An Open Question: What Are Our Goals For Education?

One of the most intriguing journal articles I’ve ever encountered is David F. Labaree’s “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals.” I cited it in at least half of my graduate essays. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it while I was studying education. Labaree outlines three main goals that America has historically held in educating its young people: democratic equality, concerned with bringing up well-informed, patriotic citizens who are smart enough not to elect a walrus to the state legislature; social efficiency, concerned with producing well-fitting cogs in the industrial machine; and social mobility, concerned with aiding the most skilled and hard-working individuals to get ahead in the workforce and become your boss before they’re old enough to rent a car.

Labaree’s main argument is that our educational system is increasingly shifting toward supporting social mobility and away from a seemingly ideal balance of these three goals. Based on this, I’d like to pose a couple of questions:

Is Labaree’s argument accurate? Is our education really shifting toward a means to individual ends? Or has education always been this way?

And the big question: What should our goals for education be?

I have my own opinions, and so does everyone else. Please feel free to weigh in!