One of the most vivid memories from my first bout of teacher training, a PGCE before my Diploma in Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector (DTLLS) - I’m nothing if not a glutton for punishment, was a lecture where us green-as-grass new recruits had to tackle the weighty question of “what is education for?”

To help us navigate such a minefield of thought, we had to pick from four different answers.

There was one about enriching yourself, another about being able to understand the world around you, another about activism and then the last one, which I think the lecturer had included as an ironic joke due to its lowly baseness was “to get a job”.

There were about 60 bright-eyed students in the lecture theatre that day. Guess how many chose the last answer? Yep, just muggins here.

‘I still think this today’

Having instantly made myself public enemy number one by daring to suggest that the end-point of an education was to get yourself paid, I then had to justify my answer to the rest of the lecture theatre.

I wish I could say it was a David and Goliath moment where I put forward my argument using devastating wit, crushing logic and heartfelt emotion, but instead, I mumbled something about it being “just what I think” feeling deep shame and promptly sitting down as fast as was humanly possible. But I still think it today.

Education is a noble pursuit, but so is employment. Yet, I’m often left to wonder why there is so much distaste in the educational field for this way of thinking.

‘It’s good enough for my students’

Being able to sustain one’s self through work, being good at that work, and allowing that work to be a factor in the betterment of one’s self is something I’ve never had a problem with.

Yet I can never shake the feeling that when I give utterance to this in education circles, the view is looked down on as not being good enough.

Well, it’s good enough for my students; students who are focused on achieving employment in their chosen field.

Should we tell them that they should leave such worldly concerns behind when it comes to the business of learning? That putting money in your pocket by doing something of value is just a little too earthy and should be dismissed, replaced by a more acceptable educational philosophy?

‘It’s about need’

I think the problem is that in many cases, the effect of not being able to support yourself is such a far-removed concept by those having the conversation that it becomes abstracted and, due to this, it can then be easily derided.

The crushing, all-consuming anxiety of not being able to make rent, or afford the kids uniform, or put decent food on the shopping list; these are worries for other folk outside the discussion.

It’s easy to forget that for many, education is not about values, it’s about need. And I think it would serve us well to remember that when asking “what is education for?”

It’s for enlightenment certainly, but it’s also about putting food on the table.

Tom Starkey teaches English at a college in the North of England