In 1628, just before his removal to Holland and nine years after the idea of a new method in philosophy first occurred to him, Descartes suggests Rule I: “The end of study should be to direct the mind towards the enunciation of sound and correct judgments on all matters that come before it.”
For millennia, the question of education’s purpose has shaped and reshaped civilizations. In classical Greece, paideia—the holistic cultivation of the citizen—aimed to form character, virtue, and civic judgment, not merely to transmit knowledge or skills. Later, the European humanist tradition, especially in Germany, articulated Bildung: the formation of the whole person, combining self-cultivation with social responsibility. Here, education was inseparable from the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful—anchored in the flourishing of the individual within a broader ethical and political order.
The Enlightenment introduced a new vision: education as the expansion of reason and autonomy. Rousseau, Kant, and Humboldt championed the liberation of the mind from dogma and heteronomy. Yet the project remained comprehensive, insisting that to be educated is to be capable of independent thought and judgment, able to orient one’s will in a complex world. This vision, often neglected today, was perhaps most succinctly articulated by René Descartes in the early 17th century. In his Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1628), Descartes insisted: “The end of study should be to direct the mind towards the enunciation of sound and correct judgments on all matters that come before it.” His method urged students not to specialize narrowly, but to strengthen the natural light of reason—so that “understanding may light the will to its proper choice in all the contingencies of life.” Though Schumacher would later critique Descartes as “powerful and frightfully narrow,” his ideal—a unity of reason and will, judgment and action—remains a perennial touchstone.
As modernity advanced, however, education’s purpose fragmented. The 19th and 20th centuries saw the rise of mass schooling, designed for industrial and civic integration. Durkheim and the French Republican tradition conceived education as the transmission of collective norms and civic identity. In contrast, the Anglo-American world increasingly turned to “human capital” theory, reframing education as a tool for economic productivity, employability, and competitiveness. Curricula shifted from the cultivation of virtue or wisdom to the acquisition of discrete, measurable skills and outcomes—what many now call “skillification.” The rise of standardized testing, the dominance of STEM disciplines, and the cult of “learning outcomes” reflect a deeper shift: the subordination of education’s broader purposes to narrow economic ends.
Contemporary philosophers of education—Biesta, MacIntyre, Nussbaum, Arendt—have sharply criticized this narrowing. They warn that an exclusive focus on employability or measurable outputs empties education of its deeper purpose: the formation of judgment, practical wisdom (phronesis), and the ability to navigate uncertainty, plurality, and moral complexity. They ask: What is lost when education becomes a factory of competencies, rather than a community of inquiry, critique, and human growth? What happens when schools and universities forget their vocation to form citizens, not just workers; to cultivate the imagination and moral sensibility, not just technical mastery?
Against this backdrop, Descartes’ vision regains urgency. In an age of information overload, existential uncertainty, and accelerating social change, education must reclaim its deepest telos: the empowerment of individuals to make sound, wise judgments in the face of complexity and conflict. This requires, as Descartes intuited, not just “skills for the future” but a renewal of reason, attention, dialogue, and character. It means rejecting both the empty formalism of testing and the superficial pluralism of “skillification,” insisting that education is a moral and political project—the formation of free, responsible, and wise human beings.
Thus, while Descartes’ vision is not exhaustive—it must be broadened to include social, emotional, civic, and ecological aims—it reminds us that education’s highest purpose is not compliance or productivity, but the ongoing quest for wisdom, judgment, and the good life.