define education essay

Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education pp 13–21 Cite as

What Is “Education”?

• Barry Chazan 2  
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• First Online: 26 October 2021

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Analytic philosophy of education focuses on clarifying such key terms as: “education”, “aims”, “goals”, “objectives”, “overt curriculum”, “covert curriculum”, “null curriculum”, “pedagogical content knowledge”. The understanding of these and other concepts is critical to enable contemporary education to be regarded as a truly professional domain.

• Pedagogic content knowledge

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The world of education—like law, medicine, business, and other spheres—has its own unique language. A discussion of this language is important for principals and teachers, parents, and students in order to facilitate a clear understanding of what education is. In this chapter, I analyze and clarify some key terms with a view to promoting a coherent and more precise educational practice.

Three Ways to Analyze the Term “Education”

There are three kinds of definitions of “education” (Scheffler 1960 ). The first type is called the descriptive . It is a statement that proposes to denote or explain the nature of the meaning of the word called “education” by using a variety of words to explain either what the phenomenon is or how the term is to be understood. This type of definition claims to describe precisely how the word denoted as “education” is most prominently used.

The second type of definition of “education” is the programmatic , which comes to advocate for or prescribe a belief of what education should be or should do. A programmatic definition is less preoccupied with what the phenomenon or language of education is and more concerned with promulgating a particular practice of education that is regarded as desirable. Sometimes prescriptive definitions are expressed in short, clipped sentences such as Pink Floyd’s “We don’t need no education” or the title of Jonathan Kozol’s description of education as Death at an Early Age (Kozol 1985 ). Programmatic definitions are ultimately short slogans or deeply felt preaching about the way education should be.

The third type of definition is the stipulative and its purpose is technical and utilitarian. It is basically a linguistic agreement or pact that enables a discussion to proceed smoothly without forcing a person to each time state, “This is what I mean by the term ‘education.’” It is essentially is a linguistic shortcut, in which one person’s explanation of the word “education” is called Version 1; a second person’s explanation is Version 2, and the third interpretation is called Version 3. This is a kind of a shortcut that enables the discussion to precede at a decent pace.

My concern in this chapter is the descriptive mode, namely, the endeavor to arrive at a clear and generally agreed-upon statement of what the word “education” means. My aim is to refer to terms that are generally used in everyday speech and to attempts to search for viable and relevant definitions that reflect as accurately as possible the common language usage of the term. There is a technique that students and some academics use in the attempt to understand the term, namely, to trace it back to its original linguistic roots. There are times when this is helpful, but very often this can be misleading, since the way it once was used does not necessarily help us understand the way it is used today. The contemporary word “education” is sometimes traced to the Latin root educare , which means “to train” or “to mold”. Based on this linguistic root, some people like to argue that training or molding is what education today should be. At the same time, the Latin word educere means “to lead out”, which suggests a totally different understanding of “education” as a process aimed at that freeing the person from the prison of ignorance. Generally, it is my sense that the technique of tracing back to former linguistic roots is more useful for understanding ways in which terms were understood in the past rather than helping us to grasp what they mean today.

Some Contemporary Meanings

Let’s now look at some diverse definitions of “education”. One understanding of the term is the conscious effort to equip the unequipped young with facts, knowledge, and skills that will enable them to function as adults in a specific society. This is often called the socialization model.

A second usage of the word “education” understands it as exposure to, understanding of, and practice in skillsets that a person needs to be able to function in contemporary culture. This notion is sometimes called the acculturation model.

A third notion of education focuses on the development of reflective thinking and feeling abilities so that the young will be able to carve out how they wish to exist. This model is sometimes known as the liberal or person-centered model of education.

A Proposed Definition of “Education”

I have found the discussion of diverse meanings of education to be very fruitful because it helps me see the world through different lenses and, particularly, enables me to think about and consider diverse meanings and practices of the dynamics of education. At the same time, since I believe that education is a practice, and in practice we need some very specific tools and toolkits to help us proceed, I have searched over time for a definition of “education” that I regard as both descriptively and programmatically useful for the educational practitioner. Ultimately, the definition that I regard as the most useful was shaped by Lawrence Cremin, who is regarded as the most distinguished historian of twentieth-century education:

Education is the deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to transmit, provoke or acquire knowledge, values, attitudes, skills or sensibilities as well as any learning that results from the effort (Cremin, Public Education , p. 27)

This broad-based definition indicates that education is a purposeful activity. The word “education” is reserved for frameworks created with the considered and conscious intent to educate. This definition also understands education as a process and not a place. It is a purposeful activity that can happen within a wide range of frameworks and not only in buildings called schools. Moreover, this intentional activity does not only transmit knowledge, but it also is concerned with values, attitudes, skills, and sensibilities. Education is an activity which takes place in many diverse venues and is intended to develop knowledge, understanding, valuing, growing, caring, and behaving. It can happen “when you sit in your house, and when you go on the way, and when you lie down and when you rise” (Deuteronomy, 6:7). While contemporary societies have denoted schools as the agency responsible for education, in fact, education far transcends the certificates of achievement received from pre-school, elementary, secondary, and collegiate frameworks.

“Aims”, “Goals”, “Objectives”

The concept of education invites the question “Education for what?” What is the purpose of education? While the terms, “aims”, “goals”, and “objectives” of education are sometimes used interchangeably, philosophers of education describe three distinct activities related to “purpose”: Aims, Goals, Objectives = AGO (Noddings 2007 ).

“Aims” refer to the most general ideals, values, or principles, which a person, institution, or society regards as the ultimate desideratum of education. Aims are value statements which designate certain principles or values as the ultimate aspiration. Aims describe both the ideal target of an educational institution as well at its ultimate desired outcomes or achievements. Educational aims ultimately frame the overall direction of an educational system or institution.

“Goals” refer to a second stage, which is derivative from aims and focuses on contents and topics that should be studied so as to enable students to understand and actualize core ideals explicit in aims. Goals translate aims into specific contents or stepping-stones that should be part of the educational process. If one of the aims of twentieth-century American schooling was to teach a set of shared values for its diverse populations in order to socialize them into a core American society, then its goal was to provide them with skillsets such as language, science, and mathematics, which were then regarded as contents critical to enable realization of the larger shared American creed.

The word “objectives” refers to the most practical stage, which is the actual teaching materials—books textbooks, maps, videos, and visual aids—used in the classroom each day, week, and month in a year. These are the infamous “lesson plans” which are an hour by hour mapping out of how teachers will spend every single day in the classroom.

This AGO framework can be a useful structure for analyzing education, from its most abstract goals to its most immediate daily application. Moreover, if implemented properly, it would seem to reflect a useful dynamic from theory to practice. Unfortunately, in reality, what often happens is that aims and goals are skipped over and objectives—daily blueprints, and lesson plans—become the main preoccupation. Because of a multitude of exigencies, the thoughtful paradigm of aims, goals, and objectives is often neglected at the expense of “getting through the day” in practice.

Three Notions of “Curriculum”

An important term in the study of education is “curriculum”, which popularly refers to the overall subjects or contents of schooling. As the field of curriculum studies developed into a rigorous academic area of study in schools of education, broader understandings of the term were to emerge (Pinar et al. 1995 ).

One of the important sophistications in the study of curriculum has been the notion of overt, covert, and null curricula. The “overt curriculum” refers to the clearly stated and enunciated objectives, contents, subjects, topics, books, and resources, which are the official frameworks, and requirements of a school and its teachers. It is the approved and mandated contents that shape a school’s operation.

The “covert” curriculum refers to attitudes, values, and behaviors that characterize the norms of daily life in schools beyond the subjects formally taught in a classroom. The covert curriculum is the unspoken “culture’” shaped by a multitude of forces and factors. What is the décor of the school? What do the halls look like? What type examinations are given? What is the nature of student interaction? The covert curriculum refers to the multiple features of a school culture very much shaped by the lives, habits, and “lingo” of students which have significant impact on the actual rhythm and flow of daily school life.

The “null” curriculum refers to the books, subjects, topics, and artifacts that are consciously and purposefully not part of the school curriculum. This may include partial or no discussion of the history of indigenous populations in the teaching of American history. It includes the list of books, sources, ands ideas that have very consciously not been chosen in the formal curriculum. All education requires selection, and the topics not chosen—and why—are just as important as those that have been chosen. Indeed, there are political, racial, gender, aesthetic, moral, and spiritual issues that significantly shape the overt, covert, and null curriculum of each and every type of schooling.

These three terms alert us to the complicated nature of curriculum development. While there is a popular phrase that refers to an individual “writing a curriculum’”, in fact, curriculum development has become a specialized domain that involves subject matter experts classroom teachers, and educational leadership, and requires extensive deliberation, field testing, revision, and production. It is one of the most exciting and, at the same time most demanding of fields in contemporary education.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)

An important dimension of education is what is commonly known as “pedagogy”, which is understood as the methodologies or the ways in which teaching should happen. Footnote 1 This is obviously a critical dimension of education because it is about what educators teach and how students learn—which are the ultimate domain of education. Pedagogy (sometimes called the “science of teaching”) is the assumption that there are universal patterns and procedures in teaching which should constitute an important part of academic teacher training. There were, and there still are, some general courses on pedagogy in university departments of education which reflect the assumption that there is a core set of methodologies generally appropriate for all sorts of teaching. Twentieth-century philosophers in multiple fields of study—for example, physics, mathematics, literature, and economics—began to focus on the notions of “realms of meaning” or “spheres of knowledge”, which led to the general consensus that there is a diversity of pedagogic methodologies that derive from the many different spheres of knowledge. This kind of thinking made it clear that because of the significant differences between science, mathematics, history, literature, and philosophy, there could be no one overall pedagogy appropriate for all subjects; consequently, such courses as “principles of pedagogy” were misleading. In the 1980s, through the innovative work of a group of educators of whom Professor Lee Shulman was a central figure, an important concept was to emerge which has had a profound effect on styles of teaching (Shulman 1986 ). This research led to the term “pedagogical content knowledge” (PCK). PCK refers to the fact that diverse spheres of knowledge utilize diverse methodologies of researching and understanding and therefore require diverse practices of teaching. In other words, the way a teacher teaches the subject depends on the nature of the subject and that all subjects are not the same. Just as it is clear that the ways we teach someone to drive a car or to learn how to swim have their own characteristics, so it is clear that the teaching of mathematics must differ from the teaching of literature, which differs from the teaching of civics, which differs from the teaching of languages. This notion indicates that one must be wary of general principles of “how to teach” and that quality teaching begins with and is related to an understanding of the subject matter being taught. To teach chemistry or physics one has to understand the role of experimentation. In teaching literature, one has to understand the importance of simile, metaphor, plot, and theme. PCK was to have a major impact particularly in the experimental subject areas, although there were also important implications for teaching literature and other areas. At the heart of PCK is the notion that methodology or “what to do” flows from the content one teaches, and the content one teaches ultimately flows from the “why” of education. In other words, education is an integrated dynamic in which the “why” affects the “what” and the “what” affects the “how”.

I learned about the importance of PCK during my travels over the years to all sorts of Jewish schools. One of the most prominent subjects (typically in the early years of elementary school) I observed was the teaching of Genesis Chapter 12 which describes a conversation between God and Abraham in which God makes a covenant—a legal agreement—with Abraham, that if he follows God’s ways, Abraham will be given a certain body of land for himself and for his children in perpetuity. How one teaches this section depends upon how one understands the nature of this ancient source. If this text is a verifiable history book (which was the mode that I observed in so many schools), it will be taught in one way; if this text is not a history book but rather a philosophical or theological work with profound religious, moral, and human messages, it will be taught in a totally different way. These two understandings result in dramatically diverse pedagogies and messages, depending on whether the text in Genesis 12 was presented as an authoritative history or a profound philosophy.

The contemporary language of education includes some key concepts—“schooling”, “aims”, “goals”, “curriculum”, and “pedagogy”—whose meanings are very important to the practice of education in schools and beyond. This conclusion suggests that the fields of education and Jewish education in the twenty-first century are sophisticated domains which call for serious deliberation and study by prospective educators. The educators of our young deserve the same level of training, investment, and rigor that we expect from the doctors who treat our bodies or from the engineers who build the bridges on which we travel. Education in the twenty-first century is a critical sphere that calls for deep reflection, training, and passion.

