General knowledge is essential, but not enough. It is not enough to possess the ability to recall facts and calculate figures; to understand grammar, sentence structure and prose, yet remain unable to comprehend the intricate detail of a poem or experience the power of an author to lure you in to their story. Education should be focused on the process of acquiring information and the skills necessary to take information, connect it to other information, develop new thought, experience wonder and excitement and feel the power of the connections across all disciplines. Teachers need to be facilitators for this educational journey. They should be there to guide individual students in the various ways to discover and acquire knowledge. The following quotes from Whitehead and Hook most closely capture my developing definition of education:

Education is the ability to develop a purpose for learning based on individual capacity.  Individualized education where every child learns what he/she needs to learn.  What they learn is determined by interest, ability, skills, goals, motivation, and intellectual maturity. (Hook, 1959)

What education has to impart is an intimate sense for the power of ideas, for the beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas, together with a particular body of knowledge which has peculiar reference to the life of the being possessing it. (Whitehead, 1959)

The individual nature of the human being and our ability to respond to our environment in a variety of ways calls for an educational system that celebrates individuality, yet creates a learning community that builds its strength from the sociocultural interactions among the members of the community.  A system based on a set “one-size-fits-all” standardized curriculum limits the capacity for learning.

As human beings, the more we learn, the more we want to learn. In thinking about the most important purpose in compulsory education, I believe focusing on an educational experience that is tailored to the needs of individual students would likely result in a educational journey that instills the love of learning in all of our children, cultivating a intrinsic drive that would essentially create life-long learners.  All of the other purposes for compulsory education  discussed in class, including, employment preparation, citizenship, critical thinking, educational advancement, social justice, character education and advancing the human project, would all come to fruition as a result of schooling that encouraged and supported the notion of learning to learn. The vast kaleidoscope of knowledge and information that exists needs to be turned, twisted, probed and prodded
in order to develop new ways to see and experience our environment.