"Learning as Freedom" -Précis.

In “Learning as Freedom”—an editorial published on September 5, 2012 in The New York Times—Michael Roth argues that rather than structuring education around specific vocations, “making the grade,” and turning people into “robots” designed to complete certain tasks, education should allow individuals to be free to grow and learn while gaining necessary skills and finding their purpose and significance in life and work. Roth argues that higher education should grant the ability to constantly learn in daily life rather than train a person to only function in a certain occupation or job. The purpose of education, according to Roth, is to act as a doorway to expand human knowledge and individuality in order to help the individual find their own sense of significance. Roth agrees with philosopher John Dewey that schools should not educate their students so that they become mere tools of society, or "human capital". It is not the schools' role to mold students into being economic resources but to educate students in an equal system so that they are developed into free thinkers and so that they have the ability to grow and learn even well after they leave the classroom and enter the workplace.