Asking students the purpose of school led to more questions than answers

Earlier in the year,  after reading Warren Berger’s (@GlimmerGuy) “A More Beautiful Question”,  I posted this reflection and finished by asking, “What do you believe is the purpose of schools?”.  I asked my 16 year old daughter the same question and was also encouraged to get input from other students, so that led me to send out the question What do YOU believe is the purpose of school? (In your opinion, is this the same as or different  from your parent's or teacher's view?) to 527 students.  Lucky for me, the majority of the feedback came from three different grade bands.  Of the 527 students who responded to the question, 81 were 5th graders, 197 were 7th graders, and 150 were 11th graders.  As I read each of the responses, I started to notice the students feedback breaking out into five different categories.

For the most part, all of the students mentioned that learning, in some form, was a part of school, but as the students wrote on, you could start to see these categories emerge.

The purpose of school is for…

• Control = Students who mentioned this as the main part of their response made statements such as:  to keep kids under control; close to vest; out of trouble; required to go by law; give kids something to do.

• Test = These students said the main focus of schools was to prepare kids to do well on tests; Teach “stuff” we won’t use

• Prepare for next steps = If the students answer had more of an external focus, such as: focus on future steps; purpose was to get ready for next step; get you into college, get a good job, etc.; then I categorized the answer in this group.

• Smarter = If their answer was mostly centered on gaining education for  building knowledge; learn about things; get smarter;get an education; exposed to new things, but did not go deeper than that as a description then the answers were categorized in this group.  

• Life Skills = If the student’s answer had more of an internal focus on the bigger picture of education such as: prepare you for life; more than just knowledge; help you to think on your own; Find who you are; find a passion then I categorized these answers as focusing on life skills.

I should give the disclaimer that this was a non-scientific categorization of the statements and you might have organized them differently, so I shared the links to the breakdown of these three groups.

5th Grade Responses

Category	Raw Numbers	Percentage
Control	2	2.5
Test	0	0
Prepare for next steps	34	42
Smarter	28	34.5
Life Skills	15	18.5
Answer did not apply	2	2.5

7th Grade Responses

Category	Raw Numbers	Percentage
Control	0	0
Test	1	0.5
Prepare for next steps	54	27.5
Smarter	68	34.5
Life Skills	70	35.5
Answer did not apply	4	2

11th Grade Responses

Category	Raw Numbers	Percentage
Control	5	3.3
Test	5	3.3
Prepare for next steps	57	38
Smarter	42	28
Life Skills	40	26.7
Answer did not apply	1	0.7

I don’t know that the data leads to any answers, or necessarily should, but I suspect it has the potential to lead to more questions.  This is especially true if you pull selected thoughts, many of them outliers and some more common, from the students such as these listed.

Concerning Control

I think it is to make kids bored in specific subjects and force them to learn and do things you do not want to do. And my parents or teachers would probably disagree with me because they think learning in every subject even the ones you do not like is fun.   (5th grader)

The purpose of school is to educate and prepare kids for the future, but I think the real purpose of schools is to give kids something to do, without school, everyone would just be running around on the streets causing havoc, it gives kids meaningless busy work to keep us occupied so we don't start selling drugs or something. I think high school doesn't actually do that great of a job for preparing kids for the future, like high school work really doesn't teach good work ethic or motivation. So many kids come out of school hating hard work, and success isn't possible without hard work and sacrifice. also there should really be a better finance course that prepares kids for the future financial. (11th grader)

Concerning Testing

I think it is to learn which is the same and different from my teachers because we do a lot to just get ready for tests and we just try to do good on tests and we learn a little bit of the time but I don't feel like we are just learning we are just getting information to just do good on a test and we do a lot of stuff that I don't quite see how it will help us in our future. Some of the stuff we do will not always help us in the future so I do not really understand why we go over it. (7th grader)

Honestly, it doesn't prepare you for college. Everyone from college says that it doesn't help you at all. My parents think the same thing. the main thing it helps on is how to become a better test taker, and we don't do that in the real world.  (11th grader)

Concerning Preparing for Next Steps

I believe the purpose of school is to make us better at the subjects that we need to make it into Harvard university. I think this is different from my teachers’ p.o.v because they probably just want us to make it into a good college. They won’t be expecting some student from Aurora High school to go to Harvard. School is amazing for me especially if your top 3 colleges is 1 Harvard 2 MIT

