What is the main purpose of education to you?

As teachers, education is our core business.

It is not the management position that we may hold in school.

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There are some principals that run schools like corporate companies.

There are also teachers who become middle management and they focus so much on their supervisory roles that they forget that their main reason for being a teacher was to educate the next generation.

In the past

In the early days, there may not be many schools around and many were farmers and fishermen.

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There were also many manual workers. They earned by working with their hands.

Their skills were passed down to their children who did not receive education from schools but life itself was an education to them.

Getting the knowledge and skills from their parents is gaining the survival skills for their future and generations to come.

Modernisation and Education

I believe many people can agree that governments place great importance in education as education plays a major role in developing a country especially without natural resources.

Human resource is the greatest resource for a country so develop their citizens to be educated would enable the development of a country.

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When the population of educated people is high, the modernisation of the country would also accelerate drastically.

Core of education

My personal belief is that education is to enable our students to gain physical or mental ability to cope with future job and survival requirements.

Academic results do not ensure our students’ future survival.
It is definitely more than that for sure.

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Their attitude and resilience for challenges regardless of success or failure.

Their love of learning regardless of how well they perform.

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With great love for learning, our students can excel in a particular area in futre even if we do not see it now.

Every child is talented but in different ways.
Every child can learn but with different amount of time.

The knowledge we provide in school can only enrich their brains but we can never provide them with the real-life experience and challenges from the corporate working world that they are going to face in future.

Even when schools try the best to provide authentic learning experience but we can never duplicate the real experience totally.

Our authentic learning experience in schools is still a very protected experience since the bosses in the working world can be extremely nasty with words and colleagues may not be helpful.

Make a difference

We can make a difference by not just focusing on the head knowledge but the overall development of a child.

That is why many governments and schools are shifting their attention away from just academic performance but different aspects of education.

Every teacher knows that our students would still to be evaluated by a summative assessment but we should still make an effort to develop them in other areas like character building and many other life skills.

We can make a difference by doing our part even if it is just a small seed as it may just grow into a tree in the future.

In conclusion

We educate the hearts of our students and we hope to develop the characteristics that they need for survival in the 21st century.

We cannot be there for them in future but the seeds of values and attitudes that we intentionally plant in them can help them to face their future challenges.

Disclaimer: This is my personal reflection and I am not in any position to instruct anyone what they should do. I am not responsible for any action taken as a result of this post. My post can only be a reference for your further research and growth. By reading this post, you acknowledge and accept that. All images and pictures were taken from google images that are free from copyright under labelled for reuse.