Adult education specialist Malcolm Knowles suggested that the term “pedagogy” be used to refer to the teaching of children and that the term “andragogy” be used to denote adult learning. (Knowles 2020 ).

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Pinar, William Reynolds, William, Slattery, Taubman, Peter. 1995. Understanding Curriculum . (Peter Lang).

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Shulman, Lee. 1986. “Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching”. Educational Researcher Feb. Vol. 15 No. 2. pp. 4–14.

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Chazan, B. (2022). What Is “Education”?. In: Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83925-3_3

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What Is Education For?

Read an excerpt from a new book by Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson, which calls for redesigning education for the future.

What is education for? As it happens, people differ sharply on this question. It is what is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also inflected by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. Still, not having an agreed-upon definition of education doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it or do anything about it.

We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school”—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning. Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. It is vital that we differentiate these terms: children love to learn, they do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions of compulsory education. One is that young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things that they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. Another assumption is that compulsory education is a preparation for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? Well, I believe that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global-economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four basic purposes.

Education should enable young people to engage with the world within them as well as the world around them. In Western cultures, there is a firm distinction between the two worlds, between thinking and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. This distinction is misguided. There is a deep correlation between our experience of the world around us and how we feel. As we explored in the previous chapters, all individuals have unique strengths and weaknesses, outlooks and personalities. Students do not come in standard physical shapes, nor do their abilities and personalities. They all have their own aptitudes and dispositions and different ways of understanding things. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people. Engaging them as individuals is at the heart of raising achievement.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Many of the deepest problems in current systems of education result from losing sight of this basic principle.

Schools should enable students to understand their own cultures and to respect the diversity of others. There are various definitions of culture, but in this context the most appropriate is “the values and forms of behavior that characterize different social groups.” To put it more bluntly, it is “the way we do things around here.” Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their values from one generation to the next. For some, education is a way of preserving a culture against outside influences. For others, it is a way of promoting cultural tolerance. As the world becomes more crowded and connected, it is becoming more complex culturally. Living respectfully with diversity is not just an ethical choice, it is a practical imperative.

There should be three cultural priorities for schools: to help students understand their own cultures, to understand other cultures, and to promote a sense of cultural tolerance and coexistence. The lives of all communities can be hugely enriched by celebrating their own cultures and the practices and traditions of other cultures.

Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. This is one of the reasons governments take such a keen interest in education: they know that an educated workforce is essential to creating economic prosperity. Leaders of the Industrial Revolution knew that education was critical to creating the types of workforce they required, too. But the world of work has changed so profoundly since then, and continues to do so at an ever-quickening pace. We know that many of the jobs of previous decades are disappearing and being rapidly replaced by contemporary counterparts. It is almost impossible to predict the direction of advancing technologies, and where they will take us.

How can schools prepare students to navigate this ever-changing economic landscape? They must connect students with their unique talents and interests, dissolve the division between academic and vocational programs, and foster practical partnerships between schools and the world of work, so that young people can experience working environments as part of their education, not simply when it is time for them to enter the labor market.

Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. We live in densely woven social systems. The benefits we derive from them depend on our working together to sustain them. The empowerment of individuals has to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life, and of democracy in particular. Our freedoms in democratic societies are not automatic. They come from centuries of struggle against tyranny and autocracy and those who foment sectarianism, hatred, and fear. Those struggles are far from over. As John Dewey observed, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

For a democratic society to function, it depends upon the majority of its people to be active within the democratic process. In many democracies, this is increasingly not the case. Schools should engage students in becoming active, and proactive, democratic participants. An academic civics course will scratch the surface, but to nurture a deeply rooted respect for democracy, it is essential to give young people real-life democratic experiences long before they come of age to vote.

Eight Core Competencies

The conventional curriculum is based on a collection of separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence we discussed in the previous chapter, as well as what is deemed to be important later in life. The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands completely separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, and methods as well as propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, and languages, and of all other subjects. It is therefore much more useful to focus on the concept of disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—it is rare that activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. A journalist writing an article, for example, must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition, as well as the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum, which is to ask what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. The four purposes above suggest eight core competencies that, if properly integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face in their lives. These competencies are curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven from the beginning of a student’s educational journey and nurtured throughout.

From Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by the Estate of Sir Kenneth Robinson and Kate Robinson.

What Is Education? Insights from the World's Greatest Minds

Forty thought-provoking quotes about education..

Posted May 12, 2014 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

As we seek to refine and reform today’s system of education , we would do well to ask, “What is education?” Our answers may provide insights that get to the heart of what matters for 21st century children and adults alike.

It is important to step back from divisive debates on grades, standardized testing, and teacher evaluation—and really look at the meaning of education. So I decided to do just that—to research the answer to this straightforward, yet complex question.

Looking for wisdom from some of the greatest philosophers, poets, educators, historians, theologians, politicians, and world leaders, I found answers that should not only exist in our history books, but also remain at the core of current education dialogue.

In my work as a developmental psychologist, I constantly struggle to balance the goals of formal education with the goals of raising healthy, happy children who grow to become contributing members of families and society. Along with academic skills, the educational journey from kindergarten through college is a time when young people develop many interconnected abilities.

As you read through the following quotes, you’ll discover common threads that unite the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical aspects of education. For me, good education facilitates the development of an internal compass that guides us through life.

Which quotes resonate most with you? What images of education come to your mind? How can we best integrate the wisdom of the ages to address today’s most pressing education challenges?

If you are a middle or high school teacher, I invite you to have your students write an essay entitled, “What is Education?” After reviewing the famous quotes below and the images they evoke, ask students to develop their very own quote that answers this question. With their unique quote highlighted at the top of their essay, ask them to write about what helps or hinders them from getting the kind of education they seek. I’d love to publish some student quotes, essays, and images in future articles, so please contact me if students are willing to share!

What Is Education? Answers from 5th Century BC to the 21 st Century

• The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done. — Jean Piaget, 1896-1980, Swiss developmental psychologist, philosopher
• An education isn't how much you have committed to memory , or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't. — Anatole France, 1844-1924, French poet, novelist
• Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. — Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013, South African President, philanthropist
• The object of education is to teach us to love beauty. — Plato, 424-348 BC, philosopher mathematician
• The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education — Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968, pastor, activist, humanitarian
• Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, physicist
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle, 384-322 BC, Greek philosopher, scientist
• Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life. — Brigham Young, 1801-1877, religious leader
• Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer – into a selflessness which links us with all humanity. — Nancy Astor, 1879-1964, American-born English politician and socialite
• Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Irish poet
• Education is freedom . — Paulo Freire, 1921-1997, Brazilian educator, philosopher
• Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. — John Dewey, 1859-1952, philosopher, psychologist, education reformer
• Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom. — George Washington Carver, 1864-1943, scientist, botanist, educator
• Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer, poet
• The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. — Sydney J. Harris, 1917-1986, journalist
• Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. — Malcolm Forbes, 1919-1990, publisher, politician
• No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure. — Emma Goldman, 1869 – 1940, political activist, writer
• Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. — John W. Gardner, 1912-2002, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson
• Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. — Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, English writer, theologian, poet, philosopher
• Education is the movement from darkness to light. — Allan Bloom, 1930-1992, philosopher, classicist, and academician
• Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know. -- Daniel J. Boorstin, 1914-2004, historian, professor, attorney
• The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. — William S. Burroughs, 1914-1997, novelist, essayist, painter
• The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. -- Robert M. Hutchins, 1899-1977, educational philosopher
• Education is all a matter of building bridges. — Ralph Ellison, 1914-1994, novelist, literary critic, scholar
• What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul. — Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, English essayist, poet, playwright, politician
• Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. — Malcolm X, 1925-1965, minister and human rights activist
• Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students. — Solomon Ortiz, 1937-, former U.S. Representative-TX
• The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education. — Plutarch, 46-120AD, Greek historian, biographer, essayist
• Education is a shared commitment between dedicated teachers, motivated students and enthusiastic parents with high expectations. — Bob Beauprez, 1948-, former member of U.S. House of Representatives-CO
• The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home. — William Temple, 1881-1944, English bishop, teacher
• Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them. — John Ruskin, 1819-1900, English writer, art critic, philanthropist
• Education levels the playing field, allowing everyone to compete. — Joyce Meyer, 1943-, Christian author and speaker
• Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. — B.F. Skinner , 1904-1990, psychologist, behaviorist, social philosopher
• The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers rather than to fill it with the accumulation of others. — Tyron Edwards, 1809-1894, theologian
• Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength of the nation. — John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, 35 th President of the United States
• Education is like a lantern which lights your way in a dark alley. — Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, 1918-2004, President of the United Arab Emirates for 33 years
• When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts. — Dalai Lama, spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism
• Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence . — Robert Frost, 1874-1963, poet
• The secret in education lies in respecting the student. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, essayist, lecturer, and poet
• My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance, but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors. — Maya Angelou, 1928-, author, poet

©2014 Marilyn Price-Mitchell. All rights reserved. Please contact for permission to reprint.

Marilyn Price-Mitchell, Ph.D., is an Institute for Social Innovation Fellow at Fielding Graduate University and author of Tomorrow’s Change Makers.

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Philosophy of Education

Philosophy of education is the branch of applied or practical philosophy concerned with the nature and aims of education and the philosophical problems arising from educational theory and practice. Because that practice is ubiquitous in and across human societies, its social and individual manifestations so varied, and its influence so profound, the subject is wide-ranging, involving issues in ethics and social/political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, and other areas of philosophy. Because it looks both inward to the parent discipline and outward to educational practice and the social, legal, and institutional contexts in which it takes place, philosophy of education concerns itself with both sides of the traditional theory/practice divide. Its subject matter includes both basic philosophical issues (e.g., the nature of the knowledge worth teaching, the character of educational equality and justice, etc.) and problems concerning specific educational policies and practices (e.g., the desirability of standardized curricula and testing, the social, economic, legal and moral dimensions of specific funding arrangements, the justification of curriculum decisions, etc.). In all this the philosopher of education prizes conceptual clarity, argumentative rigor, the fair-minded consideration of the interests of all involved in or affected by educational efforts and arrangements, and informed and well-reasoned valuation of educational aims and interventions.

Philosophy of education has a long and distinguished history in the Western philosophical tradition, from Socrates’ battles with the sophists to the present day. Many of the most distinguished figures in that tradition incorporated educational concerns into their broader philosophical agendas (Curren 2000, 2018; Rorty 1998). While that history is not the focus here, it is worth noting that the ideals of reasoned inquiry championed by Socrates and his descendants have long informed the view that education should foster in all students, to the extent possible, the disposition to seek reasons and the ability to evaluate them cogently, and to be guided by their evaluations in matters of belief, action and judgment. This view, that education centrally involves the fostering of reason or rationality, has with varying articulations and qualifications been embraced by most of those historical figures; it continues to be defended by contemporary philosophers of education as well (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2007, 2017). As with any philosophical thesis it is controversial; some dimensions of the controversy are explored below.

This entry is a selective survey of important contemporary work in Anglophone philosophy of education; it does not treat in detail recent scholarship outside that context.

1. Problems in Delineating the Field

2. analytic philosophy of education and its influence, 3.1 the content of the curriculum and the aims and functions of schooling, 3.2 social, political and moral philosophy, 3.3 social epistemology, virtue epistemology, and the epistemology of education, 3.4 philosophical disputes concerning empirical education research, 4. concluding remarks, other internet resources, related entries.

The inward/outward looking nature of the field of philosophy of education alluded to above makes the task of delineating the field, of giving an over-all picture of the intellectual landscape, somewhat complicated (for a detailed account of this topography, see Phillips 1985, 2010). Suffice it to say that some philosophers, as well as focusing inward on the abstract philosophical issues that concern them, are drawn outwards to discuss or comment on issues that are more commonly regarded as falling within the purview of professional educators, educational researchers, policy-makers and the like. (An example is Michael Scriven, who in his early career was a prominent philosopher of science; later he became a central figure in the development of the field of evaluation of educational and social programs. See Scriven 1991a, 1991b.) At the same time, there are professionals in the educational or closely related spheres who are drawn to discuss one or another of the philosophical issues that they encounter in the course of their work. (An example here is the behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner, the central figure in the development of operant conditioning and programmed learning, who in works such as Walden Two (1948) and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1972) grappled—albeit controversially—with major philosophical issues that were related to his work.)

