Education: More Than Just Standardized Testing
Education can be considered the key to the door that unlocks one’s future. This is the key element in Martha Nussbaum’s “Education for Profit, Education for Democracy” and Rabindranath Tagore’s “To Teachers.” Both of these authors describe how a complete education supplemented with skills necessary for life can open any door for a student, but governmental ambition and educational corruption can lock that door forever.
The government of a nation is full of national prejudices, whether they are easily spotted or not. These prejudices then have the tendency to leak into school systems by what is mandated for students to read and study. Tagore was strongly opposed to the great influence government has on education. He believed that an education should allow “every child to understand and fulfill this purpose of the age, not defeat it by acquiring the habit of creating divisions and cherishing national prejudices” (Tagore 43). Similarly, Martha Nussbaum argued that the government of a nation was solely focused on its economic growth and the international stature such growth brings, …show more content…
In his essay, Tagore relates back to this feeling from his days in school, where everyday “the same book is brought and poured out for him ” and not fully opening up to what he desired to gain from the world” (42). Nussbaum agreed with Tagore’s statement and said the education system pressured schools “to produce the sort of student who can do well on a standardized test” and not striving to give students the important lessons that will carry them through life (65). The authors believe that the superior goal of a school should be to teach all students what they need to know about how to succeed in the real world and not just what the government want students to
Education can be considered the key to the door that unlocks one’s future. This is the key element in Martha Nussbaum’s “Education for Profit, Education for Democracy” and Rabindranath Tagore’s “To Teachers.” Both of these authors describe how a complete education supplemented with skills necessary for life can open any door for a student, but governmental ambition and educational corruption can lock that door forever.
The government of a nation is full of national prejudices, whether they are easily spotted or not. These prejudices then have the tendency to leak into school systems by what is mandated for students to read and study. Tagore was strongly opposed to the great influence government has on education. He believed that an education should allow “every child to understand and fulfill this purpose of the age, not defeat it by acquiring the habit of creating divisions and cherishing national prejudices” (Tagore 43). Similarly, Martha Nussbaum argued that the government of a nation was solely focused on its economic growth and the international stature such growth brings, …show more content…
In his essay, Tagore relates back to this feeling from his days in school, where everyday “the same book is brought and poured out for him ” and not fully opening up to what he desired to gain from the world” (42). Nussbaum agreed with Tagore’s statement and said the education system pressured schools “to produce the sort of student who can do well on a standardized test” and not striving to give students the important lessons that will carry them through life (65). The authors believe that the superior goal of a school should be to teach all students what they need to know about how to succeed in the real world and not just what the government want students to