Taylor Wash
SOC 270
23 September 2011 Education Involvement

The purposes of education is to prepare one for college and thus this college experience leads to a career or corporate job according to Shaun McCabe, a student here at NIU. During the 1800s, college was a symbol of wealth and education. People didn’t go to school to get a career, people went to school solely for the privileges of learning. Education does indeed help certain people but today even educated people are getting the short end of the stick because of the economy. People with degrees are clerks and or work at McDonald’s. Even mediocre cubical jobs are hard to come by. “I am here to enlighten myself and learn about the world around me,” he says, “I want to learn what I don’t know even if it won’t prepare me for a job.” As far as history, literature and philosophy being apart of our educational system, McCabe feels that these are the most important subjects in our system to date. Only basic science and math are truly required by but these three subjects expand the mind absolutely and are ultimately the most enlightening subjects taught today. The notion that education leads to a career was very common amongst the students I interviewed. “I always thought you go to school, you get rewarded with a job,” communications major Megan Schaper says. Ideally, I think the purpose of education in America is to accurately teach people not only of common sense needed for daily life such as reading and writing; but to accurately teach people of their history and their present. With education comes understanding and with understanding comes peace. When people don't know, they are scared and when they are scared they fight the unknown out of basic instinct. I think education is a direct attack on bias and discrimination through knowledge. But realistically, education has turned into just another institution in the modern western world and therefore maintains inequalities and teaches subdued behaviors rather than genuine thought behaviors. Schools have become holding places and essentially jail cells for young people subduing social change on their behalf. Schools now teach basic math, reading, writing (if you're lucky) - but they also teach class differences, inequalities, and how to maintain the status quo all too often (especially in American public schools). Most of the people I interviewed did have one common thread: they all believe that the quality of education is slowly declining. Youth today don’t learn anything. In class, we don’t pay attention. We merely take notes, disregarding the lecture and the professor absolutely. When it’s time for an exam, we memorize notes and vocab only to forget it all once the text is over. No one actually learns anything. Everyone is just trying to get by. Mediocrity is the common thread amongst all students, despite age. I do believe the three functions the book states are the intended purposes of education, however I do not believe these are completely attainable, aside from the first purpose which is to socialize the young into basic values, beliefs, and customs of the society. Ultimately, they are ideal goals, but they aren’t realistic. I absolutely do not feel that schools in the modern western world are fulfilling their ideal goals. However, in terms of the