The purpose of education

The purpose of education is friendship.

This is what I heard from a CiRCE Institute podcast, from one of its founders. I hadn't thought of it like this before. I might have said that the purpose of education is to know the truth, or to be virtuous, or something along those lines. Yet, if the purpose of virtue is friendship - true friendship, that is - then the purpose of education must be friendship. Our education ought to train us to be capable of true friendship.

How different this purpose is from that the world now thinks is the purpose of education: career; or even more base: money or status. It is interesting also that in our day, career is almost always placed above friendship as a life priority.

I was listening to an episode of On Point on NPR, talking about the decline of male friendship. According to many who research these things, almost all men lose all their friendships by middle age. Men in middle and old age, for the most part, have no intimate friendships with anybody, and the resulting loneliness is causing a host of physical and psychological health problems. How did it happen? It happened because men placed career and family above friendship, and over time all their friendships fell away. It's not entirely men's faults. Our society expects men to treat career and family above friendship. Friendship cannot be forged in isolation; it is a collaborative exercise requiring mutual acknowledgement and commitment of two individuals. Thus, even if one man decided to place friendship above or equal to career and family, chances are he would find no one willing or able to reciprocate. This is the process by which male friendship has eroded into nonexistence over the past few decades.