Education

Leisure or recreation
Taking up a hobby
For the priests a way of gaining
skills to be able to interpret sacred
text
Learning the same social habits and
skills as their elders.

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 Evolution of Education
• In its modern form, education is instruction of pupils
within specially constructed school premises,
emerged in 19th century.
• As industrial economy rapidly expanded, demand for
specialized schooling that could produce educated
capable workforce increased.
• As occupations became more differentiated, and
located away from the home, skills could not be
passed on to children from the parents.
• With practical transmission of specific skills, people
were exposed to abstract learning—math, science,
history, literature etc.
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 Evolution of Education
• In a modern society, people have to be
furnished with basic skills—such as reading,
writing and calculating—and general
knowledge of their physical, social and
economic environment.
• It is also important how to learn to master
new and sometimes highly technical forms of
information.
• And advanced society also needs to pure
research and insight with no immediate
practical value to push out boundaries of
knowledge.
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Intended Functions of Education
• Prepare people to make a living and contribute to the
society.
• Preserving the culture and passing it from one
generation to the next.
• Encouraging democratic participation by teaching
verbal skills.
• Developing person’s ability to think rationally and
independently.
• Enriching and enabling students to expand
intellectual and aesthetic horizons.
• Improving personal adjustment through counseling.
• Improving health of the youth through physical
exercises and hygiene education.

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 Intended Functions…..
• Producing patriotic citizens through lessons
illustrating the country’s glory.
• Promoting racial integration.
• Providing public entertainment, like athletic events,
drama, music etc.
• Building character and making responsible and
productive men and women.
Some of these intended functions may not be fulfilled,
but universally defined manifest functions of
education.
Recently the manifest functions are so multiplied that
we often assume that education can solve all the
problems of society.
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Latent/unintended Functions
• Creation of Adolescence: extended
education delays entry to the labor
force. Higher education still prolongs
dependency—perennial students
accumulating credits or “incompletes,”
living on loans, scholarships,
assistantships and odd jobs but never
finishing and entering competition for a
permanent position.
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 Latent Functions…
• Weakening of Parental Control.
• Preserving class system: students are being
socialized to accept and fit in to the system of
statuses and roles.
• A heaven for Dissent: Universities have long history
of political activism. Universities administrations and
even governments were overthrown. Universities
were the breeding grounds for civil rights movement,
anti-colonialism sentiments and unpopular Vietnam
war were the issues. The movement for the Partition
of India was very well supported by the students of
Aligarh Muslim University.

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 Education In Islam
• Study of the Qur’an dominated instructions in the schools in
the early Islamic world.
• The core curriculum consisted of memorising the Qur’an and
hadith, together with writing and mathematics.
• The pupils practiced their writing on secular poems, lest a
mistake be made with sacred text.
• Madrasa was the term used for seminary and Bayt al-Hikma
(the House of Wisdom) the higher seat of learning that focused
on teaching rather than research.
• Until the introduction of paper, the chief method of recording
was the memory.
• Mosques also had libraries and offered lectures on hadith.
When books became common, Baghdad had more than 100
book dealers, all congregated in one street.
• Today, education in Islamic world is divided into two groups,
religious and secular.

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 Social Class differences in
Learning
• When predicting average achievement for a school,
the quality of the school is less important than the
family and class background of the student.
• In every country, children from the lower class learn
far less, are more often absent, drop out earlier than
middle or upper class children.
• In third world countries, “schools for the poor” lack
even the minimum facilities and staff needed for
decent learning.
• Most of the low achievers are from the working class
families and most of the high achievers are from
middle or upper class families.

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 Social Class….
• It is believed that schools give everyone a chance to
climb the social ladder. But in reality, education has
been to block the upward mobility of the poor,
minorities and underprivileged people.
• Schools perpetuate inequality by socializing children
to stay in the class to which they were born.
• Credential requirements like admission tests, entry
tests screen out those who lack the middle class
niceties of language, manners and ornamental
learning. They protect the “ins” from the competition
of the “outs” maintaining inequality and privilege.
• Credentialism is not ending, but those demanding
credentials must be able to show that they really
screen our the incompetent and not the
disadvantaged.
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