What makes the field even more amorphous is the existence of works on educational topics, written by well-regarded philosophers who have made major contributions to their discipline; these educational reflections have little or no philosophical content, illustrating the truth that philosophers do not always write philosophy. However, despite this, works in this genre have often been treated as contributions to philosophy of education. (Examples include John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education [1693] and Bertrand Russell’s rollicking pieces written primarily to raise funds to support a progressive school he ran with his wife. (See Park 1965.)

Finally, as indicated earlier, the domain of education is vast, the issues it raises are almost overwhelmingly numerous and are of great complexity, and the social significance of the field is second to none. These features make the phenomena and problems of education of great interest to a wide range of socially-concerned intellectuals, who bring with them their own favored conceptual frameworks—concepts, theories and ideologies, methods of analysis and argumentation, metaphysical and other assumptions, and the like. It is not surprising that scholars who work in this broad genre also find a home in the field of philosophy of education.

As a result of these various factors, the significant intellectual and social trends of the past few centuries, together with the significant developments in philosophy, all have had an impact on the content of arguments and methods of argumentation in philosophy of education—Marxism, psycho-analysis, existentialism, phenomenology, positivism, post-modernism, pragmatism, neo-liberalism, the several waves of feminism, analytic philosophy in both its ordinary language and more formal guises, are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Conceptual analysis, careful assessment of arguments, the rooting out of ambiguity, the drawing of clarifying distinctions—all of which are at least part of the philosophical toolkit—have been respected activities within philosophy from the dawn of the field. No doubt it somewhat over-simplifies the complex path of intellectual history to suggest that what happened in the twentieth century—early on, in the home discipline itself, and with a lag of a decade or more in philosophy of education—is that philosophical analysis came to be viewed by some scholars as being the major philosophical activity (or set of activities), or even as being the only viable or reputable activity. In any case, as they gained prominence and for a time hegemonic influence during the rise of analytic philosophy early in the twentieth century analytic techniques came to dominate philosophy of education in the middle third of that century (Curren, Robertson, & Hager 2003).

The pioneering work in the modern period entirely in an analytic mode was the short monograph by C.D. Hardie, Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory (1941; reissued in 1962). In his Introduction, Hardie (who had studied with C.D. Broad and I.A. Richards) made it clear that he was putting all his eggs into the ordinary-language-analysis basket:

The Cambridge analytical school, led by Moore, Broad and Wittgenstein, has attempted so to analyse propositions that it will always be apparent whether the disagreement between philosophers is one concerning matters of fact, or is one concerning the use of words, or is, as is frequently the case, a purely emotive one. It is time, I think, that a similar attitude became common in the field of educational theory. (Hardie 1962: xix)

About a decade after the end of the Second World War the floodgates opened and a stream of work in the analytic mode appeared; the following is merely a sample. D. J. O’Connor published An Introduction to Philosophy of Education (1957) in which, among other things, he argued that the word “theory” as it is used in educational contexts is merely a courtesy title, for educational theories are nothing like what bear this title in the natural sciences. Israel Scheffler, who became the paramount philosopher of education in North America, produced a number of important works including The Language of Education (1960), which contained clarifying and influential analyses of definitions (he distinguished reportive, stipulative, and programmatic types) and the logic of slogans (often these are literally meaningless, and, he argued, should be seen as truncated arguments), Conditions of Knowledge (1965), still the best introduction to the epistemological side of philosophy of education, and Reason and Teaching (1973 [1989]), which in a wide-ranging and influential series of essays makes the case for regarding the fostering of rationality/critical thinking as a fundamental educational ideal (cf. Siegel 2016). B. O. Smith and R. H. Ennis edited the volume Language and Concepts in Education (1961); and R.D. Archambault edited Philosophical Analysis and Education (1965), consisting of essays by a number of prominent British writers, most notably R. S. Peters (whose status in Britain paralleled that of Scheffler in the United States), Paul Hirst, and John Wilson. Topics covered in the Archambault volume were typical of those that became the “bread and butter” of analytic philosophy of education (APE) throughout the English-speaking world—education as a process of initiation, liberal education, the nature of knowledge, types of teaching, and instruction versus indoctrination.

Among the most influential products of APE was the analysis developed by Hirst and Peters (1970) and Peters (1973) of the concept of education itself. Using as a touchstone “normal English usage,” it was concluded that a person who has been educated (rather than instructed or indoctrinated) has been (i) changed for the better; (ii) this change has involved the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual skills and the development of understanding; and (iii) the person has come to care for, or be committed to, the domains of knowledge and skill into which he or she has been initiated. The method used by Hirst and Peters comes across clearly in their handling of the analogy with the concept of “reform”, one they sometimes drew upon for expository purposes. A criminal who has been reformed has changed for the better, and has developed a commitment to the new mode of life (if one or other of these conditions does not hold, a speaker of standard English would not say the criminal has been reformed). Clearly the analogy with reform breaks down with respect to the knowledge and understanding conditions. Elsewhere Peters developed the fruitful notion of “education as initiation”.

The concept of indoctrination was also of great interest to analytic philosophers of education, for, it was argued, getting clear about precisely what constitutes indoctrination also would serve to clarify the border that demarcates it from acceptable educational processes. Thus, whether or not an instructional episode was a case of indoctrination was determined by the content taught, the intention of the instructor, the methods of instruction used, the outcomes of the instruction, or by some combination of these. Adherents of the different analyses used the same general type of argument to make their case, namely, appeal to normal and aberrant usage. Unfortunately, ordinary language analysis did not lead to unanimity of opinion about where this border was located, and rival analyses of the concept were put forward (Snook 1972). The danger of restricting analysis to ordinary language (“normal English usage”) was recognized early on by Scheffler, whose preferred view of analysis emphasized

first, its greater sophistication as regards language, and the interpenetration of language and inquiry, second, its attempt to follow the modern example of the sciences in empirical spirit, in rigor, in attention to detail, in respect for alternatives, and in objectivity of method, and third, its use of techniques of symbolic logic brought to full development only in the last fifty years… It is…this union of scientific spirit and logical method applied toward the clarification of basic ideas that characterizes current analytic philosophy [and that ought to characterize analytic philosophy of education]. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 9–10])

After a period of dominance, for a number of important reasons the influence of APE went into decline. First, there were growing criticisms that the work of analytic philosophers of education had become focused upon minutiae and in the main was bereft of practical import. (It is worth noting that a 1966 article in Time , reprinted in Lucas 1969, had put forward the same criticism of mainstream philosophy.) Second, in the early 1970’s radical students in Britain accused Peters’ brand of linguistic analysis of conservatism, and of tacitly giving support to “traditional values”—they raised the issue of whose English usage was being analyzed?

Third, criticisms of language analysis in mainstream philosophy had been mounting for some time, and finally after a lag of many years were reaching the attention of philosophers of education; there even had been a surprising degree of interest on the part of the general reading public in the United Kingdom as early as 1959, when Gilbert Ryle, editor of the journal Mind , refused to commission a review of Ernest Gellner’s Words and Things (1959)—a detailed and quite acerbic critique of Wittgenstein’s philosophy and its espousal of ordinary language analysis. (Ryle argued that Gellner’s book was too insulting, a view that drew Bertrand Russell into the fray on Gellner’s side—in the daily press, no less; Russell produced a list of insulting remarks drawn from the work of great philosophers of the past. See Mehta 1963.)

Richard Peters had been given warning that all was not well with APE at a conference in Canada in 1966; after delivering a paper on “The aims of education: A conceptual inquiry” that was based on ordinary language analysis, a philosopher in the audience (William Dray) asked Peters “ whose concepts do we analyze?” Dray went on to suggest that different people, and different groups within society, have different concepts of education. Five years before the radical students raised the same issue, Dray pointed to the possibility that what Peters had presented under the guise of a “logical analysis” was nothing but the favored usage of a certain class of persons—a class that Peters happened to identify with (see Peters 1973, where to the editor’s credit the interaction with Dray is reprinted).

Fourth, during the decade of the seventies when these various critiques of analytic philosophy were in the process of eroding its luster, a spate of translations from the Continent stimulated some philosophers of education in Britain and North America to set out in new directions, and to adopt a new style of writing and argumentation. Key works by Gadamer, Foucault and Derrida appeared in English, and these were followed in 1984 by Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition . The classic works of Heidegger and Husserl also found new admirers; and feminist philosophers of education were finding their voices—Maxine Greene published a number of pieces in the 1970s and 1980s, including The Dialectic of Freedom (1988); the influential book by Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , appeared the same year as the work by Lyotard, followed a year later by Jane Roland Martin’s Reclaiming a Conversation . In more recent years all these trends have continued. APE was and is no longer the center of interest, although, as indicated below, it still retains its voice.

3. Areas of Contemporary Activity

As was stressed at the outset, the field of education is huge and contains within it a virtually inexhaustible number of issues that are of philosophical interest. To attempt comprehensive coverage of how philosophers of education have been working within this thicket would be a quixotic task for a large single volume and is out of the question for a solitary encyclopedia entry. Nevertheless, a valiant attempt to give an overview was made in A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Curren 2003), which contains more than six-hundred pages divided into forty-five chapters each of which surveys a subfield of work. The following random selection of chapter topics gives a sense of the enormous scope of the field: Sex education, special education, science education, aesthetic education, theories of teaching and learning, religious education, knowledge, truth and learning, cultivating reason, the measurement of learning, multicultural education, education and the politics of identity, education and standards of living, motivation and classroom management, feminism, critical theory, postmodernism, romanticism, the purposes of universities, affirmative action in higher education, and professional education. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education (Siegel 2009) contains a similarly broad range of articles on (among other things) the epistemic and moral aims of education, liberal education and its imminent demise, thinking and reasoning, fallibilism and fallibility, indoctrination, authenticity, the development of rationality, Socratic teaching, educating the imagination, caring and empathy in moral education, the limits of moral education, the cultivation of character, values education, curriculum and the value of knowledge, education and democracy, art and education, science education and religious toleration, constructivism and scientific methods, multicultural education, prejudice, authority and the interests of children, and on pragmatist, feminist, and postmodernist approaches to philosophy of education.

Given this enormous range, there is no non-arbitrary way to select a small number of topics for further discussion, nor can the topics that are chosen be pursued in great depth. The choice of those below has been made with an eye to highlighting contemporary work that makes solid contact with and contributes to important discussions in general philosophy and/or the academic educational and educational research communities.

The issue of what should be taught to students at all levels of education—the issue of curriculum content—obviously is a fundamental one, and it is an extraordinarily difficult one with which to grapple. In tackling it, care needs to be taken to distinguish between education and schooling—for although education can occur in schools, so can mis-education, and many other things can take place there that are educationally orthogonal (such as the provision of free or subsidized lunches and the development of social networks); and it also must be recognized that education can occur in the home, in libraries and museums, in churches and clubs, in solitary interaction with the public media, and the like.

In developing a curriculum (whether in a specific subject area, or more broadly as the whole range of offerings in an educational institution or system), a number of difficult decisions need to be made. Issues such as the proper ordering or sequencing of topics in the chosen subject, the time to be allocated to each topic, the lab work or excursions or projects that are appropriate for particular topics, can all be regarded as technical issues best resolved either by educationists who have a depth of experience with the target age group or by experts in the psychology of learning and the like. But there are deeper issues, ones concerning the validity of the justifications that have been given for including/excluding particular subjects or topics in the offerings of formal educational institutions. (Why should evolution or creation “science” be included, or excluded, as a topic within the standard high school subject Biology? Is the justification that is given for teaching Economics in some schools coherent and convincing? Do the justifications for including/excluding materials on birth control, patriotism, the Holocaust or wartime atrocities in the curriculum in some school districts stand up to critical scrutiny?)

