What Should Education Do?

From this week's Carnival of Education, comes this post by the Ed Wahoo, in which he asks that we take a look at the big picture of education:

There's an article in Saturday's New York Times about Harvard's president. The Washington Post is reporting on a Virginia county's efforts to raise SAT scores. Across the vast array of education blogs, you currently find posts on charter schools; appropriate school attire; different styles of high schools; the lawfulness of No Child Left Behind; the National Education Association's affiliations; teacher burnout; accountability; testing; and every other topic under the sun.

The discourse is vibrant and rich, and people bring unceasingly impressive passion and ideas to the table. Yet I am often left wondering: Where is the discussion of the bigger picture?

Talking about the nuts and bolts -- and some of the aforementioned issues are large nuts and thick bolts -- has its place, and it's rewarding in its own right. But to rehash a favorite analogy of mine, at some point, we're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Here are the questions I want to see engaged: What is the ultimate goal of education, and what is the ultimate goal of our education system? What is the bare minimum we want all of our students to be able to do when they exit the system?

So to take up Ed Wahoo's Challenge, here is what I want the education system to do at a bare minimum:

• I want to see every kid who graduates able to read at a 12th grade level, be able to comprehend and analyze what they read.
• I want every kid to be able to write a "five paragraph" essay, even if that essay is supposed to be ten pages long.
• I want every kid to understand the government that regulates their lives, how elections work, and the importance of their role in that government.
• I want every kid to be able to solve binomial functions. Not for the ability to do so, but for the understanding of the logical process it instills.
• I want every kid to understand ecnomonics, credit cards, how to manage their money and balance their checkbook, how taxes work and why they are present.
• I want every kid to understand the biology of their own bodies and that of the opposite gender, how to take care of those bodies, and how their bodies interact with the rest of the world.
• I want every kid to know that failure is a part of life and after high school, there are not going to be a lot of people outside of your family who will care if you fail or succeed. But if you fail, you will not have an out.

I guess I don't want a lot, just people who are ready to move into the adult world.

The question of what our education system should be is rarely discussed, and I hope that we can discuss it more. There are times, honestly, when I wonder if the public education system that has evolved in America suits our needs. Clearly, the system does not suit the needs of many of today's students, but is that a failing of the system as designed or a failure to update the design.

Looking at my list of desires for a public education system, I see that, aside from a few modern issues, like credit cards, much of the subject matter I hope to see taught is not all that different, except in degree, from what was taught to earlier generations. Which leads to me to believe, that the way in which our world works has overtaken the system, rather than the system failing in a wholesale manner.