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In every culture the purpose of education has been to impart a vision of one’s role in society and to teach the skills required to fulfill that role. Training has focused only on basic skills for some, and on leadership skills for those deemed capable of taking on that function. An important role of education is to instill a deeper understanding of each culture’s lasting values that would hopefully increase its chances of long-term survival.

Civilization has existed for roughly ten thousand years. Before that, children were taught the basic survival skills of a hunter-gatherer society, especially those involved in meeting basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter, which still is the case in primitive cultures. In civilized societies, educators try to impart the values of an agriculture-based structure that is moving toward greater urbanization. There is a struggle in every civilization to identify and teach lasting values that would enable it to adapt to an ever-changing world. Civilizations are more likely to perpetuate themselves when their members are prepared to deal with the unexpected.

The ability to pass on skills always has been essential to the continuation of any civilization. Communication – which includes language, modeling and gesture – is the primary means by which lessons are conveyed. Repeating the same lessons in the same skills may continue for eons, but for a civilization to progress innovation based on trial and error must take place. Innovations that improve lives tend to be remembered and communicated.

In every age some civilizations have superseded previous generations because of a strong, unified vision that was communicated via education. The Romans surpassed their Greek predecessors because of a unified faith in their engineering and military skills. The Aztecs conquered huge swaths of Mexico due to the favor of their gods. The Germans built an empire that would last a thousand years. And the United States is the preeminent power in today’s world because it is built on egalitarian principles. Each of these civilizations has geared its educational efforts toward preparing students to participate in a great vision that would support its mission. But each also has had difficulty adapting to the shock of unexpected events for which their training and education left them unprepared.

Most civilizations – up to a few hundred years ago – have been monarchies. When there was an elite class whose goal was to perpetuate itself, innovation was slow. People were trained in roles that contributed to the status quo. But as societies became more egalitarian, education in ideas – in addition to basic skills – began to spread. More people became interested in innovations that had the potential to improve their lives. In England, for example, nobles demanded roles in governing, and decision-making gradually broadened as a vision of greater egalitarianism took hold. Education improved with a more broad-based prosperity.

All civilizations, despite efforts to maintain themselves relatively unaltered, have undergone radical changes – often within the life span of an individual. Natural disasters, a depletion of resources, and vicious wars are some of the areas that have led to collapse as civilizations have failed to adapt. We thus must continually ask ourselves how to impart the basic truths that define our culture while maintaining the flexibility to adjust to a world that is likely to change before our eyes.

After our revolution, the United States served as a beacon for others to overthrow their governments and provide greater roles to the average person in decision-making. But the effects of revolutions falter where education does not prepare people to participate in self-governance. France, for example, flirted with a return to monarchy for 150 years after their 1789 revolution. In the United States, African Americans and women were denied the right to vote for decades. Their education enforced the view that they would never really be capable of participation in the democratic process, let alone become leaders. Yet because of an underlying vision of equality, the seed of broad-based egalitarianism had been planted and eventually broke through.

Education reflects the expectations of teachers for the roles their students are likely to fulfill. But preparation to participate in a world of equal opportunity requires that we impart much more than skills. If we are to have a society where the rights of all are respected to develop their potential, we must instill a vision of a world where the possibility within every human being to be a contributing member of society can be fulfilled. Students must be taught to respect not only their own unique talents and abilities, but those of others. Many will want to develop values and skills to enable them to contribute to our nation and world. Some will choose to focus only on their own needs, but no one can long remain unaffected in a world prone to economic breakdowns, natural disasters, and wars. If we are to move our civilization forward, teachers must emphasize that being a member of a civilization has its responsibilities as well as its rights.

In an equal opportunity society, education must encourage students to absorb not only information based on the past, but to use this information as a basis to consider the best future course for themselves and their world. Not only is a familiarity with history essential, but an ability to come to viable conclusions based on the information available. We can supply students with our version of the facts that they must digest and regurgitate, but real education requires presenting them with an array of information to prepare them to make the decisions required of those in a free society. The reality of the world is continually changing – it fails to comply with our static concepts. Real learning is not only about attaining information and skills to function in the world that we know, but it is about being prepared to deal creatively with a future that we know will hold surprises.

Day after day our concepts guide our actions. We have concepts of our world, of other people, of ourselves and about how we expect all of these to interact. Our concepts come from what we have been taught and what we observe, and they forge our expectations. Our best teachers encourage us to see the world as a place of opportunity where we focus on solutions, rather than obstacles. If we see people – or parts of our world, such as nature – in a positive light, we will perceive them as possible contributors to solutions. If we believe a person – or group of persons – to be bad or incompetent, we are likely to have low expectations. When we believe the world to be full of obstacles – human and natural – we will expend our time and energy in blame rather than moving toward our goals. But when we are able to maintain our vision of the world as a place where solutions are possible no matter how large our problems, we can continually refocus on where we want our world – and ourselves – to go. An effective education empowers us to deal with those challenges that crop up daily to confound our expectations. When we truly understand that temporary setbacks – for ourselves and our world – are the rule rather than the exception, we can renew our faith in our resilience and that of our world and move past each setback as it occurs. Education at its best encourages us to refine our vision - to redraw our map - to include the pitfalls we have overcome. The best education instills faith that we can continually find creative and new routes that don’t ignore our past, but allow us to build on it and move on.