The different justifications for particular items of curriculum content that have been put forward by philosophers and others since Plato’s pioneering efforts all draw, explicitly or implicitly, upon the positions that the respective theorists hold about at least three sets of issues.

First, what are the aims and/or functions of education (aims and functions are not necessarily the same)? Many aims have been proposed; a short list includes the production of knowledge and knowledgeable students, the fostering of curiosity and inquisitiveness, the enhancement of understanding, the enlargement of the imagination, the civilizing of students, the fostering of rationality and/or autonomy, and the development in students of care, concern and associated dispositions and attitudes (see Siegel 2007 for a longer list). The justifications offered for all such aims have been controversial, and alternative justifications of a single proposed aim can provoke philosophical controversy. Consider the aim of autonomy. Aristotle asked, what constitutes the good life and/or human flourishing, such that education should foster these (Curren 2013)? These two formulations are related, for it is arguable that our educational institutions should aim to equip individuals to pursue this good life—although this is not obvious, both because it is not clear that there is one conception of the good or flourishing life that is the good or flourishing life for everyone, and it is not clear that this is a question that should be settled in advance rather than determined by students for themselves. Thus, for example, if our view of human flourishing includes the capacity to think and act autonomously, then the case can be made that educational institutions—and their curricula—should aim to prepare, or help to prepare, autonomous individuals. A rival justification of the aim of autonomy, associated with Kant, champions the educational fostering of autonomy not on the basis of its contribution to human flourishing, but rather the obligation to treat students with respect as persons (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988). Still others urge the fostering of autonomy on the basis of students’ fundamental interests, in ways that draw upon both Aristotelian and Kantian conceptual resources (Brighouse 2005, 2009). It is also possible to reject the fostering of autonomy as an educational aim (Hand 2006).

Assuming that the aim can be justified, how students should be helped to become autonomous or develop a conception of the good life and pursue it is of course not immediately obvious, and much philosophical ink has been spilled on the general question of how best to determine curriculum content. One influential line of argument was developed by Paul Hirst, who argued that knowledge is essential for developing and then pursuing a conception of the good life, and because logical analysis shows, he argued, that there are seven basic forms of knowledge, the case can be made that the function of the curriculum is to introduce students to each of these forms (Hirst 1965; see Phillips 1987: ch. 11). Another, suggested by Scheffler, is that curriculum content should be selected so as “to help the learner attain maximum self-sufficiency as economically as possible.” The relevant sorts of economy include those of resources, teacher effort, student effort, and the generalizability or transfer value of content, while the self-sufficiency in question includes

self-awareness, imaginative weighing of alternative courses of action, understanding of other people’s choices and ways of life, decisiveness without rigidity, emancipation from stereotyped ways of thinking and perceiving…empathy… intuition, criticism and independent judgment. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 123–5])

Both impose important constraints on the curricular content to be taught.

Second, is it justifiable to treat the curriculum of an educational institution as a vehicle for furthering the socio-political interests and goals of a dominant group, or any particular group, including one’s own; and relatedly, is it justifiable to design the curriculum so that it serves as an instrument of control or of social engineering? In the closing decades of the twentieth century there were numerous discussions of curriculum theory, particularly from Marxist and postmodern perspectives, that offered the sobering analysis that in many educational systems, including those in Western democracies, the curriculum did indeed reflect and serve the interests of powerful cultural elites. What to do about this situation (if it is indeed the situation of contemporary educational institutions) is far from clear and is the focus of much work at the interface of philosophy of education and social/political philosophy, some of which is discussed in the next section. A closely related question is this: ought educational institutions be designed to further pre-determined social ends, or rather to enable students to competently evaluate all such ends? Scheffler argued that we should opt for the latter: we must

surrender the idea of shaping or molding the mind of the pupil. The function of education…is rather to liberate the mind, strengthen its critical powers, [and] inform it with knowledge and the capacity for independent inquiry. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 139])

Third, should educational programs at the elementary and secondary levels be made up of a number of disparate offerings, so that individuals with different interests and abilities and affinities for learning can pursue curricula that are suitable? Or should every student pursue the same curriculum as far as each is able?—a curriculum, it should be noted, that in past cases nearly always was based on the needs or interests of those students who were academically inclined or were destined for elite social roles. Mortimer Adler and others in the late twentieth century sometimes used the aphorism “the best education for the best is the best education for all.”

The thinking here can be explicated in terms of the analogy of an out-of-control virulent disease, for which there is only one type of medicine available; taking a large dose of this medicine is extremely beneficial, and the hope is that taking only a little—while less effective—is better than taking none at all. Medically, this is dubious, while the educational version—forcing students to work, until they exit the system, on topics that do not interest them and for which they have no facility or motivation—has even less merit. (For a critique of Adler and his Paideia Proposal , see Noddings 2015.) It is interesting to compare the modern “one curriculum track for all” position with Plato’s system outlined in the Republic , according to which all students—and importantly this included girls—set out on the same course of study. Over time, as they moved up the educational ladder it would become obvious that some had reached the limit imposed upon them by nature, and they would be directed off into appropriate social roles in which they would find fulfillment, for their abilities would match the demands of these roles. Those who continued on with their education would eventually become members of the ruling class of Guardians.

The publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971 was the most notable event in the history of political philosophy over the last century. The book spurred a period of ferment in political philosophy that included, among other things, new research on educationally fundamental themes. The principles of justice in educational distribution have perhaps been the dominant theme in this literature, and Rawls’s influence on its development has been pervasive.

Rawls’s theory of justice made so-called “fair equality of opportunity” one of its constitutive principles. Fair equality of opportunity entailed that the distribution of education would not put the children of those who currently occupied coveted social positions at any competitive advantage over other, equally talented and motivated children seeking the qualifications for those positions (Rawls 1971: 72–75). Its purpose was to prevent socio-economic differences from hardening into social castes that were perpetuated across generations. One obvious criticism of fair equality of opportunity is that it does not prohibit an educational distribution that lavished resources on the most talented children while offering minimal opportunities to others. So long as untalented students from wealthy families were assigned opportunities no better than those available to their untalented peers among the poor, no breach of the principle would occur. Even the most moderate egalitarians might find such a distributive regime to be intuitively repugnant.

Repugnance might be mitigated somewhat by the ways in which the overall structure of Rawls’s conception of justice protects the interests of those who fare badly in educational competition. All citizens must enjoy the same basic liberties, and equal liberty always has moral priority over equal opportunity: the former can never be compromised to advance the latter. Further, inequality in the distribution of income and wealth are permitted only to the degree that it serves the interests of the least advantaged group in society. But even with these qualifications, fair equality of opportunity is arguably less than really fair to anyone. The fact that their education should secure ends other than access to the most selective social positions—ends such as artistic appreciation, the kind of self-knowledge that humanistic study can furnish, or civic virtue—is deemed irrelevant according to Rawls’s principle. But surely it is relevant, given that a principle of educational justice must be responsive to the full range of educationally important goods.

Suppose we revise our account of the goods included in educational distribution so that aesthetic appreciation, say, and the necessary understanding and virtue for conscientious citizenship count for just as much as job-related skills. An interesting implication of doing so is that the rationale for requiring equality under any just distribution becomes decreasingly clear. That is because job-related skills are positional whereas the other educational goods are not (Hollis 1982). If you and I both aspire to a career in business management for which we are equally qualified, any increase in your job-related skills is a corresponding disadvantage to me unless I can catch up. Positional goods have a competitive structure by definition, though the ends of civic or aesthetic education do not fit that structure. If you and I aspire to be good citizens and are equal in civic understanding and virtue, an advance in your civic education is no disadvantage to me. On the contrary, it is easier to be a good citizen the better other citizens learn to be. At the very least, so far as non-positional goods figure in our conception of what counts as a good education, the moral stakes of inequality are thereby lowered.

In fact, an emerging alternative to fair equality of opportunity is a principle that stipulates some benchmark of adequacy in achievement or opportunity as the relevant standard of distribution. But it is misleading to represent this as a contrast between egalitarian and sufficientarian conceptions. Philosophically serious interpretations of adequacy derive from the ideal of equal citizenship (Satz 2007; Anderson 2007). Then again, fair equality of opportunity in Rawls’s theory is derived from a more fundamental ideal of equality among citizens. This was arguably true in A Theory of Justice but it is certainly true in his later work (Dworkin 1977: 150–183; Rawls 1993). So, both Rawls’s principle and the emerging alternative share an egalitarian foundation. The debate between adherents of equal opportunity and those misnamed as sufficientarians is certainly not over (e.g., Brighouse & Swift 2009; Jacobs 2010; Warnick 2015). Further progress will likely hinge on explicating the most compelling conception of the egalitarian foundation from which distributive principles are to be inferred. Another Rawls-inspired alternative is that a “prioritarian” distribution of achievement or opportunity might turn out to be the best principle we can come up with—i.e., one that favors the interests of the least advantaged students (Schouten 2012).

The publication of Rawls’s Political Liberalism in 1993 signaled a decisive turning point in his thinking about justice. In his earlier book, the theory of justice had been presented as if it were universally valid. But Rawls had come to think that any theory of justice presented as such was open to reasonable rejection. A more circumspect approach to justification would seek grounds for justice as fairness in an overlapping consensus between the many reasonable values and doctrines that thrive in a democratic political culture. Rawls argued that such a culture is informed by a shared ideal of free and equal citizenship that provided a new, distinctively democratic framework for justifying a conception of justice. The shift to political liberalism involved little revision on Rawls’s part to the content of the principles he favored. But the salience it gave to questions about citizenship in the fabric of liberal political theory had important educational implications. How was the ideal of free and equal citizenship to be instantiated in education in a way that accommodated the range of reasonable values and doctrines encompassed in an overlapping consensus? Political Liberalism has inspired a range of answers to that question (cf. Callan 1997; Clayton 2006; Bull 2008).

Other philosophers besides Rawls in the 1990s took up a cluster of questions about civic education, and not always from a liberal perspective. Alasdair Macintyre’s After Virtue (1984) strongly influenced the development of communitarian political theory which, as its very name might suggest, argued that the cultivation of community could preempt many of the problems with conflicting individual rights at the core of liberalism. As a full-standing alternative to liberalism, communitarianism might have little to recommend it. But it was a spur for liberal philosophers to think about how communities could be built and sustained to support the more familiar projects of liberal politics (e.g., Strike 2010). Furthermore, its arguments often converged with those advanced by feminist exponents of the ethic of care (Noddings 1984; Gilligan 1982). Noddings’ work is particularly notable because she inferred a cogent and radical agenda for the reform of schools from her conception of care (Noddings 1992).

One persistent controversy in citizenship theory has been about whether patriotism is correctly deemed a virtue, given our obligations to those who are not our fellow citizens in an increasingly interdependent world and the sordid history of xenophobia with which modern nation states are associated. The controversy is partly about what we should teach in our schools and is commonly discussed by philosophers in that context (Galston 1991; Ben-Porath 2006; Callan 2006; Miller 2007; Curren & Dorn 2018). The controversy is related to a deeper and more pervasive question about how morally or intellectually taxing the best conception of our citizenship should be. The more taxing it is, the more constraining its derivative conception of civic education will be. Contemporary political philosophers offer divergent arguments about these matters. For example, Gutmann and Thompson claim that citizens of diverse democracies need to “understand the diverse ways of life of their fellow citizens” (Gutmann & Thompson 1996: 66). The need arises from the obligation of reciprocity which they (like Rawls) believe to be integral to citizenship. Because I must seek to cooperate with others politically on terms that make sense from their moral perspective as well as my own, I must be ready to enter that perspective imaginatively so as to grasp its distinctive content. Many such perspectives prosper in liberal democracies, and so the task of reciprocal understanding is necessarily onerous. Still, our actions qua deliberative citizen must be grounded in such reciprocity if political cooperation on terms acceptable to us as (diversely) morally motivated citizens is to be possible at all. This is tantamount to an imperative to think autonomously inside the role of citizen because I cannot close-mindedly resist critical consideration of moral views alien to my own without flouting my responsibilities as a deliberative citizen.

