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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.

The World Bank Group is the largest financier of education in the developing world, working in 90 countries and committed to helping them reach SDG4: access to inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.

Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. It delivers large, consistent returns in terms of income, and is the most important factor to ensure equity and inclusion.

For individuals, education promotes employment, earnings, health, and poverty reduction. Globally, there is a  9% increase in hourly earnings for every extra year of schooling . For societies, it drives long-term economic growth, spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion.  Education is further a powerful catalyst to climate action through widespread behavior change and skilling for green transitions.

Developing countries have made tremendous progress in getting children into the classroom and more children worldwide are now in school. But learning is not guaranteed, as the  2018 World Development Report  (WDR) stressed.

Making smart and effective investments in people’s education is critical for developing the human capital that will end extreme poverty. At the core of this strategy is the need to tackle the learning crisis, put an end to  Learning Poverty , and help youth acquire the advanced cognitive, socioemotional, technical and digital skills they need to succeed in today’s world. 

In low- and middle-income countries, the share of children living in  Learning Poverty  (that is, the proportion of 10-year-old children that are unable to read and understand a short age-appropriate text) increased from 57% before the pandemic to an estimated  70%  in 2022.

However, learning is in crisis. More than 70 million more people were pushed into poverty during the COVID pandemic, a billion children lost a year of school , and three years later the learning losses suffered have not been recouped .  If a child cannot read with comprehension by age 10, they are unlikely to become fluent readers. They will fail to thrive later in school and will be unable to power their careers and economies once they leave school.

The effects of the pandemic are expected to be long-lasting. Analysis has already revealed deep losses, with international reading scores declining from 2016 to 2021 by more than a year of schooling.  These losses may translate to a 0.68 percentage point in global GDP growth.  The staggering effects of school closures reach beyond learning. This generation of children could lose a combined total of  US$21 trillion in lifetime earnings  in present value or the equivalent of 17% of today’s global GDP – a sharp rise from the 2021 estimate of a US$17 trillion loss. 

Action is urgently needed now – business as usual will not suffice to heal the scars of the pandemic and will not accelerate progress enough to meet the ambitions of SDG 4. We are urging governments to implement ambitious and aggressive Learning Acceleration Programs to get children back to school, recover lost learning, and advance progress by building better, more equitable and resilient education systems.

Last Updated: Mar 25, 2024

The World Bank’s global education strategy is centered on ensuring learning happens – for everyone, everywhere. Our vision is to ensure that everyone can achieve her or his full potential with access to a quality education and lifelong learning. To reach this, we are helping countries build foundational skills like literacy, numeracy, and socioemotional skills – the building blocks for all other learning. From early childhood to tertiary education and beyond – we help children and youth acquire the skills they need to thrive in school, the labor market and throughout their lives.

Investing in the world’s most precious resource – people – is paramount to ending poverty on a livable planet.  Our experience across more than 100 countries bears out this robust connection between human capital, quality of life, and economic growth: when countries strategically invest in people and the systems designed to protect and build human capital at scale, they unlock the wealth of nations and the potential of everyone.

Building on this, the World Bank supports resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone. We do this by generating and disseminating evidence, ensuring alignment with policymaking processes, and bridging the gap between research and practice.

The World Bank is the largest source of external financing for education in developing countries, with a portfolio of about $26 billion in 94 countries including IBRD, IDA and Recipient-Executed Trust Funds. IDA operations comprise 62% of the education portfolio.

The investment in FCV settings has increased dramatically and now accounts for 26% of our portfolio.

World Bank projects reach at least 425 million students -one-third of students in low- and middle-income countries.

The World Bank’s Approach to Education

Five interrelated pillars of a well-functioning education system underpin the World Bank’s education policy approach:

• Learners are prepared and motivated to learn;
• Teachers are prepared, skilled, and motivated to facilitate learning and skills acquisition;
• Learning resources (including education technology) are available, relevant, and used to improve teaching and learning;
• Schools are safe and inclusive; and
• Education Systems are well-managed, with good implementation capacity and adequate financing.

The Bank is already helping governments design and implement cost-effective programs and tools to build these pillars.

Our Principles:

• We pursue systemic reform supported by political commitment to learning for all children. 
• We focus on equity and inclusion through a progressive path toward achieving universal access to quality education, including children and young adults in fragile or conflict affected areas , those in marginalized and rural communities,  girls and women , displaced populations,  students with disabilities , and other vulnerable groups.
• We focus on results and use evidence to keep improving policy by using metrics to guide improvements.   
• We want to ensure financial commitment commensurate with what is needed to provide basic services to all. 
• We invest wisely in technology so that education systems embrace and learn to harness technology to support their learning objectives.   

Laying the groundwork for the future

Country challenges vary, but there is a menu of options to build forward better, more resilient, and equitable education systems.

Countries are facing an education crisis that requires a two-pronged approach: first, supporting actions to recover lost time through remedial and accelerated learning; and, second, building on these investments for a more equitable, resilient, and effective system.

Recovering from the learning crisis must be a political priority, backed with adequate financing and the resolve to implement needed reforms.  Domestic financing for education over the last two years has not kept pace with the need to recover and accelerate learning. Across low- and lower-middle-income countries, the  average share of education in government budgets fell during the pandemic , and in 2022 it remained below 2019 levels.

The best chance for a better future is to invest in education and make sure each dollar is put toward improving learning.  In a time of fiscal pressure, protecting spending that yields long-run gains – like spending on education – will maximize impact.  We still need more and better funding for education.  Closing the learning gap will require increasing the level, efficiency, and equity of education spending—spending smarter is an imperative.

• Education technology  can be a powerful tool to implement these actions by supporting teachers, children, principals, and parents; expanding accessible digital learning platforms, including radio/ TV / Online learning resources; and using data to identify and help at-risk children, personalize learning, and improve service delivery.

Looking ahead

We must seize this opportunity  to reimagine education in bold ways. Together, we can build forward better more equitable, effective, and resilient education systems for the world’s children and youth.

Accelerating Improvements

Supporting countries in establishing time-bound learning targets and a focused education investment plan, outlining actions and investments geared to achieve these goals.

Launched in 2020, the  Accelerator Program  works with a set of countries to channel investments in education and to learn from each other. The program coordinates efforts across partners to ensure that the countries in the program show improvements in foundational skills at scale over the next three to five years. These investment plans build on the collective work of multiple partners, and leverage the latest evidence on what works, and how best to plan for implementation.  Countries such as Brazil (the state of Ceará) and Kenya have achieved dramatic reductions in learning poverty over the past decade at scale, providing useful lessons, even as they seek to build on their successes and address remaining and new challenges.  

