The Why of Education

Abstract

What do we hope for when we send children to school? This is the question Martin Luther King, Jr. posed in an essay entitled “The Purpose of Education,” published in the Morehouse student newspaper around the time of his 18th birthday. King's answer: “Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.” But what, then, is character? This is the question child psychologist Diana Baumrind addressed, toward the end of an illustrious career, in an essay entitled “Reflections on Character and Competence.” Character, Baumrind writes, “provides the structure of internal law that governs inner thoughts and volitions subject to the agent's control under the jurisdiction of conscience.”