Civic education does not exhaust the domain of moral education, even though the more robust conceptions of equal citizenship have far-reaching implications for just relations in civil society and the family. The study of moral education has traditionally taken its bearings from normative ethics rather than political philosophy, and this is largely true of work undertaken in recent decades. The major development here has been the revival of virtue ethics as an alternative to the deontological and consequentialist theories that dominated discussion for much of the twentieth century.

The defining idea of virtue ethics is that our criterion of moral right and wrong must derive from a conception of how the ideally virtuous agent would distinguish between the two. Virtue ethics is thus an alternative to both consequentialism and deontology which locate the relevant criterion in producing good consequences or meeting the requirements of moral duty respectively. The debate about the comparative merits of these theories is not resolved, but from an educational perspective that may be less important than it has sometimes seemed to antagonists in the debate. To be sure, adjudicating between rival theories in normative ethics might shed light on how best to construe the process of moral education, and philosophical reflection on the process might help us to adjudicate between the theories. There has been extensive work on habituation and virtue, largely inspired by Aristotle (Burnyeat 1980; Peters 1981). But whether this does anything to establish the superiority of virtue ethics over its competitors is far from obvious. Other aspects of moral education—in particular, the paired processes of role-modelling and identification—deserve much more scrutiny than they have received (Audi 2017; Kristjánsson 2015, 2017).

Related to the issues concerning the aims and functions of education and schooling rehearsed above are those involving the specifically epistemic aims of education and attendant issues treated by social and virtue epistemologists. (The papers collected in Kotzee 2013 and Baehr 2016 highlight the current and growing interactions among social epistemologists, virtue epistemologists, and philosophers of education.)

There is, first, a lively debate concerning putative epistemic aims. Alvin Goldman argues that truth (or knowledge understood in the “weak” sense of true belief) is the fundamental epistemic aim of education (Goldman 1999). Others, including the majority of historically significant philosophers of education, hold that critical thinking or rationality and rational belief (or knowledge in the “strong” sense that includes justification) is the basic epistemic educational aim (Bailin & Siegel 2003; Scheffler 1965, 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2005, 2017). Catherine Z. Elgin (1999a,b) and Duncan Pritchard (2013, 2016; Carter & Pritchard 2017) have independently urged that understanding is the basic aim. Pritchard’s view combines understanding with intellectual virtue ; Jason Baehr (2011) systematically defends the fostering of the intellectual virtues as the fundamental epistemic aim of education. This cluster of views continues to engender ongoing discussion and debate. (Its complex literature is collected in Carter and Kotzee 2015, summarized in Siegel 2018, and helpfully analyzed in Watson 2016.)

A further controversy concerns the places of testimony and trust in the classroom: In what circumstances if any ought students to trust their teachers’ pronouncements, and why? Here the epistemology of education is informed by social epistemology, specifically the epistemology of testimony; the familiar reductionism/anti-reductionism controversy there is applicable to students and teachers. Anti-reductionists, who regard testimony as a basic source of justification, may with equanimity approve of students’ taking their teachers’ word at face value and believing what they say; reductionists may balk. Does teacher testimony itself constitute good reason for student belief?

The correct answer here seems clearly enough to be “it depends”. For very young children who have yet to acquire or develop the ability to subject teacher declarations to critical scrutiny, there seems to be little alternative to accepting what their teachers tell them. For older and more cognitively sophisticated students there seem to be more options: they can assess them for plausibility, compare them with other opinions, assess the teachers’ proffered reasons, subject them to independent evaluation, etc. Regarding “the teacher says that p ” as itself a good reason to believe it appears moreover to contravene the widely shared conviction that an important educational aim is helping students to become able to evaluate candidate beliefs for themselves and believe accordingly. That said, all sides agree that sometimes believers, including students, have good reasons simply to trust what others tell them. There is thus more work to do here by both social epistemologists and philosophers of education (for further discussion see Goldberg 2013; Siegel 2005, 2018).

A further cluster of questions, of long-standing interest to philosophers of education, concerns indoctrination : How if at all does it differ from legitimate teaching? Is it inevitable, and if so is it not always necessarily bad? First, what is it? As we saw earlier, extant analyses focus on the aims or intentions of the indoctrinator, the methods employed, or the content transmitted. If the indoctrination is successful, all have the result that students/victims either don’t, won’t, or can’t subject the indoctrinated material to proper epistemic evaluation. In this way it produces both belief that is evidentially unsupported or contravened and uncritical dispositions to believe. It might seem obvious that indoctrination, so understood, is educationally undesirable. But it equally seems that very young children, at least, have no alternative but to believe sans evidence; they have yet to acquire the dispositions to seek and evaluate evidence, or the abilities to recognize evidence or evaluate it. Thus we seem driven to the views that indoctrination is both unavoidable and yet bad and to be avoided. It is not obvious how this conundrum is best handled. One option is to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable indoctrination. Another is to distinguish between indoctrination (which is always bad) and non-indoctrinating belief inculcation, the latter being such that students are taught some things without reasons (the alphabet, the numbers, how to read and count, etc.), but in such a way that critical evaluation of all such material (and everything else) is prized and fostered (Siegel 1988: ch. 5). In the end the distinctions required by the two options might be extensionally equivalent (Siegel 2018).

Education, it is generally granted, fosters belief : in the typical propositional case, Smith teaches Jones that p , and if all goes well Jones learns it and comes to believe it. Education also has the task of fostering open-mindedness and an appreciation of our fallibility : All the theorists mentioned thus far, especially those in the critical thinking and intellectual virtue camps, urge their importance. But these two might seem at odds. If Jones (fully) believes that p , can she also be open-minded about it? Can she believe, for example, that earthquakes are caused by the movements of tectonic plates, while also believing that perhaps they aren’t? This cluster of italicized notions requires careful handling; it is helpfully discussed by Jonathan Adler (2002, 2003), who recommends regarding the latter two as meta-attitudes concerning one’s first-order beliefs rather than lessened degrees of belief or commitments to those beliefs.

Other traditional epistemological worries that impinge upon the epistemology of education concern (a) absolutism , pluralism and relativism with respect to knowledge, truth and justification as these relate to what is taught, (b) the character and status of group epistemologies and the prospects for understanding such epistemic goods “universalistically” in the face of “particularist” challenges, (c) the relation between “knowledge-how” and “knowledge-that” and their respective places in the curriculum, (d) concerns raised by multiculturalism and the inclusion/exclusion of marginalized perspectives in curriculum content and the classroom, and (e) further issues concerning teaching and learning. (There is more here than can be briefly summarized; for more references and systematic treatment cf. Bailin & Siegel 2003; Carter & Kotzee 2015; Cleverley & Phillips 1986; Robertson 2009; Siegel 2004, 2017; and Watson 2016.)

The educational research enterprise has been criticized for a century or more by politicians, policymakers, administrators, curriculum developers, teachers, philosophers of education, and by researchers themselves—but the criticisms have been contradictory. Charges of being “too ivory tower and theory-oriented” are found alongside “too focused on practice and too atheoretical”; but in light of the views of John Dewey and William James that the function of theory is to guide intelligent practice and problem-solving, it is becoming more fashionable to hold that the “theory v. practice” dichotomy is a false one. (For an illuminating account of the historical development of educational research and its tribulations, see Lagemann 2000.)

A similar trend can be discerned with respect to the long warfare between two rival groups of research methods—on one hand quantitative/statistical approaches to research, and on the other hand the qualitative/ethnographic family. (The choice of labels here is not entirely risk-free, for they have been contested; furthermore the first approach is quite often associated with “experimental” studies, and the latter with “case studies”, but this is an over-simplification.) For several decades these two rival methodological camps were treated by researchers and a few philosophers of education as being rival paradigms (Kuhn’s ideas, albeit in a very loose form, have been influential in the field of educational research), and the dispute between them was commonly referred to as “the paradigm wars”. In essence the issue at stake was epistemological: members of the quantitative/experimental camp believed that only their methods could lead to well-warranted knowledge claims, especially about the causal factors at play in educational phenomena, and on the whole they regarded qualitative methods as lacking in rigor; on the other hand the adherents of qualitative/ethnographic approaches held that the other camp was too “positivistic” and was operating with an inadequate view of causation in human affairs—one that ignored the role of motives and reasons, possession of relevant background knowledge, awareness of cultural norms, and the like. Few if any commentators in the “paradigm wars” suggested that there was anything prohibiting the use of both approaches in the one research program—provided that if both were used, they were used only sequentially or in parallel, for they were underwritten by different epistemologies and hence could not be blended together. But recently the trend has been towards rapprochement, towards the view that the two methodological families are, in fact, compatible and are not at all like paradigms in the Kuhnian sense(s) of the term; the melding of the two approaches is often called “mixed methods research”, and it is growing in popularity. (For more detailed discussion of these “wars” see Howe 2003 and Phillips 2009.)

The most lively contemporary debates about education research, however, were set in motion around the turn of the millennium when the US Federal Government moved in the direction of funding only rigorously scientific educational research—the kind that could establish causal factors which could then guide the development of practically effective policies. (It was held that such a causal knowledge base was available for medical decision-making.) The definition of “rigorously scientific”, however, was decided by politicians and not by the research community, and it was given in terms of the use of a specific research method—the net effect being that the only research projects to receive Federal funding were those that carried out randomized controlled experiments or field trials (RFTs). It has become common over the last decade to refer to the RFT as the “gold standard” methodology.

The National Research Council (NRC)—an arm of the US National Academies of Science—issued a report, influenced by postpostivistic philosophy of science (NRC 2002), that argued that this criterion was far too narrow. Numerous essays have appeared subsequently that point out how the “gold standard” account of scientific rigor distorts the history of science, how the complex nature of the relation between evidence and policy-making has been distorted and made to appear overly simple (for instance the role of value-judgments in linking empirical findings to policy directives is often overlooked), and qualitative researchers have insisted upon the scientific nature of their work. Nevertheless, and possibly because it tried to be balanced and supported the use of RFTs in some research contexts, the NRC report has been the subject of symposia in four journals, where it has been supported by a few and attacked from a variety of philosophical fronts: Its authors were positivists, they erroneously believed that educational inquiry could be value neutral and that it could ignore the ways in which the exercise of power constrains the research process, they misunderstood the nature of educational phenomena, and so on. This cluster of issues continues to be debated by educational researchers and by philosophers of education and of science, and often involves basic topics in philosophy of science: the constitution of warranting evidence, the nature of theories and of confirmation and explanation, etc. Nancy Cartwright’s important recent work on causation, evidence, and evidence-based policy adds layers of both philosophical sophistication and real world practical analysis to the central issues just discussed (Cartwright & Hardie 2012, Cartwright 2013; cf. Kvernbekk 2015 for an overview of the controversies regarding evidence in the education and philosophy of education literatures).

As stressed earlier, it is impossible to do justice to the whole field of philosophy of education in a single encyclopedia entry. Different countries around the world have their own intellectual traditions and their own ways of institutionalizing philosophy of education in the academic universe, and no discussion of any of this appears in the present essay. But even in the Anglo-American world there is such a diversity of approaches that any author attempting to produce a synoptic account will quickly run into the borders of his or her competence. Clearly this has happened in the present case.

Fortunately, in the last thirty years or so resources have become available that significantly alleviate these problems. There has been a flood of encyclopedia entries, both on the field as a whole and also on many specific topics not well-covered in the present essay (see, as a sample, Burbules 1994; Chambliss 1996b; Curren 1998, 2018; Phillips 1985, 2010; Siegel 2007; Smeyers 1994), two “Encyclopedias” (Chambliss 1996a; Phillips 2014), a “Guide” (Blake, Smeyers, Smith, & Standish 2003), a “Companion” (Curren 2003), two “Handbooks” (Siegel 2009; Bailey, Barrow, Carr, & McCarthy 2010), a comprehensive anthology (Curren 2007), a dictionary of key concepts in the field (Winch & Gingell 1999), and a good textbook or two (Carr 2003; Noddings 2015). In addition there are numerous volumes both of reprinted selections and of specially commissioned essays on specific topics, some of which were given short shrift here (for another sampling see A. Rorty 1998, Stone 1994), and several international journals, including Theory and Research in Education , Journal of Philosophy of Education , Educational Theory , Studies in Philosophy and Education , and Educational Philosophy and Theory . Thus there is more than enough material available to keep the interested reader busy.