Universalizing Foundational Literacy

Readying children for the future by supporting acquisition of foundational skills – which are the gateway to other skills and subjects.

The  Literacy Policy Package (LPP)   consists of interventions focused specifically on promoting acquisition of reading proficiency in primary school. These include assuring political and technical commitment to making all children literate; ensuring effective literacy instruction by supporting teachers; providing quality, age-appropriate books; teaching children first in the language they speak and understand best; and fostering children’s oral language abilities and love of books and reading.

Advancing skills through TVET and Tertiary

Ensuring that individuals have access to quality education and training opportunities and supporting links to employment.

Tertiary education and skills systems are a driver of major development agendas, including human capital, climate change, youth and women’s empowerment, and jobs and economic transformation. A comprehensive skill set to succeed in the 21st century labor market consists of foundational and higher order skills, socio-emotional skills, specialized skills, and digital skills. Yet most countries continue to struggle in delivering on the promise of skills development. 

The World Bank is supporting countries through efforts that address key challenges including improving access and completion, adaptability, quality, relevance, and efficiency of skills development programs. Our approach is via multiple channels including projects, global goods, as well as the Tertiary Education and Skills Program . Our recent reports including Building Better Formal TVET Systems and STEERing Tertiary Education provide a way forward for how to improve these critical systems.

Addressing Climate Change

Mainstreaming climate education and investing in green skills, research and innovation, and green infrastructure to spur climate action and foster better preparedness and resilience to climate shocks.

Our approach recognizes that education is critical for achieving effective, sustained climate action. At the same time, climate change is adversely impacting education outcomes. Investments in education can play a huge role in building climate resilience and advancing climate mitigation and adaptation. Climate change education gives young people greater awareness of climate risks and more access to tools and solutions for addressing these risks and managing related shocks. Technical and vocational education and training can also accelerate a green economic transformation by fostering green skills and innovation. Greening education infrastructure can help mitigate the impact of heat, pollution, and extreme weather on learning, while helping address climate change. 

Examples of this work are projects in Nigeria (life skills training for adolescent girls), Vietnam (fostering relevant scientific research) , and Bangladesh (constructing and retrofitting schools to serve as cyclone shelters).

Strengthening Measurement Systems

Enabling countries to gather and evaluate information on learning and its drivers more efficiently and effectively.

The World Bank supports initiatives to help countries effectively build and strengthen their measurement systems to facilitate evidence-based decision-making. Examples of this work include:

(1) The  Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD) : This tool offers a strong basis for identifying priorities for investment and policy reforms that are suited to each country context by focusing on the three dimensions of practices, policies, and politics.

• Highlights gaps between what the evidence suggests is effective in promoting learning and what is happening in practice in each system; and
• Allows governments to track progress as they act to close the gaps.

The GEPD has been implemented in 13 education systems already – Peru, Rwanda, Jordan, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Islamabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sierra Leone, Niger, Gabon, Jordan and Chad – with more expected by the end of 2024.

(2)  Learning Assessment Platform (LeAP) : LeAP is a one-stop shop for knowledge, capacity-building tools, support for policy dialogue, and technical staff expertise to support student achievement measurement and national assessments for better learning.

Supporting Successful Teachers

Helping systems develop the right selection, incentives, and support to the professional development of teachers.

Currently, the World Bank Education Global Practice has over 160 active projects supporting over 18 million teachers worldwide, about a third of the teacher population in low- and middle-income countries. In 12 countries alone, these projects cover 16 million teachers, including all primary school teachers in Ethiopia and Turkey, and over 80% in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam.

A World Bank-developed classroom observation tool, Teach, was designed to capture the quality of teaching in low- and middle-income countries. It is now 3.6 million students.

While Teach helps identify patterns in teacher performance, Coach leverages these insights to support teachers to improve their teaching practice through hands-on in-service teacher professional development (TPD).

Our recent report on Making Teacher Policy Work proposes a practical framework to uncover the black box of effective teacher policy and discusses the factors that enable their scalability and sustainability.

 Supporting Education Finance Systems

Strengthening country financing systems to mobilize resources for education and make better use of their investments in education.

Our approach is to bring together multi-sectoral expertise to engage with ministries of education and finance and other stakeholders to develop and implement effective and efficient public financial management systems; build capacity to monitor and evaluate education spending, identify financing bottlenecks, and develop interventions to strengthen financing systems; build the evidence base on global spending patterns and the magnitude and causes of spending inefficiencies; and develop diagnostic tools as public goods to support country efforts.

Working in Fragile, Conflict, and Violent (FCV) Contexts

The massive and growing global challenge of having so many children living in conflict and violent situations requires a response at the same scale and scope. Our education engagement in the Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) context, which stands at US$5.35 billion, has grown rapidly in recent years, reflecting the ever-increasing importance of the FCV agenda in education. Indeed, these projects now account for more than 25% of the World Bank education portfolio.

Education is crucial to minimizing the effects of fragility and displacement on the welfare of youth and children in the short-term and preventing the emergence of violent conflict in the long-term. 

Support to Countries Throughout the Education Cycle

Our support to countries covers the entire learning cycle, to help shape resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone. 

The ongoing  Supporting  Egypt  Education Reform project , 2018-2025, supports transformational reforms of the Egyptian education system, by improving teaching and learning conditions in public schools. The World Bank has invested $500 million in the project focused on increasing access to quality kindergarten, enhancing the capacity of teachers and education leaders, developing a reliable student assessment system, and introducing the use of modern technology for teaching and learning. Specifically, the share of Egyptian 10-year-old students, who could read and comprehend at the global minimum proficiency level, increased to 45 percent in 2021.

In  Nigeria , the $75 million  Edo  Basic Education Sector and Skills Transformation (EdoBESST)  project, running from 2020-2024, is focused on improving teaching and learning in basic education. Under the project, which covers 97 percent of schools in the state, there is a strong focus on incorporating digital technologies for teachers. They were equipped with handheld tablets with structured lesson plans for their classes. Their coaches use classroom observation tools to provide individualized feedback. Teacher absence has reduced drastically because of the initiative. Over 16,000 teachers were trained through the project, and the introduction of technology has also benefited students.

Through the $235 million  School Sector Development Program  in  Nepal  (2017-2022), the number of children staying in school until Grade 12 nearly tripled, and the number of out-of-school children fell by almost seven percent. During the pandemic, innovative approaches were needed to continue education. Mobile phone penetration is high in the country. More than four in five households in Nepal have mobile phones. The project supported an educational service that made it possible for children with phones to connect to local radio that broadcast learning programs.

