The Aims of Education

Essay by LuckyLucianoCollege, UndergraduateA-, April 2004

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The Aims of Education

Education as a whole has many goals. However, one of its main missions is to teach the children, who will be the leaders of the future. Therefore, it is highly important that the children of today be thoroughly taught in all of the important subjects. This is where a major controversy can develop. Who is to say what is or is not an important school subject? A child can only be taught so much through formal schooling. As a result, a teacher must select what is the most appropriate for the foreseeable future.

For that reason, the education has changed dramatically over the centuries. Today, it is not enough for a child to be sent to weave textiles in a factory, or pick crops in a field. In this day and age, most people are formally educated through college, and some go on to graduate schooling.

Yet, children during the Industrial Revolution in Britain were formally taught very little. However, they had mostly informal, "on-the-job" training. A child who worked for years in a factory would become very efficient at what they did, as would anyone who performs the same task repetitively. Unfortunately, the child would learn little about most other matters. A diverse education (as far as materials learned) early on in a child's life can help that child find a job better then manual labor when the child becomes an adult. In Britain, labor laws were passed that set standards for children working in factories. These new levels of work let children go to school until they were teenagers. Although this increase in the minimum age for child labor was a slight one, it can be said that Britain improved as a whole due to the boost in new concepts and new ideas. Therefore,