The Purpose of school Have you ever asked yourself why children go to school? You will probably say that they go to learn their own language and other languages,arithmetic, geography, geometry,history, science and all the other subjects. That is quite true. but why do they learn these things? And are these things all that they learn at school? We send our children to school to prepare them for the ,time when they will be big and will have to work for themselves. They learn their own language so that they will be able to tell others clearly what they want and what they know, and understand what others tell them. They learn foreign languages in order to be able to benefit from what people in other countries have written and said, and in order to make people from other countries understand what they themselves mean. They learn arithmetic in order to be able to measure and count things in their daily life, geography in order to know something about the world around them, and history to know something about human beings they meet every day. Nearly everything they study at school has some practical use in their life, but is that the only reason why they go to school? No. There is more in education than just learning facts. We go to school, above all, to learn how to learn, so that, when we have left school, we can continue to learn. A man who really knows how to learn will always be successful, because whenever he has to do something new which he has never had to do before,he will rapidly teach himself how to do it in the best way. The uneducated person, on the other hand, is either unable to do something new, or does it badly. The purpose of schools, therefore, is not just to teach languages, arithmetic, geography, etc., but teach pupils the way to learn.

上学的目的 你是否问过自己为什么孩子要上学?你可能会说他们上学是去学习母语和其他语言、数学、地理、几何、历史、科学及其他学科。此话不假，但他们为什么要学这些?这些东西是他们在校学习的全部内容吗? 我们送孩子上学是为了让他们为自己长大后工作做准备。学习母语是为了使他们明确告诉别人自己要什么，自己知道什么并理解别人的话。学习外语是为了从其他国家人士的著作和言语中获益并让他国人士了解自己说话的含义。学数学是为了日常计量和算数，学习地理是为了了解周围的世界，学习历史是为了了解他们每天遇见的每个人。在学校里学的一切在他们的日常生活中都有实际应用，但这就是他们上学的惟一理由吗? 当然不是。教育不仅仅是学习本身。首先，我们上学是为了学会如何学习，这样，当我们离开学校时，我们能继续学习。一个懂得学习的人总是一个有成就的人，因为不管他何时做以前从未做过的事，他都会快速地教自己如何以最好的办法来做。相反地，一个未受过教育的人不是无法做好新事情，就是做得很糟。因此，学校的目的不仅仅是教语言、数学、地理等知识，也教会学生学习的方法。