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What is the purpose of a good education?

Recently, a college student came to my class looking really tired. After the usual greetings, I tactfully asked her what she does in her moments of leisure. “I don’t know what that means,” she replied.

I assumed that, because we are from different countries and we have different cultures, my question was misunderstood because of the words I used. I began to explain what “leisure” means. But after just a couple of sentences, the student stopped and told me she already knew the meaning of “leisure.”

Before I could add or say anything else, she explained that, to pay for her studies, she was working two jobs and then she studies full time. She is also a musician and to earn extra money she also works on weekends. She also has a boyfriend and she is active in her church.

What this student was telling me is that intellectually she knew the meaning of “leisure,” but she has not enjoyed the actual experience of having in her life a moment of leisure. (By the way, “leisure,” before modern times, had a positive sense and it was thought to be a time of study and self-discovery.)

In the same way that nobody gets drunk after reading in the dictionary the definition of “wine,” or memorizing or repeating that definition, nobody can enjoy a moment of leisure just because that person know what “leisure” means.

This student knew that difference between knowing about something and experiencing something, and she didn’t confuse one with the other. But, as she told me, her academic formation had little impact on the direction and meaning of her life.

That observation reminded me of a college essay I recently read titled “The Purpose of Education.” The student, who wrote that essay in his junior year, was Martin Luther King, Jr, at that time (1946-1947) studying at Morehouse College.

According to King, education has two purposes. First, “discipline the mind.” Second, “integrate human life around central, focusing ideals.” “It is a tragedy that the latter is often neglected in our educational system,” King wrote almost seven decades ago.

King went on to explain that “the first function of education” is to teach people “to think intensively,” that is, “to discern the true from the false, the relevant from the irrelevant, and the real from the unreal.” But, he said, “This is not the whole of education.”

King warned that the education system was offering “education without morals,” that is, we teach the students “the power of concentration,” but we don’t give the students any “worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.” “It is not enough to know truth, but we must love truth and sacrifice for it,” King said.

What’s the purpose of education if we only repeat what we already know, but we remain unable to experience love or sacrifice? Such kind of education, King said, “can be the most dangerous force in society,” or, even more poetically, is “like a ship without a compass, merely wandering nowhere.”

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