The Purpose of Education

I read this article called “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education” and it had a very interesting argument. The argument is that getting an education at Ivy League schools prepares you for a fabulous career and financial success but it does not prepare you for life – for interacting with others, for the possibility of failure, for an intellectual quest unhitched to tangible success.

Since reading this article, I have been wondering about the components of a good education and I have come up with three components of a good education. First, it should impart a love of learning. This can be in a particular field or a general curiosity. Second, it should impart specific skills which help us to find and keep a job. Third, it should teach us life lessons – how to interact with others, finish tasks on time, adapt to exigencies etc. Being a teacher, I can attest how hard it is for any school or course or teacher to teach all these at once. Indeed, colleges are universities are now bifurcated in what they teach – either they are very specific and specialized to fulfill the second requirement or they are very generic and diffuse to fulfill the first.

I admit that since I have started my dissertation, I have been seeing my education in the more instrumental way that the second requirement suggests. Finish the dissertation, get the degree and leave and then I am free to do what I want. But I think this attitude hurts the dissertation. It makes me unwilling to sit down and write because I am writing for my committee or with the far-off goal of finishing in mind. There are times when I recapture the love for the subject itself and at those times, I am much more productive because I am captivated by the material. True, when I am captivated by the material, I also waste a lot of time because I read articles and books only tangentially connected with my subject. But it feels like fun; not like a chore. Ultimately, I think, dissertating and all reading and writing for our profession should be done for both instrumental reasons and out of genuine curiosity. The instrumental part of me is what adheres to deadlines and prevents me from reading and working on multiple subjects at once. The curious part of me wants to work out of genuine excitement – except it also distracts me from one project and leads me to another. A combination of the two attitudes would be ideal.

With regard to the third goal of education, I have been thinking of what UVA has taught me. Often I fail to reflect on the great experience I have had at UVA and remember the bad things like funding battles. So, here are some of the great things I learnt and got from being at UVA.

Great friends.
Tenacity (this is a lesson that any graduate student must learn in order to get their PhD).
Adaptability (this was honed as a result of the uncertainty of graduate life).
Possibility of failure (this is again true of graduate students as a whole – probably not because of UVA).
Diverse perspectives on political theory – actually I learnt a lot about American Politics and a lot about Political Theory.
Excitement about a lot of different issues and topics – I loved being part of a community which thought about larger issues while also caring about and sharing the minute details of my life.
Some really caring faculty.
My first experience in a really beautiful exciting college town.
Gregg (This list is not in order of importance, so I do not mean that Gregg is the least important thing on my list of "good things from UVA")

The list is much longer but you get the point. So what about you? What are your theories on education and what have you gotten out of your education thus far?