From 2017-2023, the $50 million  Strengthening of State Universities  in  Chile  project has made strides to improve quality and equity at state universities. The project helped reduce dropout: the third-year dropout rate fell by almost 10 percent from 2018-2022, keeping more students in school.

The World Bank’s first  Program-for-Results financing in education  was through a $202 million project in  Tanzania , that ran from 2013-2021. The project linked funding to results and aimed to improve education quality. It helped build capacity, and enhanced effectiveness and efficiency in the education sector. Through the project, learning outcomes significantly improved alongside an unprecedented expansion of access to education for children in Tanzania. From 2013-2019, an additional 1.8 million students enrolled in primary schools. In 2019, the average reading speed for Grade 2 students rose to 22.3 words per minute, up from 17.3 in 2017. The project laid the foundation for the ongoing $500 million  BOOST project , which supports over 12 million children to enroll early, develop strong foundational skills, and complete a quality education.

The $40 million  Cambodia  Secondary Education Improvement project , which ran from 2017-2022, focused on strengthening school-based management, upgrading teacher qualifications, and building classrooms in Cambodia, to improve learning outcomes, and reduce student dropout at the secondary school level. The project has directly benefited almost 70,000 students in 100 target schools, and approximately 2,000 teachers and 600 school administrators received training.

The World Bank is co-financing the $152.80 million  Yemen  Restoring Education and Learning Emergency project , running from 2020-2024, which is implemented through UNICEF, WFP, and Save the Children. It is helping to maintain access to basic education for many students, improve learning conditions in schools, and is working to strengthen overall education sector capacity. In the time of crisis, the project is supporting teacher payments and teacher training, school meals, school infrastructure development, and the distribution of learning materials and school supplies. To date, almost 600,000 students have benefited from these interventions.

The $87 million  Providing an Education of Quality in  Haiti  project supported approximately 380 schools in the Southern region of Haiti from 2016-2023. Despite a highly challenging context of political instability and recurrent natural disasters, the project successfully supported access to education for students. The project provided textbooks, fresh meals, and teacher training support to 70,000 students, 3,000 teachers, and 300 school directors. It gave tuition waivers to 35,000 students in 118 non-public schools. The project also repaired 19 national schools damaged by the 2021 earthquake, which gave 5,500 students safe access to their schools again.

In 2013, just 5% of the poorest households in  Uzbekistan  had children enrolled in preschools. Thanks to the  Improving Pre-Primary and General Secondary Education Project , by July 2019, around 100,000 children will have benefitted from the half-day program in 2,420 rural kindergartens, comprising around 49% of all preschool educational institutions, or over 90% of rural kindergartens in the country.

In addition to working closely with governments in our client countries, the World Bank also works at the global, regional, and local levels with a range of technical partners, including foundations, non-profit organizations, bilaterals, and other multilateral organizations. Some examples of our most recent global partnerships include:

UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:  Coalition for Foundational Learning

The World Bank is working closely with UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as the  Coalition for Foundational Learning  to advocate and provide technical support to ensure foundational learning.  The World Bank works with these partners to promote and endorse the  Commitment to Action on Foundational Learning , a global network of countries committed to halving the global share of children unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10 by 2030.

Australian Aid, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Canada, Echida Giving, FCDO, German Cooperation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Conrad Hilton Foundation, LEGO Foundation, Porticus, USAID: Early Learning Partnership

The Early Learning Partnership (ELP) is a multi-donor trust fund, housed at the World Bank.  ELP leverages World Bank strengths—a global presence, access to policymakers and strong technical analysis—to improve early learning opportunities and outcomes for young children around the world.

We help World Bank teams and countries get the information they need to make the case to invest in Early Childhood Development (ECD), design effective policies and deliver impactful programs. At the country level, ELP grants provide teams with resources for early seed investments that can generate large financial commitments through World Bank finance and government resources. At the global level, ELP research and special initiatives work to fill knowledge gaps, build capacity and generate public goods.

UNESCO, UNICEF:  Learning Data Compact

UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank have joined forces to close the learning data gaps that still exist and that preclude many countries from monitoring the quality of their education systems and assessing if their students are learning. The three organizations have agreed to a  Learning Data Compact , a commitment to ensure that all countries, especially low-income countries, have at least one quality measure of learning by 2025, supporting coordinated efforts to strengthen national assessment systems.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS):   Learning Poverty Indicator

Aimed at measuring and urging attention to foundational literacy as a prerequisite to achieve SDG4, this partnership was launched in 2019 to help countries strengthen their learning assessment systems, better monitor what students are learning in internationally comparable ways and improve the breadth and quality of global data on education.

FCDO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:  EdTech Hub

Supported by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the EdTech Hub is aimed at improving the quality of ed-tech investments. The Hub launched a rapid response Helpdesk service to provide just-in-time advisory support to 70 low- and middle-income countries planning education technology and remote learning initiatives.

MasterCard Foundation

Our Tertiary Education and Skills  global program, launched with support from the Mastercard Foundation, aims to prepare youth and adults for the future of work and society by improving access to relevant, quality, equitable reskilling and post-secondary education opportunities.  It is designed to reframe, reform, and rebuild tertiary education and skills systems for the digital and green transformation.

The “how to” of inclusive education policy design

Including refugees in national education systems

How generative AI can enrich teaching and learning

Areas of focus.

Digital Technologies

Early Childhood Development

Education Data & Measurement

Education Finance

Education in Fragile, Conflict & Violence Contexts

Girls’ Education

Higher Education

Inclusive Education

Initiatives

• Show More +
• Tertiary Education and Skills Program
• Service Delivery Indicators
• Evoke: Transforming education to empower youth
• Global Education Policy Dashboard
• Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel
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Collapse and Recovery: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Eroded Human Capital and What to Do About It

BROCHURES & FACT SHEETS

Publication: Realizing Education's Promise: A World Bank Retrospective – August 2023

Education and Climate Change flyer - November 2022

Learning Losses Brochure - October 2022

World Bank Group Education Fact Sheet - September 2022

STAY CONNECTED

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Global Education Newsletter - March 2024

What's happening in the World Bank Education Global Practice? Read to learn more.

Human Capital Project

The Human Capital Project is a global effort to accelerate more and better investments in people for greater equity and economic growth.

Impact Evaluations

Research that measures the impact of education policies to improve education in low and middle income countries.

Investing in People for a Livable Planet

Global thought leaders came together to champion investments in people to eradicate poverty on a livable planet.

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• Progress towards quality education was already slower than required before the pandemic, but COVID-19 has had devastating impacts on education, causing learning losses in four out of five of the 104 countries studied.

