A few months ago I had a discussion with a friend. He asked me what my life purpose is. Wow, I have never really thought about it. The first thing comes to mind for an answer was to be beneficial for myself, others, and my environment. My friend told me that my answer was not adequate because it was a normative answer. Yes, I agree. My answer was what my culture and religion suggest to be the life purpose of human. Anyone in my culture and religion can answer the same thing. What my friend asked me was what my life purpose is, a specific purpose only for me. Well, I gave it a thought and I cannot disagree with my friend. Although I am not an existentialist, I believe that everyone is unique and humans have free will to choose and direct their life. Having a life purpose and free will are the characters of human.

Do people realise that children are given uniform information about life purpose? They are given the same explanation about the preferred life style: getting higher education degree, working in a multinational company or white collar job, owning assets to ensure their economic welfare, and by achieving those stuffs they will live happily ever after. First of all, there is no such a thing like living happily ever after because human will die eventually. More importantly, whose preferred life style is that? Do all people want that kind of life? In a sense, education contributes to the distribution of that way of life; education which according to Orr (1994) focuses only on personal benefit and intellectuality, abandoning feeling and sense of humanity.

Education is a tool for people; not only a certain group of people but all people. Therefore education has the obligation to facilitate people to achieve their life purpose, at least in my opinion. If educators, including those who have the power to make decision, agree with this, education may be understood differently. Education which is now regarded to be what Robinson (2012) called the producer of university professors because it pushes all children into one direction; can be regarded to be the facilitator of people’s different life purpose.

I think, this concept of education as a facilitator for people to achieve their life purpose puts back human in the centre of education. It respects human’s choice and gives a sense of power for people (Freire, 1973). It is the opposite of the reality of education now. Uniformity is spread all over the world as Colin (2011) showed similarity of national education system worldwide. In an extreme understanding, this kind of uniformity can be regarded as indoctrination which violates people’s autonomy (Gingell & Winch, 2008).

In my opinion, education should be able to help people to live their own unique life. It should go beyond material adequacy, it better be providing spiritual and emotional adequacy; by, as mentioned by Fairfield (2009), enabling people to give richer meanings to their lived experience. Education should also be made in a way that allows individual uniqueness to be celebrated and supports people to pursue their life purpose so that they will be content with happiness.

May 28, 2013