What is the purpose of Education?

Sometimes I wonder about what I do. Not me personally- I teach conservative values, solid business relevant skills, and liberal education like history and civics. Not openly, of course- I'm not tenured yet, so I can't do any of those things openly or else I'd risk not keeping my job. No, I wonder what the purpose of public education in our society is.

Education does not teach job skills. Even though businesses continue to ask for more courses in job skills, from what I've seen, classes like art, shop, etc are being cut in favor of more foreign language and math. The focuses of classes is not on job skills- rarely do classes draw clear connections between the real world of work and education. And the whole attitude towards business in education is hostile. So it doesn't teach job skills.

Education does not teach a general liberal education. It misses the boat on hitting the basics of writing, reading, and arithmetic. Look at the latest math results- even though our country is by far the richest and most successful, our state-run education industry lags many other nations in performance. The latest reading results also mirror this- our students can't read- and based on what I have seen, I would contend that our scores are inflated, because they can read, but don't understand what they are reading. In social studies it is worse- the Michigan scores mirror the rest of the nation, and in Michigan, only 33% of students meet the basic standards of social studies education, and based on my experience in a standards setting committee, I would contend that the bar is very low even to meet the standards. So students are learning history, civics, math, or reading.

So what does education do? I would contend that now, education is just be a socialization place, a place where students are kept, occupied, and socialized. But if that is the goal, how good is it doing? Probably doing a fair job at indoctrination of liberal ideas. But I'd have to do some research on bullying, school shootings, teen depression, manners, etc to discover how well it's doing on more traditional socialization.