Without additional measures, an estimated 84 million children and young people will stay out of school by 2030 and approximately 300 million students will lack the basic numeracy and literacy skills necessary for success in life.

In addition to free primary and secondary schooling for all boys and girls by 2030, the aim is to provide equal access to affordable vocational training, eliminate gender and wealth disparities, and achieve universal access to quality higher education.

Education is the key that will allow many other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved. When people are able to get quality education they can break from the cycle of poverty.

Education helps to reduce inequalities and to reach gender equality. It also empowers people everywhere to live more healthy and sustainable lives. Education is also crucial to fostering tolerance between people and contributes to more peaceful societies.

• To deliver on Goal 4, education financing must become a national investment priority. Furthermore, measures such as making education free and compulsory, increasing the number of teachers, improving basic school infrastructure and embracing digital transformation are essential.

What progress have we made so far?

While progress has been made towards the 2030 education targets set by the United Nations, continued efforts are required to address persistent challenges and ensure that quality education is accessible to all, leaving no one behind.

Between 2015 and 2021, there was an increase in worldwide primary school completion, lower secondary completion, and upper secondary completion. Nevertheless, the progress made during this period was notably slower compared to the 15 years prior.

What challenges remain?

According to national education targets, the percentage of students attaining basic reading skills by the end of primary school is projected to rise from 51 per cent in 2015 to 67 per cent by 2030. However, an estimated 300 million children and young people will still lack basic numeracy and literacy skills by 2030.

Economic constraints, coupled with issues of learning outcomes and dropout rates, persist in marginalized areas, underscoring the need for continued global commitment to ensuring inclusive and equitable education for all. Low levels of information and communications technology (ICT) skills are also a major barrier to achieving universal and meaningful connectivity.

Where are people struggling the most to have access to education?

Sub-Saharan Africa faces the biggest challenges in providing schools with basic resources. The situation is extreme at the primary and lower secondary levels, where less than one-half of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have access to drinking water, electricity, computers and the Internet.

Inequalities will also worsen unless the digital divide – the gap between under-connected and highly digitalized countries – is not addressed .

Are there groups that have more difficult access to education?

Yes, women and girls are one of these groups. About 40 per cent of countries have not achieved gender parity in primary education. These disadvantages in education also translate into lack of access to skills and limited opportunities in the labour market for young women.

What can we do?  

Ask our governments to place education as a priority in both policy and practice. Lobby our governments to make firm commitments to provide free primary school education to all, including vulnerable or marginalized groups.

Facts and figures

Goal 4 targets.

• Without additional measures, only one in six countries will achieve the universal secondary school completion target by 2030, an estimated 84 million children and young people will still be out of school, and approximately 300 million students will lack the basic numeracy and literacy skills necessary for success in life.
• To achieve national Goal 4 benchmarks, which are reduced in ambition compared with the original Goal 4 targets, 79 low- and lower-middle- income countries still face an average annual financing gap of $97 billion.

Source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023

4.1  By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and Goal-4 effective learning outcomes

4.2  By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and preprimary education so that they are ready for primary education

4.3  By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

4.4  By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship

4.5  By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations

4.6  By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy

4.7  By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

4.A  Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all

4.B  By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries

4.C  By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing states

UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UN Children’s Fund

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UN Population Fund: Comprehensive sexuality education

UN Office of the Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth

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• Education and Society

Schools and colleges are transforming the lives of individual learners and their families. They play a core role in society. At the same time, they are continuously transformed by politics, markets, and scientific, technological, and cultural change. Sociologists of education and higher education at Harvard are engaged in basic and applied research, both contemporary and historical, and focusing on the United States as well as on cross-national and cross-cultural analyses. The broad array of research in this cluster applies core sociological concepts, such as equity and (in)equality; race and ethnicity; social networks; immigration; stratification; organizations; culture; social mobility; socialization and others to the study of education. The research cluster has links to the Graduate School of Education (GSE), the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Education, the Secondary Field in Education Studies and the Mahindra Seminar on Universities: Past, Present and Future.

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What the Future of Education Looks Like from Here

• Posted December 11, 2020
• By Emily Boudreau

After a year that involved a global pandemic, school closures, nationwide remote instruction, protests for racial justice, and an election, the role of education has never been more critical or more uncertain. When the dust settles from this year, what will education look like — and what should it aspire to?

To mark the end of its centennial year, HGSE convened a faculty-led discussion to explore those questions. The Future of Education panel, moderated by Dean Bridget Long and hosted by HGSE’s Askwith Forums , focused on hopes for education going forward, as well as HGSE’s role. “The story of HGSE is the story of pivotal decisions, meeting challenges, and tremendous growth,” Long said. “We have a long history of empowering our students and partners to be innovators in a constantly changing world. And that is needed now more than ever.”

Joining Long were Associate Professor Karen Brennan , Senior Lecturer Jennifer Cheatham , Assistant Professor Anthony Jack, and Professors Adriana Umaña-Taylor and Martin West , as they looked forward to what the future could hold for schools, educators, and communities:

… After the pandemic subsides

The pandemic heightened existing gaps and disparities and exposed a need to rethink how systems leaders design schools, instruction, and who they put at the center of that design. “As a leader, in the years before the pandemic hit, I realized the balance of our work as practitioners was off,” Cheatham said. “If we had been spending time knowing our children and our staff and designing schools for them, we might not be feeling the pain in the way we are. I think we’re learning something about what the real work of school is about.” In the coming years, the panelists hope that a widespread push to recognize the identity and health of the whole-child in K–12 and higher education will help educators design support systems that can reduce inequity on multiple levels.

… For the global community

As much as the pandemic isolated individuals, on the global scale, people have looked to connect with each other to find solutions and share ideas as they faced a common challenge. This year may have brought everyone together and allowed for exchange of ideas, policies, practices, and assessments across boundaries.

… For technological advancements

As educators and leaders create, design, and imagine the future, technology should be used in service of that vision rather than dictating it. As technology becomes a major part of how we communicate and share ideas, educators need to think critically about how to deploy technology strategically. “My stance on technology is that it should always be used in the service of our human purpose and interest,” said Brennan. “We’ve talked about racial equity, building relationships. Our values and purposes and goals need to lead the way, not the tech.”

… For teachers

Human connections and interactions are at the heart of education. At this time, it’s become abundantly clear that the role of the teacher in the school community is irreplaceable. “I think the next few years hinge on how much we’re willing to invest in educators and all of these additional supports in the school which essentially make learning possible,” Umaña-Taylor said, “these are the individuals who are making the future minds of the nation possible.”

