What is education for?
Observation
Curricula, credentials and schedules have remained broadly stable while the information environment around them changed completely. Debates focus on methods, rarely on purpose.
Narrative
Education means school, and improving education means improving schools.
Alternative View
Schooling bundles several functions — childcare, sorting, socialisation, instruction — and arguments about 'education' often conflate them.
Unknowns
Which bundled function does each reform actually target? What does credential signalling cost relative to skill formation? What would assessment look like if separated from instruction?
Question
Which of school's functions would you keep if you could only keep one?
Why It Matters
Reforms that ignore the bundle tend to optimise one function while silently degrading another.