A shared culture?

Is the aim of education today still the creation of a true human being? The imbuing of a student with a culture in which all can share?

I'll try not to rant here, but from the way Marrou describes the Hellinistic culture as something that persisted into the education of his own day, it sounds as though it's another thing lost in modern North American education.

Of course, education has more practical ends here and now. Its primary goal is to give people the knowledges they need to enter the workforce in whatever capacity they choose to do so. But that doesn't mean it should lack culture.

Actually, on the whole it seems that human enthusiasm for human ideals has waned. When we talk of being a "real man" or "real woman" now it's not in reference to achieving some lofty Platonic ideal, but rather to sexual potency. As might be expected, there's no lack of enthusiasm for that.

Yet, if the modern West's culture is more than ever and increasingly explicitly about sex and sexuality what does that say about what we have as a unifying culture?

Most every country in the world today enjoys some sort of diversity, and yet things are generally (mostly) peaceful. Where there is conflict, a clash of cultures is at its root (see the middle east, especially Syria). So is the secret to world peace making a culture of sexuality, something we all truly have in  common?

But even then, we run into trouble. Some countries are matriarchies, others give women no say in what they can do with themselves and others still are a cacophony of voices calling for opposing measures regarding sexuality.

This is what the humanities are for. It seems esoteric and wildly unworldly, but if we could figure out the common cultural element among all people - within them, even, so one group doesn't impose their ideas onto another - upon that base all the world's unique cultures could be set and secured. Then, perhaps there could be peace.