Some Big Questions

This morning I came in to find that a fellow staff member at Carol Morgan had emailed me a survey asking to answer some questions. thinking nothing of it, I opened it up to find only three, very large, very daunting questions which i found myself struggling to answer. The questions were as follows

• In your opinion, what is the purpose of formal education (school)?
• In your opinion, what are some of the most important things we need to be teaching students?
• In your opinion, what are the most important challenges students will face when they finish school (including university)?

Certainly we have all discussed in one way, shape or form these questions and their implications for what we do in our classrooms and in our schools. However, never before have I had to try to form a nice, neat , concise, opinionated response to directly answer them. I decided to post these on my blog to see what kind of response I would get from others out there. Being that I think my regular readership is under 5 I don't expect to get a lot back but anything would be interesting. So what is your opinion?