Cutting-edge research and new knowledge must become part of the public discussion in order to meaningfully shape the policies and practices that influence the future of education. “I fundamentally believe that we as academics and scholars must be part of the conversation and not limit ourselves to just articles behind paywalls or policy paragraphs at the end of a paper,” Jack said. “We have to engage the larger public.”

… In 25 years

“We shouldn’t underestimate the possibility that the future might look a lot like the present,” West said. “As I think about the potential sources of change in education, and in American education in particular, I tend to think about longer-term trends as the key driver.” Changing student demographics, access to higher education, structural inequality, and the focus of school leaders are all longer-term trends that, according to panelists, will influence the future of education. 

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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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• –––, 1987, Philosophy, Science, and Social Inquiry: Contemporary Methodological Controversies in Social Science and Related Applied Fields of Research , Oxford: Pergamon.
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

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• INPE (International Network of Philosophers of Education)

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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The Role of Education in Society: How It Impacts Our Lives?

Role of Education in Society: Education is a process of acquiring knowledge, through which, a person learns to interact with society. We can pass down our values and beliefs to the next generation through education, and allow us to grow up to be productive members of society.

In this blog post, we will discuss the importance of education and how it impacts our lives.

Table of Contents

What is Education?

Education reforms the life of an individual and society as a whole. The primary purpose of education is to disseminate knowledge and understanding. It helps individuals gain an insight into the happenings of the world around them. It also sensitizes them about their roles and responsibility in society.

In a fast-changing world, education plays a pivotal role in our lives – personal, professional and societal. By keeping us aware and updated about what’s happening around us.

Different types of education vary depending on the country or region. In general, there are three main levels of education: primary, secondary, and tertiary (or higher). 

Primary education is typically compulsory and provides basic reading, writing, and recognising skills. It usually starts at around the age of five or six and lasts for five to six years.

Secondary education builds on primary education and typically lasts for another four to five years. Tertiary, or higher, education is not compulsory but is often necessary to pursue further studies or enter certain professions. It can last anywhere from one year to several years, depending on the program of study.

There are many different philosophies about what the role of education should be in society. Some believe that it should primarily focus on academics and cognitive development, while others place more importance on social and emotional growth.

There is no single answer that is right for everyone, as each individual has unique needs and goals. However, it is quite vivid that education plays a significant role in the formation of a developed nation.

Primary Function of Education

The primary function of education is to empower individuals and prepare them for life. It helps us develop our skills and abilities so that we can be successful in our careers and contribute to society. Education also teaches us how to think critically, solve problems, and make informed decisions.

What is the Importance of Education in Society

Education helps an individual in making informed decisions. It equips them with the essential skills and knowledge to be successful in their chosen field. The role of education in society is empowering an individual. It helps people to understand the world around them and their role in it. Moreover, it also instils in them a sense of social responsibility so that they can contribute meaningfully to society.

The role of education in human capital formation is significant, as education improves productivity and prosperity of a society. The economic returns of education are higher for countries with more educated populations.

Education is the most important tool for social and economic development. It helps in reducing poverty, inequality and unemployment. Moreover, education also plays a critical role in empowering women and girls. Thus, it can be said that education is the cornerstone of any progressive society.

The role of education is not just limited to shaping our personal lives but so far it is meant to shape the entire world. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi , “The role of education is to change the heart of man.”

What is the Importance of Educational Institutions in Society?

Educational institutions play a very important role in imparting education to the students. They act as a medium through which knowledge and understanding are disseminated to the students. Moreover, they also help inculcate social values and ethics in the students.

Apart from imparting formal education, educational institutions also help in the personality development of the students. At educational institutions, the students are also made aware of the ethical values in society. Educational institutions help students to learn the foundational skill sets which later becomes foundational knowledge to acquire the professional knowledge to contribute towards the economy of society.

It is said that the role of educational institutions in society is twofold – to educate and to socialize. They play a significant role in moulding the future of our society.

The role of Education in Society is instrumental to grow human resources. An educated citizen is the greatest asset for any democratic society. A social revolution comes through educated, politically conscious and socially responsible people.

But still, there is a critical concern about the basic educational infrastructure in developing countries. It should be noted that nearly one-fourth of the Indian population still lacks access to basic educational activities. Moreover, the pandemic amplified the existing disparity of the basic education in the society, predominantly has hit hard in rural demographics. 

Now look at this data: India spends nearly 4.6% of its GDP on education, which is much less than most of the G20 nations. Hence developing countries invest more on quality education, innovation, and world class training for teachers.

The need of the hour is to provide inexpensive and accessible education to meet the aspirational value of Indian students. A robust education is the key to the growth and innovation of society, also to bringing peace and harmony as well.

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Why education is the key to development

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Education is a human right. And, like other human rights, it cannot be taken for granted. Across the world,  59 million children and 65 million adolescents are out of school . More than 120 million children do not complete primary education.

Behind these figures there are children and youth being denied not only a right, but opportunities: a fair chance to get a decent job, to escape poverty, to support their families, and to develop their communities. This year, decision-makers will set the priorities for global development for the next 15 years. They should make sure to place education high on the list.

The deadline for the Millennium Development Goals is fast approaching. We have a responsibility to make sure we fulfill the promise we made at the beginning of the millennium: to ensure that boys and girls everywhere complete a full course of primary schooling.

The challenge is daunting. Many of those who remain out of school are the hardest to reach, as they live in countries that are held back by conflict, disaster, and epidemics. And the last push is unlikely to be accompanied by the double-digit economic growth in some developing economies that makes it easier to expand opportunities.

Nevertheless, we can succeed. Over the last 15 years, governments and their partners have shown that political will and concerted efforts can deliver tremendous results – including halving the number of children and adolescents who are out of school. Moreover, most countries are closing in on gender parity at the primary level. Now is the time to redouble our efforts to finish what we started.

But we must not stop with primary education. In today’s knowledge-driven economies, access to quality education and the chances for development are two sides of the same coin. That is why we must also set targets for secondary education, while improving quality and learning outcomes at all levels. That is what the  Sustainable Development Goal  on education, which world leaders will adopt this year, aims to do.

Addressing the fact that an estimated 250 million children worldwide are not learning the basic skills they need to enter the labor market is more than a moral obligation. It amounts to an investment in sustainable growth and prosperity. For both countries and individuals, there is a direct and indisputable link between access to quality education and economic and social development.

Likewise, ensuring that girls are not kept at home when they reach puberty, but are allowed to complete education on the same footing as their male counterparts, is not just altruism; it is sound economics. Communities and countries that succeed in achieving gender parity in education will reap substantial benefits relating to health, equality, and job creation.

