Amanda asked:

How could I define the ultimate reason for education, in a metaphysical sense?

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I recently went with my wife and three young daughters to see the Walt Disney cartoon film Tarzan.I
was not expecting to enjoy the experience, but as things turned out I found the film very entertaining.
The part that really gripped me, however, is where Jane and her father undertake Tarzan's education,
using books and magic lantern slides. The slides depict cities, industry, historical events, planets and
stars.

Tarzan is awe-struck, filled with wonderment.

You could say that Tarzan acquired a lot of knowledge in a short period of time. They stuffed his head
full of facts. But that is not all that happened. Jane and her father took a man whose whole world was
the immediate environment in which he lived, and enlarged that world to encompass the universe.

Our sense of who we are changes with the broadening of perspective. History, archeology,
paleontology, cosmology provide ever broadening vistas of our place in time, just as geography,
anthropology, astronomy broaden our vision of our place in the universe.

A different set of perspectives is introduced when we learn to reflect on what it is to be human, on the
nature of human society.

When Aristotle and Plato remarked that philosophy begins with wonder, they were not talking about
the subject we now call 'philosophy', but rather the search for understanding and explanation sought
by the human and natural sciences. In a metaphysical sense, the primary aim of education is to excite
that sense of wonder about the universe and our place in it.

Geoffrey Klempner