education mind map by Harshini Harish

What is Education for?

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 12:15:33 UTC

Traditional Purposes of Education

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 12:20:17 UTC

Society has categorized education into two ways or reasons: personal achievement and economic preparation. Although these ideas are not completely wrong, Allen argues that they seem to be incomplete, as often it is a mix of both that leads to one truly pursuing education

Economic Preparation

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 12:25:44 UTC

Education is often taught as the way to get a job, make money, and have a successful future. The focus of it is centered around individual success more than community betterment.

STEM

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 12:32:38 UTC

The STEM field is strongly associated with stability, especially in financial realms, causing students and parents to find themselves gravitating towards it as they are "safe" future investment.

Reliable Employment

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 12:37:43 UTC

STEM fields are viewed as "future-investments" due to groundbreaking technology and new inventions. This causes fields such as AI, data science, and other software development to have a perfect future with schools also advertising the need for STEM in upcoming generations, along with companies recruiting heavily from STEM programs.

Status and Perception

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 12:49:43 UTC

STEM careers are often considered more prestigious and respectable than other fields.

Parents praise careers based on how marketable the student will appear during job-hunting and eventual financial earnings based on those jobs.

Promotion from Education Institutions

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 12:57:46 UTC

Education is constantly pushed by school systems due to funding "for science

and math education, as well as vocational training" (Allen 9). In contrast, humanities and liberal arts classes get dropped or reduced.

School Reform

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 13:06:06 UTC

In 1957, the launch of Russia's Sputnik (which was the first satellite) promoted a sense of urgency in the United States. The National Defence Education Act was enforced, causing increased funding for STEM as well as vocational education.

Allens Perspective of Education

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 13:15:11 UTC

Education is important for one's future and not only allows them to be personally successful but also prepares them to strengthen democracy. This is achieved by education by promoting communication skills, encouraging civic engagement, and exhibiting shared decision-making

Individual Empowerment

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 13:15:54 UTC

Education should help, not hinder one's ability to think independently. This might look different to everyone, but collectively, this means being able to express oneself with confidence and having the tools to navigate the world around them. Allen believes that such a useful tool should be shared in the political world and encourages everyone to be a contributor to democracy.

Community Responsibility

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 13:16:30 UTC

Education also teaches people how to coexist with other people, not just as individuals seeking success. Instead, the idea of shared communities fosters practicing empathy, cooperation, and understanding the perspective of others.

Democratic and Political Participation

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Understanding the world around them

Making good, informed decisions

Respecting differences and understanding perspectives

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"In the minds of parents, students, and educational policymakers alike, it is now seen as a private good whose benefits accrue primarily to the individual student in the

form of competitive advantage in the labor market and greater lifetime earnings" (Allen 21).

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 13:20:35 UTC

"For students and parents, there is no meaningful distinction between outcomes of vocational and political readiness. A student who is ready for an upwardly mobile, economically secure job is on the path to political empowerment. By contrast, a student who has somehow been prepared for civic engagement but can't get a job with decent health insurance is in no position to affect our political system" (Allen 20).

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In schools, students are taught to work collaboratively, allowing them to use their creativity. Hands-on learning and public speaking in the form of group projects, presentations, and discussions allows students to demonstrate confidence.

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 13:41:04 UTC

Education often puts students against each other, encouraging competition in forms such as ranking. To put Allen's ideas into practice, teaching students to work together (encouraging the idea of contributing to shared life instead of personal success) will allow them to think and act the same way in their future.

Allens Argument

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 13:47:15 UTC

Education is mainly about preparing students to participate in democracy. Without citizens who can act in unity, whether that be through cooperation or mutual accountability, democracy starts to weaken. By understanding their place in the world around them, students are able to become people who don't just live in a democracy but also help sustain it.

From school education to participants in democracy

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 13:53:06 UTC

"Citizens must judge whether their governments meet their responsibility, spelled out earlier in the sentence, to secure rights. If a government fails in its core purposes, it is the job of the citizen to figure this out and decide how to change direction (Allen 12)".

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 13:57:04 UTC

This mindset, from not only their parents but also other role-models in society such as teachers, educators, etc, can cause students to feel validated when they pick a "difficult" STEM major vs an "easy" liberal arts major.

hhh29_1 — 2025-09-29 13:58:06 UTC

The concept of money going to biology labs, robotics, and coding programs reinforces the idea that facilities from these fields translate into the money they will earn in the future.

Examples:

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volunteering, school-wide organizations, student initiatives, group projects

Deliberation

hhh29_1 — 2025-10-08 17:37:01 UTC

The idea is that people engage around a public problem, trying to discover what is just, what is common, and what is fair. People aren't driven by narrow self-interest but rather contribute in reasoned debate and actively listen to others.

Historical Models

hhh29_1 — 2025-10-08 17:42:49 UTC

Athenian assembly
colonial New Hampshire town halls
public representatives behaving reasonably in legislatures

These examples, pulled by Allen, demonstrated where people connected not to win, but to collectively help the public.

Frame-shifting

hhh29_1 — 2025-10-08 17:47:57 UTC

Allen wants society to shift its values and morals, as well as how people perceive issues. By changing the "frame" through which the public is viewed, it can help make existing assumptions and injustices noticeable.

Important Figures

hhh29_1 — 2025-10-08 18:21:50 UTC

Harriet Beecher Stowe- abolitionist narratives/literature

Martin Luther King Jr., or later movements like Occupy Wall Street (“we are the 99%" slogan).

Fair Fighting

hhh29_1 — 2025-10-08 18:34:19 UTC

When involved in a conflict, one should act ethically and with integrity towards the other side. By fairly hearing out others' opinions about a topic, you can respect others' reasoning.

Activists

hhh29_1 — 2025-10-08 18:43:01 UTC

Allen touches upon early women's rights activists: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage.

Examples of fair fighters who were passionate about justice and advocating for whats right.

Relationship between STEM and Liberal Arts

hhh29_1 — 2025-10-08 23:52:52 UTC

The education system has become imbalanced in how STEM is prioritized more the liberal arts. This is due to society's perception of education's purpose (that it should serve the economy more than democracy).

Allen argues that instead of rejecting STEM, both fields should compliment each other.

Counterarguments

hhh29_1 — 2025-10-09 00:54:42 UTC

Carlos Fraenkel argues that those who place a strong divide between STEM subjects and liberal arts, are understating the effects on civic engagement that STEM subjects have and vice versa for the humanities. For example, many political issues have to do with science-related topics such as climate change.

Allen responds to this by clarifying that the effects of STEM subjects versus the liberal arts are reflected in data from various socioeconomic categories; based on a person's socioeconomic status and the education they receive, patterns emerge regarding their civic engagement.