I went looking

As is my nature, I went searching for an answer recently. I wanted to know the purpose of learning. I wanted to know the answer to the age-old question “Why learn?” I suppose I have been seeking the answer to this question since I asked a teacher, probably around the 8th grade: “Why do I need to learn this?” The answer was probably a dissatisfying “Because you will need it later in life.” I never quite figured out why I would need to know what a dangling participle is, but I must admit that learning to do algebra the proper way instead of figuring it out in my head would have been helpful when I was an engineer.

The path to enlightment, as with so many other things in the year 2004, goes through Google. I was not amazed to get the following answer from the Google oracle when I asked about the “purpose of education”: Results 1 - 100 of about 44,900 for "purpose of education". (0.94 seconds)

It seems that everyone knows the purpose of education. Less people it seems, have the inside track on the secret of the “purpose of learning”: Results 1 - 100 of about 19,600 for "purpose of learning". (0.65 seconds) Oh well, at least it took .29 seconds less time for the search engine to provide the results. Scanning the meaningful pages took a bit more time. I spent the next four hours trying to find the Internet’s Platos , Voltaires, or even maybe the new Karl Marx to enlighten my poor, distressed, Red State intellect about the Purpose of Learning. What I found did little to clear things up.


Empty

The purpose of education is to provide understanding. --Peter N. Stearns

The point of education is help people learn to use their minds well. –Ted Sizer

The primary purpose of education should be to train the whole child –Various

To become enlightened. --Erin Mader

But the true purpose of education is to train the mind to think… --Albert Einstein

The purpose of education is to give children the highest academic preparation possible. –Nancy Bartley

The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life… --Ayn Rand

Cute

The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one. –Malcolm Forbes


The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. --Sydney J. Harris

Statist

The true purpose of education is to produce citizens --Archbishop of York

Good Citizenship: The Purpose of Education --Eleanor Roosevelt

Religious

The true purpose of education is to teach people to know and love the God from which we came… --Fr. John A. Hardon

Pragmatic

…the purpose of education is to provide for the economic prosperity of a country. --Khalid Baig

The central purpose of education in all societies at all times is to produce the kind of people most valued in that society --Corporate-Higher Education Forum

To produce workers for the factories --American Corporate Interests

What I think

All very nice ideals but they don’t really get to the root of the issue.

Aristotle once said: “All humans by nature desire to know.”

Curiosity is an innate characteristic of being human. Learning satisfies that human nature. Learning satisfies curiosity.

Learning makes you human and gives you that satisfaction that only comes with being true to your nature. No big, overarching reason to learn. No mystical philosophy needed. Not necessary to convince people to "enlarge your brain for God and Country."

We learn in order to satisfy something that is undefinably human in us. Because of this, knowledge is capable of being its own end.

It is as simple as that.