While recently browsing some discussions on the topic of education, I have noticed how much time is being spent trying to fine tune curriculums and programs making sure every prospective student is ready for the "real world". It's almost unanimously agreed upon that in this sense education is about preparing the student for the job market.
What is never asked, even with the slightest curiosity, is what's the purpose of education or what does being educated even mean?
These things are taken for granted or merely dismissed as something for academics or some authority to decide.
Compulsory education, the type of forced learning based off how military training is done, has been been around since antiquity and is yet another thing you can trace back to references in the immortal Republic; though only since the modern era has it been so prevalent.
I don't necessarily think it's particular helpful for me to outline a syllabus with the various proposals currently happening in the field of education, for that you'll be better informed by asking someone with skin in the game unlike myself. I can only make informed judgments from observing the history of education in the last couple hundred years which I've found sheds some light on this issue.
Since around the late 18th century, the Prussian education model has spread from Prussia throughout Europe, America, Japan, and other parts of the world. The system is still the dominant mode of pedagogy in developed countries as it promotes uniformity, nationalism, obedience, and general collectivism.
Being a promoter of such a doctrine consolidates and centralizes authority whereby academia coming from its middle ages scholastic background of preserving dogma, becomes the powerful lever for State power to use for molding the minds of youngsters.
The primary objectives of those who pushed forth this doctrine is not to teach students how to think, how to learn, or how to unlearn, rather it's just to follow the given instructions. This may seem perfectly acceptable for a training facility however; a place where trainees are instructed on how a particular technical system works including departments of engineering and science or anything else vocational.
Classical educators as well as proponents of the liberal arts tradition have always been aware that being educated was not only just difficult for the majority, but also was something impractical for them.
It wasn't suited or necessary for the masses to be actually educated for human flourishing to continue as it does.
Modern educational theorists and administrators have come to this similar understanding that not all students are capable of being educated in a mass-scale; yet they could be trained under the purview of being educated.
Regardless, they still had to figure how best to go about it as the underlying principle behind mass-education was democracy combined with egalitarianism, which has been widely accepted since the Enlightenment. They called it education to appease the traditional sentiment and disinterest of knowledge as well as bring in the new upcoming class from the industrial revolution who yearned to be part of what was once reserved for "free men".
Over time education as we've seen, became mistakenly disguised as training; the purpose of education wasn't really about being educated instead it was about being instructed and receiving instrumental or skill based knowledge toward a practical end. As Albert Jay Nock put it:
I rushed into print with the suggestion that in addition to our present system of schools, colleges and universities which are doing first-class work as training schools we ought to have a few educational institutions.
Because training schools have overtaken the way traditional educational institutions operated credentialism has become the norm with all different types of grading, benchmarks, and experimental standards being tested like you would when dealing with chemicals in a lab.
If you attended public schooling at any level you had a direct encounter with the results of all this planning and institutionalization, possibly rubbing off on your psyche. Ironically, the more you rebelled against the dominant educational system, the better equipped you are of truly being educated.
You might find it tough to clear off any indoctrination you've had, especially once reaching adulthood; although I believe self-education can be the ultimate realistic solution.
