Seth Godin asks "What is school for?" and offers 27 wide-ranging answers. It's an interesting question because it questions the role of educatio in society. For marketers, the question might be addressed from the perspective of defining the benefit being sold by educators. Is the return on educational investment measured in the overall productivity level of the population of a society? Do better educational systems generate greater GNP? Is this the beter metric, or would it be better to compare relative IQs or MENSA qualifications across societies? Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, has written about the application of his approach to evaluating differentiators of great businesses to the non-profit sector, with interesting insights about how the core 'flywheel' model shifts in non-profits.
My suggestion for #28 on Seth Godin's list is: #28. Learn to think critically. As a parent investing in the college education of a child who has chosen to major in Classics (not the major with the highest level of "I got a great job upon graduation" results), I firmly believe he's becoming a better human being able to think critically about the world around him. I suppose this also implies that I believe that better thinking among people will ultimately lead to a better society.
