Ep. 1: The Purpose of K-12 Schooling

Students will spend nearly 17,000 hours in school between the ages of 4 and 18. That is a lot of time at the most impressionable ages of our lives. We know that education is necessary, and we have a sense that schooling (a particular form of education) is crucial, but we rarely pause to reflect on why that’s the case. Why do we send our children to school for 14 years? What do we expect school to provide for our children? What do we want for our children in the critical school-aged years? In this episode we explore these ideas and more as we ask, “What is the purpose of K-12 schooling?”

Resources related to this episode:

• The transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in Perspective

• The “Me Monster”

• David Hicks’ Norms and Nobility

• On Education, Formation, Citizenship and The Lost Purpose of Learning by Joseph Claire

• Dorothy Sayers’ The Lost Tools of Learning