Education for ... what?
On this blog, I plan to explore, and share, some thoughts on the nature and purpose of education and learning. I thought I would start by an entry on why it is that we as a society educate people. Of course it is necessary for everyone to read, to understand the basics of how society and nature works so as to be able to participate in public life and understand the world around us. Along with more complex societies, the requirements for general, high quality education for children have increased, and with good reason. We need to understand how complex machinations as the internet and our energy systems work, as well as our financial systems, ecosystems and social structures. However, compared to the goals of the past century, we need to understand all these things not because we are supposed to preserve order in a stable society, or increase the size of our economy, but to transition our society into a completely new one which we hope will be able to sustain itself. The problem is,