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autonomy: personal | Dewey, John | feminist philosophy, interventions: ethics | feminist philosophy, interventions: liberal feminism | feminist philosophy, interventions: political philosophy | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on autonomy | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on disability | Foucault, Michel | Gadamer, Hans-Georg | liberalism | Locke, John | Lyotard, Jean François | -->ordinary language --> | Plato | postmodernism | Rawls, John | rights: of children | Rousseau, Jean Jacques

Acknowledgments

The authors and editors would like to thank Randall Curren for sending a number of constructive suggestions for the Summer 2018 update of this entry.

Copyright © 2018 by Harvey Siegel D.C. Phillips Eamonn Callan

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• 2. Expository Essay About Education: Writing Steps
• 3. Expository Essay About Education Examples

Expository Essay - The Basics

To start off, let's define what is an expository essay.

An expository essay is a type of writing in which the main purpose is to inform the reader about a certain topic or subject. This type of essay should be written in an objective, impartial tone and backed up by facts, statistics, or other reliable sources.

Essays need to have a clear introduction and conclusion so the reader knows what the main points are. They also need to have strong evidence that supports the argument presented throughout the paper.

An expository essay on education would require you to explain any aspect of education. For instance, its benefits or how it can be improved, etc.

Let's now take a look at how you can write an essay about education yourself.

Expository Essay About Education: Writing Steps

Writing an essay would be easier if you follow certain steps. Here are the steps you need to follow to write an engaging and interesting education essay.

Step 1: Brainstorming Ideas

Before you start writing your essay about education, it's important to brainstorm some ideas.

Think about expository essay topics about education that you find interesting or want to learn more about. You should also make sure the topic is relevant and has enough evidence to support it.

Brainstorming will help you create a list of ideas that you can work with as you write your essay. Check out some general expository essay topics to help you brainstorm.

The video below about what is education will help you brainstorm about your topic, so be sure to check it out:

Step 2: Find Out More About Your Topic

Now that you have some ideas, it's time to do some research. Gather reliable sources and read through them to learn more about your topic.

Take notes as you go so that you can refer to them when writing your essay. This will help ensure the information you include in your paper is accurate and up-to-date.

Step 3: Organize Your Ideas

Once you’ve done your research, you should start organizing your ideas. You can do this by creating an outline or using a mind map.

The outline should consist of the main points of your essay and any sub-points that will help you support those points.

An organized structure will make it easier for you to write your paper later on.

Step 4: Start with the Introduction

The introduction is one of the most important parts of your essay. It should capture the reader's attention and introduce them to the topic.

Start by introducing your topic and then provide some background information about it. This will give your readers more context as they move on to the main points of your essay.

Step 5: Write the Body

The body of your paper should be structured around each point from your outline. This is where you will include evidence and examples to support your argument.

Include a few sentences for each point and make sure that they are linked to each other in a logical way.

Each body paragraph should start with a topic sentence that introduces the main idea of the paragraph. Then, use evidence and examples to support your point and make sure that everything is linked logically.

Remember to include in-text citations so that you can give credit to the sources you used.

Step 6: Create the Conclusion

The conclusion is where you wrap up your essay and provide a summary of all the main points. You should also include a call to action or something that will make readers think about what they’ve read.

Make sure to keep it brief and don’t include any new information.

Step 7: Editing and Proofreading

Once you’ve finished writing your essay, it’s time to edit and proofread it to make sure everything is correct.

Check for spelling and grammar mistakes and make sure that the structure of your paper is logical. Also, make sure to read over your paper for any factual errors.

You can also ask a professional essay writer to look at your paper and give you feedback. This can help you identify any issues or mistakes that you may have missed. Taking the time to do this will ensure that your essay is as good as possible. 

Now that we know how to write an expository essay, let’s read a few example essays.

Expository Essay About Education Examples

Reading essays can be a great way to learn how to write one yourself.

So, before you start writing your own essay, take some time to read through these expository essay examples on education. 

Expository Essay About Education in Time of Pandemic

Expository Essay About Education System in the New Normal

Expository Essay About Importance of Education

Expository Essay About Higher Education

Short Expository Essay Example 

Let’s take a look at a short expository essay example on education:

Reading these will help you understand the structure and format of an expository paper better. Check out our blog about expository essay examples if you need samples on other topics.

To wrap up,

Writing an education essay doesn't have to be difficult. By following these steps and taking the time to do your research, you can write a great essay that will capture the reader's attention.

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Sociology of Education: Meaning, Scope, Importance, Perspectives

Synopsis : This article explores the discipline of Sociology of Education, a branch of the broader subject of Sociology, through its meaning, history of development, significance, differences with Educational Sociology, and scope. It also portrays how education can be examined using the three main theoretical perspectives in sociology.

What is Sociology of Education ?

To understand what Sociology of Education comprises, it is, first and foremost, imperative to define education from a sociological understanding. In sociology, education is held to be a social institution that serves the objective of socializing an individual from their very birth into the systems of society. Henslin (2017) defines education as “a formal system” which engages in imparting knowledge to individuals, instilling morals and beliefs (which are at par with those of the culture and society), and providing formal training for skill development. In non-industrial, simple societies, the specific institution of education did not exist in society.

For quite a long period after it was established as a formal means of knowledge development, education was available only to those privileged enough to afford it. Requirements under industrialization to have literate workers for some jobs reshaped the structure of the education system to a great extent. Even in today’s world, the education system varies from one country to another due to various factors, ranging from cultural values to the availability of proper resources.

Sociology of Education is the discipline or field of study which deals with the institution of education, and all the other factors related to it, in society. Sociology of education is also defined as the academic discipline which “examines the ways in which individuals’ experiences affect their educational achievement and outcomes” (Williams, 2011). Scott (2014) states that the subject is “mostly concerned with schooling, and especially the mass schooling systems of modern industrial societies, including the expansion of higher, further, adult, and continuing education.”

In simple words, the discipline studies education as a social institution, and examines its functions, roles, and other behaviors within the broader social context, as well as how it influences individuals and is influenced reciprocally by them. It highlights the significance of education within the different cultures and other social groups, as well as assesses factors (such as economic, political, etc.) associated with the individuals which might affect their access to education. Some themes discussed within the field are modules or curriculum, testing methods (such as standardized testing), etc.

Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Lancelot Hogben, Talcott Parsons , Pierre Bourdieu, James Coleman, John Wilfred Meyer, etc., are some scholars associated with the Sociology of Education. The discipline was made popular in India by scholars such as Madhav Sadashiv Gore, Akshay Ramanlal Desai, Yogendra Singh, and Shyama Charan Dube, among others (Pathania, 2013). 

Historical Background:

French sociologist Emile Durkheim was the person who helped establish Sociology as a formal educational discipline. Durkheim also became the first professor of sociology, the first individual to pursue a sociological understanding of the functioning of societies, and the foremost person to initiate a discussion on the sociology of education (Boronski & Hassan, 2020). He identified that the base of organic solidarity is moral education, in which self-discipline and keeping one’s desires in check are the essential principles of moral development.

However, even before sociology emerged as a formal academic discipline or pursued interest in the West, Arab philosopher and historian Ibn Khaldun has been designated the position of being one of the pioneer thinkers in Sociology, and in the sociology of education in particular. Khaldun understood education as a tool of significance, the advancement of which is crucial to the growth and development of society and economy (Boronski & Hassan, 2020).

With the advent of the Fabian Society, which was originally established in 1884, during the middle of the twentieth century, sociology of education began in its early stage in Britain.

Boronski & Hassan (2020) describe the Fabian society and its activities as the “political foundation” of the sociology of education in Britain. The methodology followed during this time was ‘political arithmetic’: examining the capability of education to result in a society that was more supportive of and characterized by democracy, and its related principles.

The intellectual roots of sociology of education in Britain lie in the influence of structural functionalism, strongly visible in both Britain and America. The British sociology of education saw a drastic shift to a more critical view of education during the 1970s and 1980s. This was termed as “New Sociology of Education (NSOE)”, which consisted of not one, but several different approaches to education, all of which, however, had a similar base: the system or institution of education was considered as fundamentally adverse to those belonging from the working class (Boronski & Hassan, 2020).

The feminist perspective of sociology grew apace in the education scenario, providing a bolder and enhanced voice to the agenda of the women’s movement, and literature on the same, such as those of Dale Spencer and Judy Samuel, also expanded. Today, the field of Sociology itself, and in particular, the sub-field of Sociology of Education faces a continuous and increasing demand to make the discipline more embracive by facilitating and encouraging the incorporation of involvement of the global South.

Theoretical Perspectives on Education :

The social institution of education can be examined using the three main theoretical perspectives in Sociology:

• Structural Functionalism : This perspective views education as a crucial and integral institution that provides several benefits to society (Henslin, 2017). The first manifest function of education is providing a source of knowledge and teaching essential aptitude, required both for social survival and economic necessities. Standardized testing scores help employers discern and select the ‘good’ potential workers from the ‘bad’ wherever there is a lack of prior knowledge about each of them. 

The second function is facilitating distribution or passing on of core cultural values, norms, beliefs, ideals, as well as patriotic feelings towards one’s country, and harmony towards fellow citizens. These are passed on from generation to generation to ensure that these values are kept intact.

“Social integration”, that is, feelings of solidarity towards other people due to sharing the same nationality as them, the inclusion of people with special needs, etc., is the third manifest function of education (Henslin, 2017). At the same time, it also serves the function of separating people into ‘appropriate’ groups based on differences in their characteristics (such as merit, skills, etc.).

Other functions vary from place to place and include providing childcare, providing nutrition (free midday meal systems), facilitating sex education and proper healthcare, diminishing the rate of unemployment, as well as ensuring security in society by keeping individuals in schools and away from corrupt activities (Henslin, 2017).

• Symbolic Interactionism : This perspective focuses on the interaction taking place in schools–in classrooms, playgrounds, etc., between students and teachers, and among students themselves, and how these can affect the individuals involved in the interactions. Socialization into gender roles is a primary example of the influence of in-school interaction upon individuals. Teachers’ expectations, type of peer groups, etc., have an impact on the performance of students (higher the teacher’s expectations, the better the students will perform, and vice versa) (Henslin, 2017). Expectations of students oneself based on their life situations (such as financial conditions) also affect an individual’s educational performance. 
• Conflict Theory : This theoretical perspective is inherently skeptical and critical of the education system. According to conflict theorists, education serves the purpose of introducing, reiterating, and maintaining the class division which is present in society. They posit the presence of a “hidden curriculum” which instills values such as submission to power or authority, adherence to social or cultural rules (such as maintenance of racial discrimination, treating students from different social classes differently), etc. (Henslin, 2017). 

Also Read: Maxist Perspective on Education

By implementing some latent and some visible rules, schools also promote the current social structures (such as capitalism: by encouraging competitive behavior and pitting students against one another based on test scores, social stratification: regions having lower-class students have poorly funded schools, etc.), thereby facilitating their existence rather than working towards their removal from society. 

Other theoretical perspectives which have had a significant impact on how education, and the system around it, is analyzed are feminist approaches, which highlight the gender differences in education, with the third wave of feminism also incorporating race and class-based discriminations into the gender imbalance; and critical race theory which focuses on all matters concerning race (mainly the obstacles which people have to encounter due to race) in education (Robson, 2019).

Scope of Sociology of Education :

Sociology of Education covers a wide range of topics. Society and all other components within it, such as culture, class, race, gender, etc., the ongoing processes of socialization, acculturation, social organization, etc., and other factors such as status, roles, values, morals, etc., all fall under the inspection of this field of study (Satapathy, n.d.). Aligning the design of education according to geographical, ethnic, and linguistic necessities, and requirements of other population subgroups also falls under Sociology of Education. How economic background and situations, family structures and relations, friends, peer groups and teachers, and other more overarching social issues affect the personality, quality of education, and accessibility of opportunities to students is an integral point of consideration under Sociology of Education.

