What is the Purpose of Schools? Reflections on Education in an Age of Functionalism

Writing about the purpose of schools at a time when accountability, standardization, and privatization are the common discourse seems almost a frill, a throwback to an old-fashioned and romantic time when public education was a topic dominated by talk of democracy and equality. It brings us back to when people spoke of education as serving the common good, and when schools were defined as “the great equalizer” (Mann, 1868). Even though schools never did realize that ideal, it was at least an ideal worth believing in.