3 Stanford!  (5th grader)

I think the purpose of school is to get a good education so you can go to a good college to one day get a job. You want to have a well enough paying job to support yourself and maybe even a family. To do so, usually degrees are required to get a good job, and the only way to get a degree is to go to college. My parents and I view it the same way. We both look at it as important, and that it is worth my time and effort. It is only going to get harder as I get older, so I need to start preparing for it now! :))))))))))))))  (7th grader)

I was told to be honest so excuse my blatant response but, to answer your question, I don't know. I know I come to school because I have to and I know that I most likely wouldn't get a job if I don't but beyond that, what is the true purpose of school? That I cannot answer. It should be to better and further yourself yet I feel as if it has become a sport, a competition among students and not a healthy one. Is the purpose of school to out do everyone else? Since I entered high school, i feel as though I am running and getting no where, working myself to exhaust everyday only to do the same the next and never seeing results. Is the purpose of school to push yourself to your breaking  point? To me, school has lost its purpose. Hopefully we can find it again. (11th grader)

Concerning becoming Smarter

I think that school is for learning getting good grades and having fun. I think that it is the same as my parents opinion and teachers opinion because they would say that school is just have fun or do good but sometimes there is pressure on like the AIR tests or anything like that or say you have a bad grade in school and you are taking the last test of the school year and that will help get your grade up that's what I mean by pressure. (5th grader)

School is to help us learn and get ready to go out in the real life, but what I don't understand is why we have so much homework if we come to school everyday. We come to school for 7 hour or more out of our day. Adding on homework after school that can take anywhere from 3 to 6 hour a day. If some kids do not understand what they are doing it can take them a longer amount of time to do there homework. That is 13 hours out of our day and there are only 24 hours in a day. People have to get 6 to 10 hour sleep a day that can be up to 23 hours in your day taken up already. That leaves you with 1 hour of free time to go outside, but kids have to have at least to have 2 hours outside each day so kids are not getting enough time outside because of the homework they have to do after school. (7th grader)

There are two fundamental parts of the purpose of school, 1) to teach things necessary for life generally and careers, and 2) to teach things that students are interested in or passionate about. Ideally there is overlap between the two parts.  (11th grader)

Concerning Life Skills

I think the purpose of school is to learn new things and become better at communicating with other people to help with understand the new things we learn. I also think the purpose of school is to prepare for real life related situations like having a job when you get older and knowing that mistakes are ok. I feel like this is about the same point of view from my teachers and parents because our teachers make us turn and talk to the person next to us a lot so we can compare our answers and fix things that we got wrong. (5th grader)

The definition if it is an institution for educating children, but that is not what you asked is it? School is a place where students go to be motivated to dream big, then it destroys our dream and tells us to be realistic. School supports individual thinking, but anytime we try to be independent we get punished. School is to teach us, but school gives us grades that tells us that we are not good enough. Us students come to school so we can learn how to be social, yet we are never allowed to speak. Sorry if you don't think this is the truth, sorry if this is a little harsh or unfair in someway, and I am sorry for speaking my mind because in school our thoughts are not always important. Teachers and parents think come to learn, but you should never judge a book by its cover.  (7th grader)

I believe the purpose of school was originally to create citizens with a better understanding of the knowledge presented in the world and innovative thinkers to better those around them. In today's society the purpose of school is to create students able to pass standardized tests of irrelevant information so the district is ranked highly . (11th grader)

I am still digesting this information , but some questions that came to mind for me were:

• Even though they are in smaller numbers, why are there students that feel that school is about control or testing?
• Why is there such a large percentage of 5th graders looking at external sources as the driver of schools?
• How can we help the students shift from a focus on external sources (getting ready for the next step/grade/school) to more of one focused on internal sources (preparing for being successful in life/passion/ independent)?
• Why does it seem like the high school students tend not to believe the adults think the same as they do about school, but the middle school students do?  Is it an age thing?
• How can we get all adults and all students on the same page, in terms of the purpose of school, so we are all moving in the same direction?
• Is there any one purpose/goal/focus of schools  that would meet the needs of all students?

These are just a few questions that popped in my head, and like I mentioned earlier, asking questions about the outliers is probably going to be the most beneficial.  More things to ponder.  :)  Here is the raw data from all the grades besides just the three mentioned if you are interested.