The Janice Heron case study demonstrates the dilemma of answering the question: What are schools for? The dilemma presented to Heron is how to best devote time, resources, and attention to the different levels of children in her class. For example, should she allow her assistant teacher to devote her time to the brightest students which will help them develop rapidly or should she have them spend time with the remedial students in her classroom. The complexity of issues the situation involves seem to sap and confound her choice of action “She packed her Money bag for home, full of work that suggested no answers” (Nelson 130).
The answer to the question posed at the outset of this essay is not one easily answered, but I believe that the main goal of education and school should be to help prepare students as best as possible for life in the real world. In other words, it should give them the tools to deal with the complexities of non-school life which they will face upon graduation. In order to do so well, I believe the philosophy of Alvin I. Goldman (1) regarding the acquiring of truth best answers what school is for “I believe in truth—‘absolute’ truth as it is sometimes called—and I believe that a great variety of human endeavors are dedicated quite properly and understandably, to the discovery and dissemination of truths.”
However, it appears that our schools are unable to achieve this for the majority of students. Many students graduate high school without a basic understanding of the social, political, economic and religious culture in which they will need to make their way independent of teachers, vouchers, parental support or other methods aimed at trying to balance the spectrum between total liberty and total equality. Schools cannot diminish all of the differences between students who are intelligent and those who are not, those who are rich and those who are not, and those
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