The Goals Of Education is the title of a great article by Richard Rothstein and Rebecca Jacobsen that appeared in the December, 2006 issue of the Phi Delta Kappan.

I just happened to find it in some research I was doing.  It gives a excellent historical perspective about what the purposes of schools have been in this country, and the effect of standardized testing on these original goals.

The article is particularly helpful to me by its description of the original intent of “civics” instruction, which is more in-line with what I teach in my Government class than what is typically done in most classrooms today.