Today's school system is very controversial when approached with questions like, "Are schools giving students the best possible education?" and "What is the purpose of education?" My concern is whether or not we are teaching students the essentials to live a healthy lifestyle; this can be described as receiving a "full education". A healthy lifestyle is very vague, that is why I will introduce a second perspective on education. From the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business, a mission statement describes their goal to prepare students to be tomorrow's leaders. This is, by my standards, a very rational and successful way of teaching but to concur with the idea of a full education would make this school system ideal.
An individual's education is normally thought to consist of their school work and only their school work. In an ideal education, school plays a very important role in obtaining a full education but a good physical health and spiritual education is needed. Our society focuses on school as the primary aspect of education simply because it is more useful in the workforce; a workforce where everyone is inevitably going to end up in some way or another.
Aside from the text books and lectures of a classroom, a student should develop a sense for physical health through team sports and individual sports. Maintaining a healthy body is just as important as maintaining a healthy mind. Along with this, knowledge of staying healthy through diets and simply just taking care of your body is essential.
In addition to school and physical health, a spiritual education would wrap things up to create a full education. Public schools don't teach any religious beliefs leaving out, to many people, a very important part of their life. Although, some schools do support religious beliefs indirectly in that they preach the same beliefs as some religions in the classroom. Religions teach us how to act towards one another and set the foundation for our morals.