Chapter three of What Schools Are For by Goodlad (1979) is about educational aims and school goals. In this chapter, the author reports that education is a deliberate and systematic effort to communicate or invoke knowledge, attitudes, skills, and sensitivities, and schools provide this education.
Schools are a public service and are therefore a servant dependent for support on their clients. A major problem that schools face is how to balance the demands of the client and still educate the students. The author states that schools are to promote critical thinking, literacy, and cultural enlightenment and a sense of devotion to the nation-state; these goals must not be divided since the promotion of free individuals results in the building of a free, democratic state. The quality of a school depends on the process that takes place within; education can become corrupt if external pressures restrict its goals.
Education prepares one for vocation, society and a changing civilization, and present and future life satisfactions. The author reports Dewey's contribution to the definition of education which states that education must make human beings who live life to the fullest, rather than to simply make citizens. Education is therefore viewed as helping the process of an individual becoming whole or flourishing. To evaluate education is to evaluate this process, which requires the extraction and understanding of what personal meaning is for each and every individual.
Schools on the other hand have goals set for them which may conflict with individual needs for education to assist personal growth. The question remains, how can schools be educative while seeking to appease those they are dependent on. Goals for schools have emerged through an ongoing sociopolitical process and include the following: client-perceived desires, professional determinants, citizen interests in teaching prevailing culture, university expectat...