ADVERTISEMENTS:
In this article we will discuss about the meaning and functions of education.
Meaning of Education:
The term ‘education’ may be interpreted either in a broad or in a narrow sense. In a broad sense, education refers to a process which continues all throughout life, and which is promoted by almost every experience in life. In this sense, educational materials are to be found in all walks of life. No single item of experience may be left out.
According to this interpretation, therefore, to live is to learn. If we closely explore our past, we shall invariably find that the greatest experiences of our lives have been derived from the most unexpected quarters. We may further notice that this type of education comes to us unconsciously.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
That is, we have not made any effort to derive such educational experience. “It comes from the problems of life with which we have to deal, from the influences and suggestions of nature, from intercourse with our follow-men, often from our failures and sufferings”.
This concept of education emphasises chiefly the process by which personality is developed, and by which we realise the relationships of man to man”, and of man to the universe.
In a narrow sense, ‘education’ refers to a consciously directed activity or effort “to develop and cultivate’ our powers”. The instructions that we receive in schools and colleges fall under this category. The teachers place before their pupil’s ideas and images with a view to directing their mental or psychological growth in a certain direction.
The students also join educational institutions with the express purpose of ‘receiving’ instructions.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Professor Dewey, in his book ‘Democracy and Education’, used the expression intentional education to mark the distinction between education which comes to us unconsciously and that which implies a definite purpose.
We generally use the term ‘education’ in this narrow sense, i.e., as “a process consciously organised by the state or the family or some other authority for the development of young people towards some end regarded as important by the authority in question—an end which may or may not involve a general cultivation of personality”.
Having accepted this narrow interpretation of education, we may discuss its social significance by considering the part played by some of the important educational agencies of our time.
Functions of Education for Society as a Whole:
According to Emile Durkheim, the major function of education is the transmission of society’s norms and values. “Society can survive”, he says, “only if there exists among its members a sufficient degree of homogeneity; education perpetuates and reinforces this homogeneity by fixing in the child from the beginning the essential similarities which collective life demands”.
A vitally important task for all societies is to bring close together a mass of individuals into a united whole. The individuals must have a sense of belonging to society. Durkheim holds that education provides the necessary link between individuals and society by indoctrinating them with the values and ideals, traditions and thoughts of the community.
Second, Durkheim argues that the formal education imparted by schools cannot be provided either by the family or the peer groups. The family is a group of kins knit together by ties of blood. Family relationships are, therefore coloured by love and affection, emotions and sentiments.
One cannot, in the nature of things, look beyond one’s family and get acquainted with the promise and problems of living in the larger society. Peers are one’s personal choice. Naturally, membership of a peer group cannot prepare one for the larger society. The school system, on the other hand , is a miniature society in which a pupil interacts with other members of the school community in terms of a fixed set of rules.
In the words of Durkheim:
“It is by respecting the school rules that the child learns to respect rales in general, that he develops the habit of self-control and restraint simply because he should control and restrain himself. It is a first initiation into the austerity of duty. Serious life has now begun”.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
In the words of Talcott Parsons, a family or a peer group upholds ‘particularistic” standards whereas a school upholds ‘universalistic’ standards. Thus, the school prepares young people for their adult roles.
Third, Durkheim argues that formal educational institutions, apart from transmitting general values which provide the ‘necessary homogeneity for social survival’, also transmit specific skills which provide the ‘necessary diversity for social co-operation’. In pre- industrial societies, technical skills were imparted chiefly through the family and the occupational group in informal and practical ways.
Thus, a child born in the family of a carpenter used to learn the skills of the trade informally from the members of his family. Industrial societies have become highly specialised and complex, calling for skills of a very high order. Complex division of labour, which is the defining feature of an industrial society, tends to strengthen social cohesion.
This he calls organic solidarity. Industrial society is thus knit together by value consensus and a specialised division of labour which makes interdependence a condition for survival.
Fourth, the object of education, as defined by Durkheim, is “to awaken and develop in the child those physical, intellectual and moral states which are required of him by the milieu for which he is specially destined”.
By way of elaborating this statement of Durkheim, Bottomore observes that “the function of education in preparing the child for a particular milieu in society….. has traditionally meant preparing him for membership of a particular group in the social hierarchy”.
Social divisions exist in almost all societies. Wherever there is a system of social stratification, there is a corresponding differentiation within the educational system. Class divisions are reflected in the educational system.
In fact, education is used as an agency for preserving class privileges and interests and thereby maintaining class distinctions. Thus, in ancient India, the education of children belonging to higher castes was quite distinct from the education that was available for the great majority of the population.
The education of the former was conducted by a hereditary priesthood, and it largely excluded secular instruction and was chiefly concerned with the transmission of religious doctrines and knowledge of the scriptures. With the establishment of British rule in India, the ancient educational system declined.
But the introduction of English education tended to reinforce the separation of those who received English education from the rest of the society. Even after four decades of India’s independence, class distinctions are maintained by the existence of different types of schools for the various social groups.
This kind of educational differentiation exists in all modern societies, however much they may be committed to egalitarian policies.
Fifth, the importance of education as an agency of social control cannot be ignored. The major function of education, according to Durkheim, is the transmission of society’s norms and values by the older generations among those who are not yet ready for social life.
Once a child internalizes through intellectual exposure the distinctive traits of this culture, his actions and behaviour -patterns are moulded by his intellectual orientation.
Conformity to social norms and values becomes easy and spontaneous. Links are firmly established between the society on the one hand and individuals on the other. Seen in this perspective, education appears to be a powerful and very effective agency of social control.
The question of applying Social sanctions arises only when there are deviations or tendencies toward deviations from socially prescribed norms of behaviour.
The application of social sanctions becomes unnecessary if educational agencies can transmit effectively society’s norms and values to individuals during impressionable periods of their lives. We should note, however, that the effectiveness of formal education as a means of social control is diminished by certain factors in modern times.
Hence it was not difficult for teachers to communicate to their pupils social traditions and values and to regulate their conduct in a manner consistent with the recognised code of the community.
With the establishment of industrialised order, the scale of values has changed. Wealth, and not education, is the main determinant of one’s status in modern industrialized societies. This has undermined the prestige of teachers to some extent.
Moreover, the expansion of mass literacy in the modern world has also contributed to the decline of the prestige of teachers, for he is “no longer set apart as the literate man”. There is yet another factor contributing towards the same end. Now-a-days the values professed by a teacher are no longer authoritative.
They have “to compete with the values presented to the child by his family, peer group, and the media of mass communication”. There is, therefore, the possibility of a conflict between “different codes of behaviour and different agencies of social control in contemporary societies”.
For instance, India being wedded to the ideal of secularism, Indian schools do not provide for any religious instruction. In these circumstances, a boy or a girl who comes from a very conservative family with religious tradition is likely to face conflicts between “secular character of state education as contrasted with the religious values of the family”.
We may conceive of innumerable cases of such conflicts among different agencies of social control.