The Primary Ends of Education
What are the purposes of education? Classical education in all cultures of the world was concerned primarily with cultivating virtue. Education was about cultivating the soul, developing a civilized character and forming good citizens. However, in today’s schooling the focus is on technical knowledge and the skills needed for the complex modern workplace. Character and values get short shrift. Theodore Roosevelt is said to have warned, “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”1 Study of the world’s scriptures leads us back to consider education’s primary ends.
Father Moon distinguishes three levels of education: first, education of heart cultivates the emotional basis for unselfish love; second, education of norm deals with the morality of good relationships; third, academic and technical education follow on these two foundations. Much of the first two levels of education is done at home as the responsibility of parents. Yet schools can also play a part, particularly by providing character education and marriage education. Given that deficiencies in character and marital problems can detract from performance in the workplace, educating for these ends need not be seen as in contradiction to the career orientation of modern schooling.