Exactly, purposefulness. There is something to the "whole child" education movement. Not separating life from education.
Albeit our purposes have changed our need for a purpose has not. No longer agrarian, and leaning away from being industrial, we must reassess what our nation's direction will be. There is a disconnect between our ideals and our reality.
When children see a relationship to what they are learning to the real world, reality sets in. Teaching personal finance to middle school aged students is not only practical but a necessary skill of survival. (So is civics and ethics and so on...)
I'd love to see a national dialogue, not on how to "fix" our current system, but on what it is we feel an educated citizen of the future will need to know. Kind of turning the equation upside down and starting from the end and working backwards. If we don't have the goal in mind how can we possibly hit the target. I feel like right now we are reading a single page of the map and guessing where to turn next.