination (Balke, 1997, p. 355)."

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