The Vajra Parrot Squawks!

What is the purpose of education?

Is it a valuable exercise in its own right or is it just a means to an end?

All my life I've loved learning, just for the fun of it, and have frittered away my time and money pursuing many strange and (often) irrelevant things. Just for the sake of ersonal interest. This made school something of a chore, and my experience echoes that of most students maybe, because I was straddled between wanting to learn and having to be taught.

Having to be taught was the problem - often completely inane and useless drivel, dictated by the Government and then sometimes rehashed by equally inane and useless teachers who did more to kill any interest in learning than the Advent of Playstation 3.

Today's education is really just a commodity. The world of work demands x, so the government supplies x in order meet the needs of the market. Whilst certainly useful in many ways, this policy just fills the student with a lot of facts which are geared towards a certain end. The student becomes merely a machine whose worth is not on what he or she can do but on how he or she can perform academically *and I use the term loosely*. Only towards the end of their student careers can teenagers choose to follow something more in tandem with their own interests - but this is still based on the whim of the examination board and because, by then, the student has been pushed in the direction of studying for a lucrative career.

The point is, the point of education is lost. I can't think of one person I know who chose their A Levels or degree just because the subject interested them - there was always an ulterior motive.

I'm just rambling, but surely there should be learning for learning's sake, for the reason that one wants to expand one's own mind and worldview and understanding? ... Before one gets sucked into the drudgery of a career or a 9-5 hell realm and the only learning in one's life is who's shagging whom on Corrie or Eastenders.