Education: why teach, or study, academic subjects?

Self-tutoring about motivation behind education: the tutor mentions some thoughts on academics.

I have three university degrees, each from a different institution. It’s become somewhat of an amusement in my circles, my emphasis on education instead of career. What might be one’s motivation for education, if they feel they could just make money instead? More broadly, at the institutional level, why teach students academic subjects rather than specific, job-related skills?

Such questions are familiar, and seem motivated by the idea that a person’s main purpose is to earn money. There is also the advantage that practical skills seem much more observable than academic ones: it’s easier to prove students’ learning when they are taught skills that can be demonstrated on physical objects.

In my observation, the philosophy that supports teaching practical skills has gained ground over the academic one during the past three decades. However, I’d be skeptical that people have a better understanding of the world today.

One idea I’ve noticed is that intuition seems of most help when adapting towards untaught situations. Yet, academic study seems, in my opinion, to develop intuition more broadly than practical training. That’s probably because academic study tends to focus on hypothetical situations, which tend to require more imagination than real-life ones.

Academic subjects, because they do tend to require more imagination than practical ones, tend to be harder to study and harder to teach. Yet, I don’t think those difficulties are really avoidable, if one wants to produce thoroughly educated people.

Interestingly, old-world societies seem to place more importance on academics compared with modern ones.

Source:

blogs.spiskalwan.org