“An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living.."?

Question

“An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life.”

what does this mean?

Answer 1

This statement means that there is more to living than making money. It means that education is ultimately about enhancing your understanding of the world and thereby your appreciation of it. It is also about preparing people to become contributing members of society and that includes making a living, but education must supersede simply teaching us to count and read so that we can work the checkout counter at Walmart. If education is to be worthwhile it will ultimately help people to better understand who they are and where they fit in the vast, beautiful, and at times troubling, world around them. It's about teaching us to wonder as much as it is about getting paychecks.

Answer 2

The educational system just gives you the skills necessary to do your job, but doesn't give you the values and ethics to lead a happy, productive, and fulfilling life.

Answer 3

It's a terrific quote that speaks volumes for the educational system (at least here in America) ... and the previous respondents hit the mark with there replies.

I'd like to add to this by saying that, in my view, America's educational system is built around an "economic model" instead of a "social model."  That fundamental difference is what compels the entire system -from Congress to the Secretary of Education (Margaret Spellings), to Superintendents of School Districts to Principals of the individual schools to miss the essential point of education and that is about "making a life."

Because the system focuses on making a living -AND- because we are a capitalist economy (that, at the end of the day, trumps our principles about being a democracy), the system constructs, maintains, and rewards only those behaviors that move toward the economic model ... i.e., "making a living."

Here's an appropriate example: the status and wages of teachers in America.  If the educational system were based on a "social model" then teachers would be revered in the society and they would be rewarded not by some arcan -and often artificial- free market scale, but instead, rewarded (pay) by their value to the society.  

It's difficult to find many professions that supersede the value that teachers have in a society (unless of course, the goal of society is not education but instead, "labor."  If that is the case -as it seems for capitalism, then the society supports having most of the population "uneducated"  ... as is true in America).

At the same time, look at the sports and celebrity industries here in America -some of the hightest paid people in the world ... and for both industries you do not need an education.  It's beyond ironic ... it's pathetic!

Today, the American system of education is failing on both ends of that quote ... on average (looking at total numbers) our high schools are not graduating students who are prepared for either making a living or making a life.  And with only about 27% of the entire work force of this nation (2008) actually earning a Bachelors degree, it seems like that trend is rather formidable and difficult to break the cycle once a student does leave high school.

P.S.  I read a national report two weeks ago that the high school graduation rate in Detroit (the 11th largest city in America with about 900,000 people) is below 25%.  That is absolutely astonishing -and frightening.  And certainly, relative to your quote, the educational system in Detroit is an abysmal failure.