All countries, regardless of their national wealth, stand to gain from more and better education. According to a recent  OECD report , providing every child with access to education and the skills needed to participate fully in society would boost GDP by an average 28% per year in lower-income countries and 16% per year in high-income countries for the next 80 years.

Today’s students need “twenty-first-century skills,” like critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and digital literacy. Learners of all ages need to become familiar with new technologies and cope with rapidly changing workplaces.

According to the International Labour Organization, an additional 280 million jobs will be needed by 2019. It is vital for policymakers to ensure that the right frameworks and incentives are established so that those jobs can be created and filled. Robust education systems – underpinned by qualified, professionally trained, motivated, and well-supported teachers – will be the cornerstone of this effort.

Governments should work with parent and teacher associations, as well as the private sector and civil-society organizations, to find the best and most constructive ways to improve the quality of education. Innovation has to be harnessed, and new partnerships must be forged.

Of course, this will cost money. According to UNESCO, in order to meet our basic education targets by 2030, we must close an external annual financing gap of about $22 billion. But we have the resources necessary to deliver. What is lacking is the political will to make the needed investments.

This is the challenge that inspired Norway to  invite world leaders  to Oslo for a  Summit on Education for Development ,  where we can develop strategies for mobilizing political support for increasing financing for education. For the first time in history, we are in the unique position to provide education opportunities for all, if only we pull together. We cannot miss this critical opportunity.

To be sure, the responsibility for providing citizens with a quality education rests, first and foremost, with national governments. Aid cannot replace domestic-resource mobilization. But donor countries also have an important role to play, especially in supporting least-developed countries. We must reverse the recent downward trend in development assistance for education, and leverage our assistance to attract investments from various other sources. For our part, we are in the process of doubling Norway’s financial contribution to education for development in the period 2013-2017.

Together, we need to intensify efforts to bring the poorest and hardest to reach children into the education system. Education is a right for everyone. It is a right for girls, just as it is for boys. It is a right for disabled children, just as it is for everyone else. It is a right for the 37 million out-of-school children and youth in countries affected by crises and conflicts. Education is a right regardless of where you are born and where you grow up. It is time to ensure that the right is upheld.

This article is published in collaboration with Project Syndicate . Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

To keep up with the Agenda  subscribe to our weekly newsletter .

Author: Erna Solberg is Prime Minister of Norway. Børge Brende is Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Image: Students attend a class at the Oxford International College in Changzhou. REUTERS/Aly Song. 

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the Education Commission

The role of education in transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development.

Apr 26, 2016 | Updates | 0 comments

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 seek to alleviate various crises and problems which threaten human rights. So, what is the role of education in achieving the SDGs, establishing sustainability and transforming our world?

While SDGs serve as benchmarks for a more sustainable society, there is still no clear vision for what that sustainable global society will ultimately look like. In fact, it is the consensus building and cooperation among different cultures and communities across the world – skills that education helps to develop – that will help us define what and how such a sustainable society can be achieved.

For this reason, it is important to integrate the ideas and increase the participation of various stakeholders in a discussion on how we can transform our world into a sustainable one towards 2030.

In particular, increasing the participation of young people who shoulder our future is critical for achieving sustainable development. Although today’s globalized world has in many ways made the world feel smaller, many young people feel isolated from their communities, and disconnected from the immediate environment around them. Education can play an important role in these situations – by fostering and nurturing youth who can actively participate and contribute to the betterment of their local communities.

Education plays a pivotal role in helping young people make the connection between global issues and local communities. Cultivating our imaginative capacity through education enhances our motivation for change and for taking action to make the world a sustainable place.

In his 2016 Peace Proposal, Dr. Daisaku Ikeda, an educator and a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, identifies two important functions of learning:

• To enable people to accurately assess the impact of their actions and to empower them to effect positive change for themselves and those around them; and
• To bring forth the courage to persevere in the face of adversity. [1]

In his proposal, Dr. Ikeda emphasizes the importance of education in building youth solidarity – a united group of young people – to encourage citizens to take courageous action to achieve a sustainable global community.

We hope that as many youth as possible join the activities organized by the Education Commission’s Youth Panel. The Education Youth Video Challenge is a great opportunity for young people to express their thoughts about local and global issues through video. We can transform our world in our own respective ways in our local communities based on the solidarity of youth!

Please share your ideas and opinions about the future of education and participate in the Education Youth Video Challenge !

Shizuka Nishimura is on the Education Commission’s Youth Panel. You can read more about her work here . 

[1] Daisaku Ikeda, 2016, “2016 Peace Proposal, Universal Respect for Human Dignity: The Great Path to Peace.” January 26. Retrieved from http://www.sgi.org/content/files/about-us/president-ikedas-proposals/peaceproposal2016.pdf (Accessed March 16, 2016).

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Role of Education in Society, Nation Building, and Importance

Education is a essential tool for developing skills like decision-making, mental agility, problem-solving, etc. It also breeds creativity and innovation. Check details on Role of Education here.

Table of Contents

Role of Education

Education is an essential tool for developing skills like decision-making, mental agility, problem-solving, and logical thinking. It also breeds creativity and innovation. In other words, Education is the transmission of knowledge, skills, and character traits. As BR Ambedkar said: “ Education is the manifestation of Perfection already in Man “.  He also believed that “Education is that which makes men fearless, teaches unity, makes understand their birth rights and teaches them to struggle and fight for freedom”.

According to Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan , where scientific knowledge ends, the realm of mystery begins. The world of scientific facts and the world of values is different. If education does not build wisdom and humanity in the hearts and minds of men, all its professional, scientific and technological triumphs will be meaningless. Therefore on the Birth date of  S Radhakrishnan, we celebrate Teachers Day.

Role of Education in Nation-Building

Education shapes a person, just as people are essential in determining a nation’s standing. Every nation is founded on education since it promotes a particular level of knowledge, morals, and awareness and is crucial to the development of technology. Greater literacy rates lead to quicker GDP growth and lower unemployment rates in a nation.

At present, nations are coping with a number of problems, such as a pandemic, terrorism, global warming, poverty, and gender inequality. Whether they are residential or day schools, they are essential in forming both pupils and the nation. Everyone who has access to a top-notch education can contribute to resolving these issues and enhancing living circumstances all around the nation.

