The purpose of education

What matters in life? Being happy, being successful? Is it even possible to reconcile these two in the long term? Against the backdrop of an education system that has led to disorientation, it is more important than ever to ask what kind of education can enable a successful life. Because what is desirable is not necessarily a successful life, but rather a joyful and happy life. Worauf kommt es im Leben an? Glücklich zu sein, Erfolg zu haben? Lässt sich beides dauerhaft überhaupt vereinbaren? Vor dem Hintergrund eines Bildungssystems, das in die Orientierungslosigkeit geführt hat, ist mehr denn je zu fragen, welche Art von Bildung ein gelingendes Leben ermöglichen kann. Denn erstrebenswert ist nicht unbedingt ein erfolgreiches, sondern vielmehr ein freudvolles und glückliches Leben. 

Education as a universal good

So why and for what purpose does a person, especially an adolescent, need the best possible education? Is there something we could all agree on? It would have to be something that is valid not only here, in our country, but all over the world. And, strictly speaking, what is to be achieved by education should be of decisive importance not only now, in the present time, but always, for as long as there have been people who have tried to find their way in their respective lives and worlds.

Even our early ancestors, who were still roaming the world as hunter-gatherers, needed some kind of education to help them survive in their communities. They too passed on their acquired knowledge and skills or their special competencies to their offspring. 

Especially when things became difficult and they were at a loss, they sought advice from their oldest and most experienced members. These were not specialists who were particularly good at one thing or another, but rather particularly educated people. They were therefore the advisors, because they had numerous opportunities to keep learning throughout the course of their lives. Above all, what it means to be “human” and how a fruitful coexistence can be possible in the first place. Is this not what education is still about today and what it will be about in the future? Education that people need always and everywhere? Those who have learned to come to terms with themselves, to find their way in life and to shape it together with others, will also acquire with joy and ease all the specific knowledge and skills – including the associated competencies – to master or effortlessly complete the specific tasks that arise in their world and at their time of life.

Educational policy disorientation

Of course, we no longer live in the Stone Age. But just like our ancestors back then, we still need to create suitable places and opportunities where our children can learn all that they need for a successful life. Who could tell us what is important here and how this could be implemented in practice? Business leaders? Politicians? University lecturers? Or our education officials and education experts? Their ideas, concepts and measures have led our education system precisely to the place that we have arrived at today: disorientation.

Perhaps we should instead seek advice from those who care less about their reputations and careers and more about the future of children and young people growing up in our world. These could, of course, be educators, politicians or university lecturers, but they are always first and foremost those who gave their lives to these children, who accompanied them and raised them. Their parents!

What parents want for their children

And what do most parents say when asked what they want for their children? “I want them to be happy now, but I also want them to be happy later, as adults.” And if you then also ask parents what they think every child needs to be happy, the answers come gushing out like water from a spring: “... an activity that they enjoy, reliable friends who stick by them, and of course security, trust, confidence, a lot of imagination and good ideas, also challenges and always a lot of joy in discovering and creating together.”

Not quite so quickly does it become obvious what the parents who answer this question really mean: “I want my child to be successful later in life, have a career, be respected and earn enough money. They should be better off than we are.” This is an understandable wish for the future, because nowadays the media very often likes to present people who correspond exactly to these visions. “But ...,” these parents should also be asked, “... are they really happy?” 

As long as the success lasts, perhaps – but strangely enough, sooner or later real life catches up with the majority of these highly successful high-flyers. And real life is a place that they cannot find their way around at all, so they become depressed, addicted to alcohol and drugs, live in broken families and are anything but happy. Is this really what these parents want for their children?

Education as a prerequisite for a successful life

It may not even be about being successful. Possibly, in order to become truly happy, it is much more important to succeed in as many things in life as possible. It may not be about success at all, but about succeeding. How nice that we can express this small but crucial difference in our language and are therefore also aware of it. When we say something has succeeded, we do not mean that we caused it to turn out the way it did, but that we made it possible for it to become that way.

You can successfully complete simple tasks like a research project or a bicycle race. But everything that takes place in daily coexistence and is therefore very complex can only ever succeed (rather than be completed successfully). Like a partnership or a wedding celebration or living together in a shared apartment. Anything and everything that life has in store for us in terms of difficult challenges, and which we must somehow master, can only succeed, but not be successfully completed!

Now we have finally arrived at the point where the question of the purpose of education becomes exciting, because it is also only possible for a happy life to succeed for our children. We cannot do it for them, no matter how hard we try, but we can enable them to acquire all that they need to make their lives succeed. Then they will also be happy. And what they need to do that, and what we can give them to do that, is education. Education for a ‘successful’ life.

Education is not the same as training

Training serves to enable a person to take on certain tasks and perform certain activities later in life. The knowledge or skills acquired in the process are also needed by the children and young people growing up in our world. Those who have acquired a sufficient amount of specific knowledge and skills may also be able to use them to great effect and become particularly successful. However, what adolescents can learn in the educational institutions that we have created is not enough for this. Training, i.e. the acquisition of knowledge and skills, as well as competencies, is too little to be able to shape one’s life in such a way that it really succeeds. This alone cannot make an adolescent a happy person – at best, a well-educated and temporarily successful one.

Education needs role models

The most effective coping strategy that can be found by a threatened and frightened human community is to build a social structure that is as strictly organized and hierarchical as possible. Here, only a few people act as subjects capable of making decisions and taking action; all others must subordinate themselves to their decisions, measures and orders.

This was the only way to lead soldiers and win wars. But in the present day, this approach can be used not only to avert collective threats, but also and above all to secure the possessions and privileges obtained by the leaders. Because this has been so significant in all human communities up to now, social institutions and structures have also been created everywhere which ensured that there were always enough children and young people willing to be used as objects for the realization of other people’s intentions and goals. The task of these institutions was not to enable the development of the individual talents and gifts of adolescents, but to ensure the stability of the respective social system.

Therefore, the present conditions and relationships in our schools will not change until the conditions and relationships of people at the level of our present society also change. Only those people who have learned to treat themselves and others lovingly are suitable role models for adolescents and can contribute to ensuring that in the future no child loses its innate joy in discovering and creating together a world worth living in.