Education for citizenship and community engagement
Today I was shown an article by Brian Rosenberg, President of Macalester College, in the Spring 2007 issue of Macalester Today. I was struck by a passage on p. 17, in which Dr. Rosenberg says
Of the three chief purposes of higher education—career training, self-enlightenment, and preparation for citizenship—it may ultimately be the third that is both the most difficult and the most important. It is the most difficult because it is the one goal of education that is not chiefly about the betterment of the self, to which we might naturally be inclined, but about the betterment of and service to others, toward which we might need to be encouraged and around which advanced civilizations must be built; it is the most important for precisely that same reason.
This connects remarkably with a new position statement on the web site of the November 5th Coalition, which "calls for new federal policies to encourage serious public participation in public education." In particular, note the second of their nine "basic premises":
The purpose of education is not just generating outcomes (such as test scores) that are determined by experts. Education is the process by which a whole community chooses and transmits values, skills, knowledge, and culture to the next generation. Communities must discuss what values they wish to transmit.
Two different but eloquent ways of saying the same important thing.