Every nation makes decisions around education. There are two quite distinct forms that seem important. One is to teach life skills to young people, so that they can maximise their value to the nation, and the other is to impart specialist knowledge to those who desire it. Practically, this results in the formation of schools and universities. Why is this important? After all, it may seem that some jobs require very little for basic function – indeed, looking back in history, knowledge and learning was the domain only of the rich and powerful. But as nations grow, it will become evident that all ventures are complex and thus specialist skills inevitably become needed. And society is needful of more and more basic teaching. We need to understand fundamentals of mathematics to operate our finances, for example, and society needs people to understand the reasons for decisions taken by our leaders.
Business will have need for specialist knowledge. Taking a very simple and obvious example, we need to be fed, and so we need farmers to grow food, and food businesses to distribute it. We need to be clothed – even the basic needs of society must be met. Farmers can work more efficiently if they have the knowledge and means to optimise their work, and they must develop considerable expertise if they are to thrive. And it’s the same with every need imaginable, through to entertainment and leisure. This is one reason that universities are important, though they also provide real value to society through the research that they carry out. If you ask an academic ‘what’s the purpose of a university?’, they’re likely to reply ‘Research.’ – many regard the education that they provide as being of secondary importance, vital though it obviously is.
Business undertakes research of its own – development of new goods and technologies to give a competitive edge, for example. Equally obviously, businesses depend on the output from other businesses. When you think about it, it’s unlikely that a business will make all of the components for the products that it brings to market. And spotting a new use for technology needs that technology to exist already. But what here is the role of the nation? Well, creative cultures probable don’t occur spontaneously – they may well need to be nurtured. There’s clearly a need for visionaries to influence the future direction of society. Do these need to be those in charge? Well, probably not, but the freedom to innovate seems important.
Feedback of learning seems to be necessary, or else a stagnation is implied. Society needs to progress, to learn both from its successes and from its failures. There’s probably a need to forget bad ideas and there’s certainly a need to remind ourselves of good ones. So, the ‘core’ of education seems to need to be continually updated – and without throwing away the ‘good’ parts unnecessarily. There are examples in our own education in the UK. We don’t routinely teach Greek and Latin widely, and some subjects are made optional – I said earlier that at Secondary school I ‘opted out’ from Geography, Biology and History, but I wasn’t ever offered any choices concerning languages. We learned French and that was that. In English, we weren’t taught anything but basic grammar – I don’t even know whether any grammar is taught nowadays. Should it be? Well, I suppose it’s arguable. The point seems to be, though, that continuous development of thinking will imply continuous change in teaching. I guess that’s probably a good thing. As a society, we certainly need to progress and to update what we regard as ‘core’ knowledge – which we’d like everyone to have.