Significance of Studying Sociology of Education :

Dynamic nature of culture, the fact that culture varies from one place to another and sometimes even within the same region, and because education, culture, and society affect each other drastically, it is important to have an understanding of the relationship between these so that education can be used effectively as a tool for human advancement (Satapathy, n.d.). Sociology of Education helps in facilitating that.

Teachers are able to learn cultural differences, practice cultural relativism , understand how differences in culture translate into the educational sphere as well, and work towards providing individuals equitable opportunities for education through the Sociology of Education (Ogechi, 2011). They can also motivate the same knowledge among students. As a discipline, Sociology of Education instills cultural appreciation, respect, and admiration towards diversity, and more in-depth knowledge about different cultures and other social groups through the patterns in education within them.

Sociology of Education also provides greater knowledge about human behavior, clarity on how people organize themselves in society and helps unravel and simplify the complexities within human society (Ogechi, 2011). Because education, whether in the formal, institutionalized form or otherwise, is one of the few components in human society which more or less remains constant across cultures, it becomes an important tool to analyze and interpret human societies.

The discipline also enhances one’s understanding of the position education occupies in society, and the roles it plays in the lives of humans (Ogechi, 2011). At the same time, it helps develop knowledge about the benefits as well as the shortcomings of education and devise policies to make the institution more beneficial for society by facilitating an analytical examination.

Due to its focus on studying one of the most vital parts of human lives today, the academic field of Sociology of Education holds a position of great importance among the several branches and sub-branches of sociology. The discipline is constantly evolving, and undergoing improvement and changes as the society, and the values held by it change.

Differences between Educational Sociology and Sociology of Education :

Although the two are related, Sociology of Education is distinctly different from Educational Sociology in certain factors. Sociology of education is the process of scientifically investigating the institution of education within the society–how the society affects it, how education influences people in the society in return, and the problems which might occur as a result of the interaction between the two (Chathu, 2017). Educational Sociology also deals with these, but where Sociology of Education is a more theory-based study, Educational Sociology focuses on applying principles in sociology to the entire system of education and how it operates within the society. In other words, Sociology of Education studies the practices within the social institution of education using sociological concepts, while Educational Sociology engages in the practical application of understandings developed through sociological research into education (Bhat, 2016).

In the same context, Sociology of Education views education as a part of the larger society, and hence the institution is analyzed both as a separate unit, as well as by considering it alongside other factors in society (Bhat, 2016). Therefore, the discipline tries to form a relationship between education and other facets of society and seeks to understand how education affects these different components of the society, and vice versa (for example, how education ingrains gender roles, as well as how pre-existing gender roles affect the quality, quantity, availability, and access to education). Educational Sociology, on the other hand, aims to provide solutions to the problems which occur in education (Bhat, 2016). In doing so, the discipline views education as a separate entity within society.

Sociology of Education tends to strive towards developing an understanding of how the education system affects individuals, and what outcomes are visible in people as a result of education (Chathu, 2017). Educational Sociology, on the other hand, strives to find ways of improving the institution and system of education so that its potentials can be more advantageously harnessed for the greater interest of all in the future.

Bhat, M. S. (2016). EDU-C-Sociological foundations of education-I . https://www.cukashmir.ac.in/departmentdocs_16/Education%20&%20Sociology%20-%20Dr.%20Mohd%20Sayid%20Bhat.pdf

Boronski, T., & Hassan, N. (2020). Sociology of education (2nd ed.). Editorial: Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington Dc, Melbourne Sage.

Chathu. (2017, January 30). Difference between educational sociology and sociology of education | definition, features, characteristics . Pediaa.com. https://pediaa.com/difference-between-educational

Ogechi, R. (2011). QUESTION: Discuss the importance of sociology of education to both teachers and students. Academia . https://www.academia.edu/37732576/QUESTION_Discuss_the_importance_

Pathania, G. J. (2013). Sociology of Education. Economic and Political Weekly , 48 (50), 29–31. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24479041

Robson, K. L. (2019). Theories in the sociology of education. In Sociology of Education in Canada . Pressbooks. https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/robsonsoced/chapter/__unknown__-2/

Satapathy, S. S. (n.d.). Sociology of education . https://ddceutkal.ac.in/Syllabus/MA_SOCIOLOGY/Paper-16.pdf

Scott, J. (2014). A dictionary of sociology (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Williams, S. M. (2011). Sociology of education. Education . https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199756810-0065

Soumili is currently pursuing her studies in Social Sciences at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, focusing on core subjects such as Sociology, Psychology, and Economics. She possesses a deep passion for exploring various cultures, traditions, and languages, demonstrating a particular fascination with scholarship related to intersectional feminism and environmentalism, gender and sexuality, as well as clinical psychology and counseling. In addition to her academic pursuits, her interests extend to reading, fine arts, and engaging in volunteer work.

Essay on Importance of Education for Students

500 words essay on importance of education.

To say Education is important is an understatement. Education is a weapon to improve one’s life. It is probably the most important tool to change one’s life. Education for a child begins at home. It is a lifelong process that ends with death. Education certainly determines the quality of an individual’s life. Education improves one’s knowledge, skills and develops the personality and attitude. Most noteworthy, Education affects the chances of employment for people. A highly educated individual is probably very likely to get a good job. In this essay on importance of education, we will tell you about the value of education in life and society.

Importance of Education in Life

First of all, Education teaches the ability to read and write. Reading and writing is the first step in Education. Most information is done by writing. Hence, the lack of writing skill means missing out on a lot of information. Consequently, Education makes people literate.

Above all, Education is extremely important for employment. It certainly is a great opportunity to make a decent living. This is due to the skills of a high paying job that Education provides. Uneducated people are probably at a huge disadvantage when it comes to jobs. It seems like many poor people improve their lives with the help of Education.

Better Communication is yet another role in Education. Education improves and refines the speech of a person. Furthermore, individuals also improve other means of communication with Education.

Education makes an individual a better user of technology. Education certainly provides the technical skills necessary for using technology . Hence, without Education, it would probably be difficult to handle modern machines.

People become more mature with the help of Education. Sophistication enters the life of educated people. Above all, Education teaches the value of discipline to individuals. Educated people also realize the value of time much more. To educated people, time is equal to money.

Finally, Educations enables individuals to express their views efficiently. Educated individuals can explain their opinions in a clear manner. Hence, educated people are quite likely to convince people to their point of view.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Importance of Education in Society

First of all, Education helps in spreading knowledge in society. This is perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Education. There is a quick propagation of knowledge in an educated society. Furthermore, there is a transfer of knowledge from generation to another by Education.

Education helps in the development and innovation of technology. Most noteworthy, the more the education, the more technology will spread. Important developments in war equipment, medicine , computers, take place due to Education.

Education is a ray of light in the darkness. It certainly is a hope for a good life. Education is a basic right of every Human on this Planet. To deny this right is evil. Uneducated youth is the worst thing for Humanity. Above all, the governments of all countries must ensure to spread Education.

FAQs on Essay on Importance of Education

Q.1 How Education helps in Employment?

A.1 Education helps in Employment by providing necessary skills. These skills are important for doing a high paying job.

Q.2 Mention one way in Education helps a society?

A.2 Education helps society by spreading knowledge. This certainly is one excellent contribution to Education.

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Education Essay

Education is essential for anyone who wants to reach their full potential and live a fulfilling life. It is a powerful tool, and it is essential for creating a better future. Education helps to develop a sense of discipline, responsibility, and respect for others. Here are a few sample essays on the topic ‘Education’.

100 Words Essay On Education

200 words essay on education, 500 words essay on education.

Education is an invaluable asset that can create many opportunities for individuals in our society. It is the cornerstone of success in personal, professional, and academic lives. Education is important because it helps us to develop necessary skills and knowledge, which enables us to think critically, make informed decisions, and maximise our potential.

The importance of education is undeniable, and its numerous benefits are undeniable. Education helps to provide the essential knowledge, skills, and values that are necessary for success in life. Education also helps to prepare individuals to assume positions of responsibility, as well as to think critically and develop problem-solving skills.

Education creates a sense of social responsibility. It teaches people how to respect one another, as well as how to be productive members of society. Learning about history and culture can help people to better understand and appreciate the differences among different cultures, and it can also inspire individuals to use their knowledge to make the world a better place. Education also fosters social mobility, as those who have access to quality education can more easily pursue higher-level positions and career paths.

Education can also help to combat inequality. By providing access to knowledge and resources, education can help to bridge the gap between those who have and those who do not have access to these things. This can lead to a more equitable distribution of resources and opportunities, as well as a decrease in poverty.

The benefits of education are wide-ranging and varied. It is essential for preparing individuals to enter the labour force, as it provides the necessary skills and knowledge that employers look for when hiring. Education also helps to create a more informed and engaged society, by teaching citizens how to think, problem solve, and make better decisions. In addition, students who attend school are more likely to have higher incomes and become financially secure.

Education plays an important role in expanding our view of the world and increasing cultural awareness and understanding. Education helps us to gain a better understanding of different cultures and beliefs, and it can eliminate prejudices and promote mutual respect. Moreover, education has been proven to increase the economic stability of individuals and families. Individuals who are educated tend to earn higher wages, have better job security, and are more likely to own a home. Education also tends to reduce poverty, as well as improve the overall quality of life for individuals and families.

Advantages of Education

Education is one of the most important aspects of any person's life. It is a key to unlocking the door to success and providing a more fulfilling life. With education, a person can become more informed, gain knowledge, and increase their skills. The advantages of education are many, and its importance cannot be overstated.

Education helps us to develop the skills, knowledge, and values that are necessary for success in life, and it can help to increase economic stability, reduce poverty, and promote cultural understanding. Education is a lifetime investment that provides individuals with the knowledge and skills they need to lead successful lives.

Education is important for the development of a person’s knowledge and skills. It allows them to gain an understanding of the world around them, analyse and interpret data, and find creative solutions to complex problems. By having an education, a person is better prepared to make informed decisions and become a successful individual.

Education is also important for career and employment opportunities. Having an education gives a person the opportunity to pursue a career they are passionate about and to be more competitive in the job market. It also provides them with more job security and higher salaries.

Finally, education is important for personal growth and development. With an education, a person can learn about different cultures, explore different fields of knowledge, and develop a better understanding of the world. Education can also help a person build relationships, gain life experiences, and develop a positive attitude towards life.

How Education Benefits The Society | Education is one of the most important aspects of life, and it plays an increasingly vital role in our society today. It is important for a variety of reasons, including contributing to the development of communities, preparing individuals for the workforce, and providing access to knowledge and resources. Education can benefit our society in many ways, and it is essential to understanding how the world works. With a good education, individuals can be better equipped to enter the labour force, create a more informed and engaged society, and combat inequality.

Education is one of the most important aspects of a person’s life. It provides them with knowledge and skills that can be used to become successful and to pursue a career that they are passionate about. It also provides them with personal growth and development, job security, and higher salaries. Education is an asset that stays with you for your entire life and helps you deal with any challenge that life throws at you.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

• Construction
• Entertainment
• Manufacturing
• Information Technology

Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi . 

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software. 

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story. 

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or  MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.  

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans. 

Process Development Engineer

The Process Development Engineers design, implement, manufacture, mine, and other production systems using technical knowledge and expertise in the industry. They use computer modeling software to test technologies and machinery. An individual who is opting career as Process Development Engineer is responsible for developing cost-effective and efficient processes. They also monitor the production process and ensure it functions smoothly and efficiently.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

Information Security Manager

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

ITSM Manager

Automation test engineer.

An Automation Test Engineer job involves executing automated test scripts. He or she identifies the project’s problems and troubleshoots them. The role involves documenting the defect using management tools. He or she works with the application team in order to resolve any issues arising during the testing process. 

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• Essay: What is an Education?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the definitions of the word “education” is: “The systematic instruction, schooling or training is given to the young in preparation for the work of life; by extension, similar instruction or training obtained in adult age. Also, the whole course of scholastic instruction which a person has received.

