PURPOSE OF SCHOOL 1
What is the purpose of school? I thought this would be a simple question to answer, but
as I started pondering and digging deeper, it was anything but a simple question. There are
numerous points of view on the subject. For example, Klamm (n.d) described four viewpoints on
the purpose of school. Is the purpose of education to pass on content knowledge from generation
to generation, meet the needs of children, change society, or help children succeed in life? To
answer this question, in looking at the options, I suppose that if we help children be successful in
life, we do that through passing on knowledge by meeting the needs of students. Ultimately,
society should change for the better. These options are great as long as the children are at the
center. In essence, the strongest predictor of whether a society is healthy and successful depends
on the health of the smaller cells that make up the society – the family. Throughout history,
when most families are made up of one dad, one mom, and the children, societies tend to be
healthier, safer, stable, more productive. When families are broken, the effects ripple into society
itself, resulting in instability, insecurity, and more poverty.
As a school leader, you determine the culture you want to have in the building (vision),
you help others see where you are and where you want to be, then it will be your job to find
those who can champion your cause and empower them. The challenge is you then have to find
those who oppose the cause and find out why, and find out if they need to be there or not.
Classrooms that buy into the vision and the direction (the small healthy cells) will push you
closer to your goals. The small unhealthy cells are where you will spend most of your time
because you will either be allocating resources to help the cells get healthy and change, or you
will be working to remove the nucleus of the cell (the teacher).
As a superintendent, this is magnified to the macro level of healthy schools and looking
instead at which principals are part of healthy cells and which are unhealthy and need to be
PURPOSE OF SCHOOL 2
treated. Schools and the school system are small modica of the larger society. This is what I call
an inter systemic relationship because, on the one hand, as a school or district, you are trying to
build healthy cells (internal: classrooms, schools) from unhealthy cells (external: broken
families, unstable, insecure home lives, etc.) with the goal of meeting kids where they are, giving
them knowledge and skills they need to be successful so they [the children] may in effect change
their own lives so that society may be better. Harvey et al. (2013) state that the emerging
leadership challenge is to ensure that everyone learns as much as possible, regardless of the
obstacles.
The good news is that most children and students are resilient and readily adaptable and
can quickly learn situational behaviors whereby they can be taught how to act at school, act on a
field trip, act at the doctor’s office, etc. They can learn that their home lives do not define them,
that there is a healthy way to live, and that it is possible to live a healthy life and be successful
and contribute to society. God’s perfect design for the family is the standard. In this world,
however, the teaching is that as people and as a global society, we are evolving towards better
lifestyles where we can share wealth, where happiness is the ultimate goal in life. The truth is
that as a global society, we are devolving. The evidence of that is all around us. Some have
taken to the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. While to a small degree this is true, my
submission is that it takes a dad and mom to raise a child. One of the challenges of the school
system is that they have been tasked with the role of being the village, in assuming all of those
duties that historically and theoretically should take place in the home (following rules,
respecting elders, learning to read, learning to communicate, learning to share, etc.). As a school
or a district leader, you must have a vision of where you want your school/district to go, and you
must enlist the help of the stakeholders to help you get there.
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References
Harvey, J., Cambron-McCabe, N., Cunningham, L. L., & Koff, R. H. (2013). The superintendent’s fieldbook:
A guide for leaders of learning (2nd ed.). Corwin.
Klamm, H. (n.d.). Education’s Philosophical Dichotomy [Webinar]. Liberty University.
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