Role of Education in Society

Education has many positive effects on society, from enhancing quality of life to fostering the growth of brilliant people with the potential to transform society. Because it provides possibilities for learning knowledge and skills that are genuinely altering the world, education is crucial to society. Not only is the availability of high-quality education crucial for individual growth but also for the growth of society as a whole. The important contributions of education to the society are as follows:

• A more tolerant society
• Better quality of life for vulnerable populations
• Reducing poverty
• Improving the nation’s health
• Reducing crime
• Improving social life
• Developing talents that change the face of humanity
• A large number of educated people improves the life of a community

Role of Education in Economic Development

Education is one of the most important aspects of development. It has a significant impact on a country’s economic prosperity. No country can advance its economy in the long run without making significant investments in its human capital. People’s perspectives on themselves and the world around them are widened by education. It improves their quality of life and offers a wide range of social advantages to both individuals and society. It is essential for assuring social and economic advancement.

It promotes entrepreneurship, technical advancements, women’s empowerment, social development, health awareness, and other areas where economic development can be accelerated. It also aids in the development of human capital, productivity, creativity, and poverty reduction. The following are the important contribution of education to India’s economic development.

• The creation of Human capital is directly related to human development.
• Educated and Skilled labour will help to increase industrial productivity and reduce wastage.
• Education, in every sense, is one of the most important aspects of attaining long-term economic growth through human capital investment which will help in Poverty Reduction
• Increased women empowerment will lead to the high speed of economic growth.
• Social Development from a dark place to a place of optimism.
• Increased awareness of Health, and reduced mortality at all levels.

Role of Education in Human Capital Formation

A more educated society can support a higher level of development than an uneducated one. Education leads to increased income and productivity, which together lead to a more fulfilling existence. In addition to assisting with individual progress, it also advances society as a whole. Education may boost value and improve cultural diversity. Here are a few of the contributions education makes to the development of human capital:

• Education teaches us to care and be empathetic, not only towards others but also to ourselves.
• Education promotes the growth of a country’s economy.
• An educated society always stays ahead and is more progressive than a society with low quality of education and educational standards
• Education also provides the opportunity to enhance the cultural richness.
• Education plays a role not only in the growth of an individual but also in the overall progress of society.

Role of Education in Skill Development

The development of skills includes education as a key component. It gives people the knowledge and abilities they need to excel in both their personal and professional lives. Education is a critical component of skill development since it keeps people abreast of emerging trends and technologies. The significance of education in skill development can be seen in the following ways:

• Knowledge Enhancement
• Competence Improvement
• Increased Employability
• Enhances creativity
• Encourages independent thinking

Role of Education in Sustainable Development

An important instrument for attaining a more sustainable future is high-quality education. This was emphasized at the UN World Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, where it was said that reforming the nation’s educational programs was essential for achieving sustainable development. Assuring environmental protection and conservation, advancing social fairness, and fostering economic sustainability are all goals of education for sustainable development (ESD), which fosters the development of the knowledge, skills, understanding, values, and behaviours necessary to create a sustainable world.

Environmental education, which aimed to equip individuals with the knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, and behaviours necessary to protect the environment, was a significant influence on the development of the ESD idea. ESD aims to empower individuals to make choices and take action that will enhance our quality of life without endangering the environment.

Role of Education in India

Every human being has a fundamental right to education, which plays a significant role in the growth of a country—India, the second-most populous nation in the world, with a literacy rate of about 74%. Despite the fact that several states in India have poor literacy rates, the country’s overall literacy rate is still increasing.

Given how crucial education is to the growth and development of any nation, Kerala leads all Indian states in terms of its rate of literacy, coming in at 94%, followed by Lakshadweep (91.85%), Mizoram (91.33%), and Goa (88.70%). However, Bihar, with a literacy rate of 61.80%, has the lowest literacy rate, followed by Arunachal Pradesh, with a rating of 65.38%, Rajasthan, with a rate of 66.11%, and Jharkhand, with a rate of 66.41%. These figures on the literacy rate make it very evident that India’s educational system has to be improved.

Any nation’s youth holds the key to its future. Youth will be better able to secure a bright future for both themselves and the nation if greater chances are provided and an effective education and learning system is established. Hence the Role of Teacher becomes essential for promoting quality education in the country.

Importance of Education for India

• Earnings rise by about 10% for every extra year of education.
• The gap between workers from wealthy and poor backgrounds in working poverty might be reduced by 39% if they obtained the same education.
• Without at least 40% of its adult population being read, no country in the world has ever experienced rapid and steady economic growth.
• From a mother’s lifestyle before giving birth to their likelihood of contracting ailments in later life, education benefits people’s health throughout their entire lives.
• Prenatal vitamins and other helpful pregnancy strategies are more likely to be used by women with at least six years of education, which lowers the risk of maternal or newborn mortality.
• Education has been shown to benefit girls and women more than boys. There is no other factor that comes close to the personal and economic empowerment that girls experience from school.

Role of Education UPSC

Education and skill development play a significant role in the broader field of human capital. Data on literacy from the 2011 Census give us a fast overview of the state of schooling today. However, literacy is not the only aspect of education. The RTE Act serves as the foundation of Indian education. However, it is the numerous education policies that have been mapped out since Independence that have contributed to the historical growth of the Indian educational system. These policies appear to have produced a variety of consequences. There is a lot of room for development still.

The Kasturirangan report, or the design of a new education policy, is the most recent development in the field of education. It perfectly encapsulates the urgent need for educational reform. India’s contemporary educational system urgently needs to be updated. The draft New Education Policy (NEP) is the ideal time to reflect on the country’s past history, accomplishments, and concerns while also outlining a cutting-edge educational strategy for India in the twenty-first century.

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What is the role of education.

Education helps you develop critical skills like decision-making, mental agility, problem-solving, and logical thinking.

What is the role of education in development?

Education becomes a catalyst in a person's personality development. It introduces a person to different perspectives and thus, helps in providing a clear and broad vision to an individual.

What is the role of education in society?

Education develops human personality, thoughts, dealing with others and prepares people for life experiences.

What is the role of education in social change?

Education contributes to social change in several ways. It fosters critical thinking, nurtures democratic values, enhances economic development, promotes social mobility, and facilitates cultural shifts.

What is the role of education in culture change?

Education plays a crucial role in driving cultural change and shaping societies. Education and cultural change are related.

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How Education Helps In Building Presence

Did you know that Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani, one of India’s most successful businessmen is a college dropout? He dropped out…

Did you know that Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani, one of India’s most successful businessmen is a college dropout? He dropped out of Stanford University to join his father’s business. Like him, many successful people across the world are college dropouts. They make us mull over the question—what is the importance of education in our life?

