Some people think that the main purpose of school is to turn children as good citizens and workers To what extent do you agree or disagree

Nowadays, with skyrocketing development of technology, we are endowed with better living standards. Hence, more and more people turn from just making a living to pursuing success and bright future. Among all the factors, education is one of the hottest topics for people nowadays to discuss, and in terms of school’s main function, two antithetical viewpoints emerge. Some contends that schools are mainly supposed to cultivate good citizens and workers, while the others disagree. From my perspective, I stand for the latter, in that the main purpose of schools is to impart knowledge and it is the parents that should take the responsibility.

To begin with, schools are places where students absorb knowledge. For most schools all over the world right now, teachers’ main duty is to teach students some basic knowledge, which tells the students how the world works. Among them are Math, Science and Literature etc. Take Science as an example. It helps to explain how the nature work specifically, like chemical principals and physics laws. The purpose of teaching these subjects is not only to let the students become a normal person with basic knowledge, but also, more importantly, to cultivate their creativity and interest in study. If schools are satisfied with fostering normal people, then scientific breakthroughs would be impossible. Only by holding the intention to impart knowledge and cultivate creativity, rather than just to raise common citizens or workers, will human beings gain more progress and achievements.

Meanwhile, school’s responsibility of producing good citizens and workers is just limited. Teachers are not very likely to totally convince all students, since teachers are neither their family members nor their friends of similar age. Hence, there is the strong possibility that teachers and students cannot understand each other, especially when the two parties are coming from different backgrounds. Also, most teachers’ academic duty, as mentioned above, is to impart knowledge and encourage interests and imagination. Thus, they may not have enough time or effort to cultivate students to become good citizens or workers. Instead, parents or other senior family members should be held accountable for this part, since they spend more time with their children, compared to teachers. Also, they will accompany their children for decades, so their impact on children is remarkable and long-lasting.

As a matter of fact, there still can be some moral courses in schools, which tells them how to become a truly mature adult rather than to stay childish. Hence, we can tell that even though it is not the main responsibility for the schools to foster the children's citizenship quality, many schools are trying to make up for what parents may lack in their children's moral and behavioral education.

From what I have explained above, we can safely arrive at the conclusion that school's main purpose is not to make students potentially good citizens and workers, but to equip them with affluent knowledge that may benefit them for the whole life. Also, the main burden should fall on the family, especially parents, to educate their children how to become socially responsible, to behave well and to become a good worker.