Education's goal

The current graduation period and the opening of school two months from now should prompt students, their parents, their teachers and education officials to think again about the goal of a university education.

John Henry Cardinal Newman, in “The Idea of a University,” stated the aim of a university education clearly. He said it is to develop in the students “the force, the steadiness, the comprehensiveness and the versatility of intellect, the command over our own powers, the instinctive just estimate of things as they pass before us,” which are the fruit of rigorous training and noble influences.

Educators say that the function of education is both social and individual. Its social function is to help people become more effective members of society by passing on to them the collective experience of the past and the present. Its individual function is to enable them to lead more satisfying and productive lives by preparing them to handle new experiences successfully.

In the contemporary world, the practical objective of a university education is often stressed; it is seen as a means for social and economic advancement. The presupposition is that people live in a competitive environment and that the aim of a university education is to help them become winners. This is now the predominant thinking in the Philippines: A university education is seen primarily as a means for getting high-paying jobs and an aid to social mobility. What is often forgotten is that a university education should also develop in the students emotional intelligence, a broad cultural outlook and the right moral perspective.

In the effort to obtain the all-important diploma, it is often forgotten that a liberal education in a university is supposed to have a liberating and liberalizing influence on the lives of the students. To be educated is not only to have private enlightenment but also to have the ability to reach rational public agreements and thus become a productive member of the community. When you come down to it, a university education should develop a mind open to truth and a heart which loves the truth.

At no time in the history of the country is the need to develop a moral perspective in the youth more urgent. The bad examples of many high government officials and politicians and the nation’s culture of forgetfulness and impunity could make the impressionable youth adopt the wrong values. Students may amass a lot of knowledge of facts, theories and techniques, they may acquire cognitive skills, but if they have no moral and ethical perspective, they will not be good members of society.