Often with limiting words denoting the nature of the predominant subject of the instruction or kind of life it prepares, as classical, legal, medical, technical, commercial, art education.” Although this is an accurate description of what an actual education may be, there is a great deal more to the process of becoming educated than the actual instruction and schooling one may receive.

If you asked a person in high school or college exactly why he is in school his response would probably have something to do with “getting an education.” Is that really why he is there? The next question you may ask is “what are you going to do with your education?” The response would undoubtedly include something about “getting a good job” or perhaps “to make a lot of money.” Most of the people in the United States have been brainwashed to think that unless one has at least a high school diploma there is no future anywhere for him.

This is completely untrue. There is no guarantee that getting a high school “education” is going to get you anywhere. A student may spend eight years between high school and college getting an “education.” He can graduate from college with A’s in every class, but still, this “education” means nothing. For example, suppose this “Straight A” student goes for a job interview. Obviously one of the first things to be looked at is the college diploma. Good grades, which by today’s standards are an indication of an educated individual, are usually very helpful in getting a good job.

But alone, good grades are a completely unfair indication of how a person will perform under the pressures of the real world. Instead of looking at a person’s grades during a job interview and deciding whether that person is eligible for a particular position, why not try something realistic? To determine a particular person’s “education” why not allow the individual to apply what he knows to his position in the workplace. This is the true test of what an education is. The application of knowledge acquired is a much better determinant of true education than whether or not a person got an A in Wood Shop or World History.

A good percentage of people in the United States graduated from high school. A smaller percentage of people graduated from college. Are these graduates educated? Knowing when the Civil War began does not make a person “educated.” Where is the real-world application of this fact? For someone who is a History major, it may prove to be an invaluable nugget of information.

For others, it will not do them a bit of good anywhere in a lifetime. A high school diploma or a college degree does not necessarily mean that an individual has an understanding of the real world. What it does mean, in fact, is that the holder of the degree or certificate has an understanding of the facts learned in school. Is being able to regurgitate information verbatim considered an education?  By the above definition, yes. It will give you a high school diploma.  But that does not really help a person in life. There is a lot more to it than that.

Take for example a high school English class. Every high school student has learned that when writing a list of things, everything in the list should be separated by a comma. This is true even before the words “or” and “and.” Now, take the aforementioned definition of the word “education.” You may notice that there is no comma after the word “schooling.” This is inconsistent with what is taught in high school. This missing comma, however, is intentional. The definition was copied exactly out of the Dictionary.

From what was learned in high school English classes there should be a comma after the word “schooling.” Being able to recognize this missing comma is a good example of education; taking what was learned in high school or college and applying it to a real-life situation can often prove to be extremely useful. The application of understood knowledge is much more of an education than is the meaningless regurgitation of dates, facts, authors, and other skills.

Take another definition provided for “education” in the Oxford English Dictionary: “The process of ‘bringing up’ (young persons); the manner in which a person has been ‘brought up’ with reference to a social situation, kind of manners and habits acquired, calling or employment prepared for, etc.” This definition seems to make more sense. High school and college are not absolutely necessary in becoming educated. The skills acquired while being “brought up” can often prove much more useful in real life than can twenty years of gaining knowledge in a high school or college situation.

Education for most people should begin outside of the classroom. What is learned in school should not be considered an education? A better word one should consider is knowledge, or perhaps knowledge of information. Knowledge is gained in school. And knowledge is not an education in itself. Once a person can take his nuggets of information and apply them to everyday things then that person can consider himself educated. Until then, a high school or college education is as good as a book of facts. It is useful if you need to know something but worthless unless the information within is relative to the situation.

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Author:  William Anderson (Schoolworkhelper Editorial Team)

Tutor and Freelance Writer. Science Teacher and Lover of Essays. Article last reviewed: 2022 | St. Rosemary Institution © 2010-2024 | Creative Commons 4.0

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About education

UNESCO believes that education is a human right for all throughout life and that access must be matched by quality. The Organization is the only United Nations agency with a mandate to cover all aspects of education. It has been entrusted to lead the Global Education 2030 Agenda through  Sustainable Development Goal 4 . The roadmap to achieve this is the  Education 2030 Framework for Action  (FFA).

UNESCO provides global and regional leadership in education, strengthens education systems worldwide and responds to contemporary global challenges through education with gender equality an underlying principle.

Its work encompasses educational development from pre-school to higher education and beyond. Themes include global citizenship and sustainable development, human rights and gender equality, health and HIV and AIDS, as well as technical and vocational skills development.

How we work

UNESCO leads the coordination and monitoring of the  Global Education 2030 Agenda  through Sustainable Development Goal 4  and using the  Education 2030 Framework for Action  as a roadmap.

The  UNESCO Education Strategy 2014-2021  has three strategic objectives:

The education sector is shifting and evolving towards a more explicit, active commitment to addressing gender-related barriers within and beyond the education system. This shift is being accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic with more NGOs, local governments as well as national governments recognizing the role education has in promoting gender-transformative change. Many are responding to this shift with innovations that aim to address the persistent challenges faced by girls and women in education. By highlighting these key practices through the Prize, we can contribute to inspiring more action for girls and women.

We speak about the importance of gender-transformative change both in and beyond education. Can you define what this means for you?

Gender-transformative education aims not only to respond to gender disparities within the education system but also to harness the full potential of education to transform attitudes, practices and discriminatory gender norms. Education can support critical changes for gender equality, such as promoting women’s leadership, preventing gender-based violence, and catalyzing boys' and men's engagement to embrace gender equality.

I have been very impressed by the capacity shown by many organizations and individuals nominated to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure they could maintain the delivery of their programmes. We know that fewer girls and women have access to and use the internet, and the digital gender gap is growing, particularly in developing countries. Many found new ways of delivering educational content and finding solutions to conduct fully online or blended approaches to learning, often in low-resource settings where access to the internet is extremely limited.  

Related items

• SDG: SDG 4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

American Academy for Liberal Education

Advancing Excellence in Liberal Education

What is Liberal Education?

The American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE) welcomes readers to its on-line resource, What is Liberal Education? ,  a collection of essays and commentaries on topics of interest pertaining to the value and practice of liberal education and addressing the question: What is liberal education?

Current Topic: Liberal Education and the K-12 Curriculum

Jacques Barzun. “Why We Educate the Way We Do”  

Jacques Barzun (1907-2012), one of the founders of the American Academy for Liberal Education, is recognized internationally as one of the most thoughtful commentators on the cultural history of the modern period. After receiving his PhD from Columbia University (NY) in 1932, Barzun was appointed to the history faculty. During his tenure at Columbia, he served as Dean of Faculties and as Provost. He was granted the title of University Professor in 1967.

Barzun is the author of over 30 books and countless essays on historical, cultural and educational topics.  Among his writings are Critical Questions (a collection of essays 1940-1980), The Use and Abuse of Art (1974), and From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Life. 1500 to the Present (2000). The American Scholar called From Dawn to Decadence a “masterwork” by a “man whose entire life has been spent acquiring the perspective that only wisdom, and not mere knowledge, can grant.” His works on education include Teacher in America (1945) and The American University:  How it Runs and Where it is Going (new ed. 1993). Barzun’s professional activities included membership in the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Society of Arts. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003. 

Jacquez Barzun was interviewed by Ruth Wattenburg of the American Educator in 2002 on the subjects that form a K-12 education. The interview is reproduced here with permission from the Fall 2002 issue of American Educator , the quarterly journal of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, under its original title: Why We Educate the Way We Do .

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• Knowledge Base
• How to write an essay introduction | 4 steps & examples

How to Write an Essay Introduction | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on February 4, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A good introduction paragraph is an essential part of any academic essay . It sets up your argument and tells the reader what to expect.

The main goals of an introduction are to:

• Catch your reader’s attention.
• Give background on your topic.
• Present your thesis statement —the central point of your essay.

This introduction example is taken from our interactive essay example on the history of Braille.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

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Table of contents

Step 1: hook your reader, step 2: give background information, step 3: present your thesis statement, step 4: map your essay’s structure, step 5: check and revise, more examples of essay introductions, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about the essay introduction.

Your first sentence sets the tone for the whole essay, so spend some time on writing an effective hook.

Avoid long, dense sentences—start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.

The hook should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of the topic you’re writing about and why it’s interesting. Avoid overly broad claims or plain statements of fact.

Examples: Writing a good hook

Take a look at these examples of weak hooks and learn how to improve them.

• Braille was an extremely important invention.
• The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability.

The first sentence is a dry fact; the second sentence is more interesting, making a bold claim about exactly  why the topic is important.

• The internet is defined as “a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities.”
• The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education.

Avoid using a dictionary definition as your hook, especially if it’s an obvious term that everyone knows. The improved example here is still broad, but it gives us a much clearer sense of what the essay will be about.

• Mary Shelley’s  Frankenstein is a famous book from the nineteenth century.
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement.

Instead of just stating a fact that the reader already knows, the improved hook here tells us about the mainstream interpretation of the book, implying that this essay will offer a different interpretation.

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See an example

Next, give your reader the context they need to understand your topic and argument. Depending on the subject of your essay, this might include:

• Historical, geographical, or social context
• An outline of the debate you’re addressing
• A summary of relevant theories or research about the topic
• Definitions of key terms

The information here should be broad but clearly focused and relevant to your argument. Don’t give too much detail—you can mention points that you will return to later, but save your evidence and interpretation for the main body of the essay.

How much space you need for background depends on your topic and the scope of your essay. In our Braille example, we take a few sentences to introduce the topic and sketch the social context that the essay will address:

Now it’s time to narrow your focus and show exactly what you want to say about the topic. This is your thesis statement —a sentence or two that sums up your overall argument.

This is the most important part of your introduction. A  good thesis isn’t just a statement of fact, but a claim that requires evidence and explanation.

The goal is to clearly convey your own position in a debate or your central point about a topic.

Particularly in longer essays, it’s helpful to end the introduction by signposting what will be covered in each part. Keep it concise and give your reader a clear sense of the direction your argument will take.

As you research and write, your argument might change focus or direction as you learn more.

For this reason, it’s often a good idea to wait until later in the writing process before you write the introduction paragraph—it can even be the very last thing you write.

When you’ve finished writing the essay body and conclusion , you should return to the introduction and check that it matches the content of the essay.

It’s especially important to make sure your thesis statement accurately represents what you do in the essay. If your argument has gone in a different direction than planned, tweak your thesis statement to match what you actually say.

To polish your writing, you can use something like a paraphrasing tool .

You can use the checklist below to make sure your introduction does everything it’s supposed to.

Checklist: Essay introduction

My first sentence is engaging and relevant.

I have introduced the topic with necessary background information.

I have defined any important terms.

My thesis statement clearly presents my main point or argument.

Everything in the introduction is relevant to the main body of the essay.

You have a strong introduction - now make sure the rest of your essay is just as good.

• Argumentative
• Literary analysis

This introduction to an argumentative essay sets up the debate about the internet and education, and then clearly states the position the essay will argue for.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

This introduction to a short expository essay leads into the topic (the invention of the printing press) and states the main point the essay will explain (the effect of this invention on European society).

In many ways, the invention of the printing press marked the end of the Middle Ages. The medieval period in Europe is often remembered as a time of intellectual and political stagnation. Prior to the Renaissance, the average person had very limited access to books and was unlikely to be literate. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century allowed for much less restricted circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation.

This introduction to a literary analysis essay , about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , starts by describing a simplistic popular view of the story, and then states how the author will give a more complex analysis of the text’s literary devices.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale. Arguably the first science fiction novel, its plot can be read as a warning about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, and in popular culture representations of the character as a “mad scientist”, Victor Frankenstein represents the callous, arrogant ambition of modern science. However, far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to gradually transform our impression of Frankenstein, portraying him in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

• An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
• Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
• A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

The “hook” is the first sentence of your essay introduction . It should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of why it’s interesting.

To write a good hook, avoid overly broad statements or long, dense sentences. Try to start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

• It gives your writing direction and focus.
• It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

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McCombes, S. (2023, July 23). How to Write an Essay Introduction | 4 Steps & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 8, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/introduction/

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