What is the Purpose of Educating?
Buenos días a todos,
So, I have just finished my second week here in Peru and wow does time fly! This past week we spent every morning going to La Inmaculada, which is a private, Jesuit school located in Lima, Peru. We have also gone to Casitas twice this week, which is an after-school program in El Agustino, and we finally spent time this past Saturday going to the MLK sports school which is also located in El Agustino. All of these experiences have been very different, but yet they all have some kind of educational purpose (whether one would define it as traditional or not).
For me, education is any type of situation in which two or more people are either learning from one another or from a shared experience. What is more difficult to define is the purpose education has in our lives as citizens. Growing up, I always thought everyone went to school so they could learn what they are good at and then go to a college to master whatever skill they liked in order to become a working member of society.
In reading “Philosophy of Education,” Harry Brighouse offers a few different purposes for education that can been seen today. I will explain the ones that I believe have been relevant to my experiences in Peru, the first purpose being autonomy: “Children have the right to the opportunity to make and act on well-informed and well-thought-out judgments about how to live their own lives.” So basically, he is saying that education teaches children how to make decisions based on skills to gather and critically think about information that is presented to them. Another purpose he describes is contributory effectiveness: “Capitalist economic institutions place a heavy influence on economic self-reliance, at least for those who are not fortunate enough to be supported by wealthy parents.” This is kind of the idea that I referenced earlier; that education has a purpose of preparing us to become financially stable. The third idea is flourishing. Basically, this purpose discusses giving children the tools they need to succeed in life and achieve personal happiness. Finally, Brighouse talks about cooperative capacity: “Involve teaching the children how to make space for one another, how to share and engage in give and take.” This idea is all about how to work well with others. In life after school people almost always have to work with others and therefore the purpose of education is teaching students how to work together productively.
I think that all of these purposes are valid, but it is difficult to choose only one as the sole purpose of education. In La Inmaculada I perceive there to be at least two purposes of education that they value greatly. First, I want to give some context as to what La Inmaculada is and how it is run. La Inmaculada is a Jesuit institution here in Peru that serves a wide range of students from kindergarteners just entering the education world to 17-year-olds getting ready to go off to college. This is a very wealthy school (although not the wealthiest) and has amenities like a gym, fields where they grow their own crops, and a full zoo. Because it is a Jesuit institution, they focus a lot on giving to and being with those less fortunate than them. I believe they exercise this value by creating a purpose of cooperative capacity. La Inmaculada has a program in which students from their school are paired up with a student from their neighboring village, Pamplona Alta. If you remember from my previous blog post, Pamplona Alta is a pueblo joven meaning that students from that village are extremely poor. Through this partnership, a relationship is formed among the students at a young age and is maintained through their secondary schooling (in the U.S.A we know this as middle/high school). During the students’ last year in secondary school, the two students work on a project together. This entire experience shows how Inmaculada creates a purpose of education which is cooperative capacity.
Although La Inmaculada has an impressive schooling system, I believe their teaching styles are focused more on memorization and have little differentiation for students. Now I am not saying whether or not this style of teaching is right or wrong, but I will say that in my time at Marquette, most of my education courses have been focused on moving away from this style of teaching to better aid in student learning. I would say that when learning is more about memorizing, it shows that the school’s purpose for educating is associated with contributory effectiveness or preparing students to be successful in finding a job and excelling at that job as well.
In comparison to Inmaculada, I want to discuss what the MLK sports school tries to incorporate in terms of purpose. When first going to the MLK sports school, I thought our sole purpose of being there was to play soccer with kids. As I began to experience what this sport school actually was, I learned quickly that it was about much more than just playing soccer. I think one of the more obvious purposes that I saw emerge was cooperative capacity. In soccer you have to be able to work well as a team in order to be successful, but this purpose here is present in an even more explicit way. The players have to come up with rules/regulations that everyone agrees on, and on top of that, all interactions among teams need to be positive.
The second purpose I found in the MLK sports school that may have been less explicit was autonomy. Right off the bat, children do not have to play soccer if they do not want to (unless their parents are making them) so that is the first choice they are making on their own. Next, I think the hope is that these children, in choosing to play soccer, will then be able to make educated decisions in the life choices they will make while they attend the MLK sports school and beyond. Playing the sport of soccer shows kids what they can do in their free time instead of going down a less desirable path of choices.
Now I would like to end on this — what I have discussed above are MY interpretations of the purposes I see emerging in these two different educational settings. In both of these schools from which I have had the privilege of seeing, I perceive that they see their purpose of education as student flourishment. This idea of flourishing is difficult to find in my opinion because although you can give a student what you think they need to succeed, it is truly up to the student whether or not school helps them reach their full potential. How to create an environment in which every student flourishes sounds impossible. But in my last two weeks in Peru I will continue to wonder and think about how this might be possible.
