Change more to our liking

It's astonishing what people define as "good education."  Some are really loose with their definition, saying that education is just what people learn in life about life.  Some are really narrow in their definition, referring only to what young people learn between ages 4 and 18 in a classroom.  Others see education as what it takes to get a job for making money, and still others want education to be either well-rounded to encompass many disciplines to ready them for a profession or trade-oriented to become good at a few specialties within a particular discipline.

It appears important to define education before anyone can proceed to other steps.  It is clearly in a society's best interest to educate, but to what end?  A definition allows them to determine how to achieve the definition and eventually how to measure the learning that takes place as a result of the education.

As the state of education stands now, far and away the consensus is to educate via the "classroom model" which is deemed the most efficient system for the economic source funding it.  Even classes via internet use the virtual classroom model although instruction is not by a group in one place but by an individual in one place.  However, there are so many reform movements afoot in the U.S. that any onlooker would conclude the system to deliver the definition is broken or the definition of education needs to change.

Many people don't like one aspect or another about the current state of education.  There are those who would reform curriculum, for instance, or those who would change the idea of grading and mastery.  Two of the biggest areas of discontent are the funding sources and funding allocations used for the public school system.  Deriving a definition for education would allow a discussion for the funding source to change or the funding allocation (formula) to change.

An example of changing the funding source would be to replace the corporate tax due to a school district placed into a state mandated funding source for public schools and charter schools.  Instead, schools who teach to a specific set of skills would be funded directly by an account set up outside of the state/city government.  For instance, a software developing company would send a "tax" to an organization for disbursement to a general technological account, which in turn would send a percentage of funds to a technology school which has as a part of its course of training different types of software coding and development.  Other technological companies would do the same.  The tax would be sent for specific, but targeted and excellent training for technology only.  An oil company would send its "tax" to a general geo-science organization for percentage disbursement to a geological/geophysics/geoengineering school which has as a part of its training the exploration and operation of oil.  Other oil related companies would do the same.

Funding is always the major issue in education.  Defining what education is and should do, would help resolve the problems of this major issue.  Other issues would follow.  But a definition would guide people through the other issues as it would through the issue of funding.  It might even result in a change to the "classroom model in the U.S.  I would think, in fact, most Americans would support finding a definition for welcome change to this model and its current state of affairs.