The Purpose of Education

"There have been many measures taken to try to turn the educational system towards more control, more indoctrination, more vocational training, imposing a debt, which traps students and young people into a life of conformity… That’s the exact opposite of [what] traditionally comes out of The Enlightenment. And there’s a constant struggle between those. In the colleges, in the schools, do you train for passing tests, or do you train for creative inquiry?”
Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator and activist. Sometimes described as the "father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy. He has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is currently Professor Emeritus, and has authored over 100 books. In this video he discusses the purpose of education, impact of technology, whether education should be perceived as a cost or an investment and the value of standardized assessment
-- Presented at the Learning Without Frontiers Conference - 2012- London (LWF 12)

"It doesn't matter what we cover; it matters what you discover." 
-- Victor Weisskopf, MIT's Professor of Physics
"That's basically it: that's good teaching. It doesn't matter what you cover; it matters how much you develop the capacity to discover. You do that and you're in good shape."
-- Noam Chomsky