Education And Its Importance

Most of us are under the impression that the role of education is to help us gain knowledge from schools and colleges. However, the power of education isn’t limited to acquiring knowledge only from formal learning institutes. Earning a formal degree isn’t a necessary step to receiving an education. Learning can happen anywhere. In other words, education is the ability to think with or without the help of classrooms. It helps us apply the knowledge we’ve acquired in the world and understand the value of life.

The power of education is so strong that it can last a lifetime. Moreover, education is a lifelong process because there is no end to learning new things and acquiring new knowledge. The role of education is to help us build opinions and have different perspectives in our lives. It not only helps us improve our lives; it also helps us utilize our knowledge to improve the lives of others.

Power Of Education

Education forms character strengthens minds and makes us independent beings. It helps us exercise our intelligence and put our potential to optimal use. ( sapns2 ) By championing the importance of good education, we open doors to a better world. You learn how to stand out in a crowd and articulate your visions clearly. Education helps you create a unique purpose.

Harappa Education’s Building Presence course is designed to help you put your education skills to the best use. The ‘Building a Brand’ model will help you learn the benefits of creating and chasing your unique purpose. The TEA (Trust, Emotional Intelligence and Authenticity) Skills framework will help you communicate your ideas with people in a compelling way while exhibiting confidence.

Importance Of Education In Our Life

The role of education is to teach us how to conduct ourselves in life by giving us a conscience. It makes us more certain and confident about our long-term goals in life.

Here are a few facts highlighting the importance of good education:

1. Spreads Awareness

Education helps develop a conscience and often helps us differentiate between right and wrong. The role of education is to question everything and not take anything at its face value. An educated mind usually pursues the logic behind actions and decisions.

2. Drives Progress

It’s because of the power of education that we can access a variety of opportunities.  From the industrial revolution days to the present technologically advanced era, education has helped us make the leap. Discoveries, inventions, and all social/technological progress are proof of embracing the importance of education in our life.

3. Improves Lives

The role of education is to help us gain better control of our lives. If you want to change your life for the better, education helps you do that. For example, you decide to start your own company. The power of education will help you reach this realization. It gives you the confidence to use your knowledge and skill-sets.

4. Empowers People

Education improves our decision-making capabilities and gives us the courage to stand up for our beliefs. The importance of education in our life is rooted in real-time examples like women standing up against domestic violence or transgender communities fighting for civil rights.

5.  Changes The World

We’ve already established that education is not only helping us but also others around us. You’re better aware of your rights and responsibilities as a citizen. If you feel empowered, you’ll want to empower others. To make better judgments and use your skills to make the world a better place is the power of education and its importance.

They say, “Instruction ends in the schoolroom but education only ends in life”. Let’s keep reminding ourselves of the importance of education in our lives and continue making the world a better place.

Explore the skills & topics such as  Social Skills ,  How to Improve Social Skills ,  Conversation Skills  & Key  Skills for a Job  from our Harappa Diaries blog section and be workplace ready.

Read our research on: Gun Policy | International Conflict | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

6. teachers’ views on the state of public k-12 education.

Overall, teachers have a negative view of the U.S. K-12 education system – both the path it’s been on in recent years and what its future might hold.

The vast majority of teachers (82%) say that the overall state of public K-12 education has gotten worse in the last five years. Only 5% say it’s gotten better, and 11% say it has gotten neither better nor worse.

Looking to the future, 53% of teachers expect the state of public K-12 education to be worse five years from now. One-in-five say it will get better, and 16% expect it to be neither better nor worse.

We asked teachers who say the state of public K-12 education is worse now than it was five years ago how much each of the following has contributed:

• The current political climate (60% of teachers say this is a major reason that the state of K-12 education has gotten worse)
• The lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (57%)
• Changes in the availability of funding and resources (46%)

Elementary school teachers are especially likely to point to resource issues – 54% say changes in the availability of funding and resources is a major reason the K-12 education system is worse now. By comparison, 41% of middle school and 39% of high school teachers say the same.

Differences by party

Overall, teachers who are Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are as likely as Republican and Republican-leaning teachers to say that the state of public K-12 education is worse than it was five years ago.

But Democratic teachers are more likely than Republican teachers to point to the current political climate (65% vs. 54%) and changes in the availability of funding and resources (50% vs. 40%) as major reasons.

Democratic and Republican teachers are equally likely to say that lasting effects of the pandemic are a major reason that the public K-12 education is worse than it was five years ago (57% each).

K-12 education and political parties

We asked teachers which political party they trust to do a better job on various aspects of public K-12 education.

Across each of the issues we asked about, roughly a third or more of teachers say they don’t trust either party to do a better job. In particular, a sizable share (42%) trust neither party when it comes to shaping the school curriculum.

On balance, more teachers say they trust the Democratic Party to do a better job handling the things we asked about than say they trust the Republican Party.

About a third of teachers say they trust the Democratic Party to do a better job in ensuring adequate funding for schools, adequate pay and benefits for teachers, and equal access to high quality K-12 education for students. Only about one-in-ten teachers say they trust the Republican Party to do a better job in these areas.

A quarter of teachers say they trust the Democratic Party to do a better job in shaping the school curriculum and making schools safer; 11% and 16% of teachers, respectively, say they trust the Republican Party in these areas.

Across all the items we asked about, shares ranging from 15% to 17% say they are not sure which party they trust more, and shares ranging from 4% to 7% say they trust both parties equally.

A majority of public K-12 teachers (58%) identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party. About a third (35%) identify with or lean toward the GOP.

For each aspect of the education system we asked about, both Democratic and Republican teachers are more likely to say they trust their own party to do a better job than to say they trust the other party.

However, across most of these areas, Republican teachers are more likely to say they trust neither party than to say they trust their own party.

For example, about four-in-ten Republican teachers say they trust neither party when it comes to ensuring adequate funding for schools and equal access to high quality K-12 education for students. Only about a quarter of Republican teachers say they trust their own party on these issues.

The noteworthy exception is making schools safer, where similar shares of Republican teachers trust their own party (41%) and neither party (35%) to do a better job.

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Table of contents, ‘back to school’ means anytime from late july to after labor day, depending on where in the u.s. you live, among many u.s. children, reading for fun has become less common, federal data shows, most european students learn english in school, for u.s. teens today, summer means more schooling and less leisure time than in the past, about one-in-six u.s. teachers work second jobs – and not just in the summer, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Exploring the role of quality and inclusive education in meeting sustainable development goals

• Published: 13 April 2024
• Volume 57 , article number  102 , ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Chunyang Wang 1 ,
• Qianqian He   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0011-3764 2 &
• Jian Xu 3  

This research investigates the interaction among state education expenditure, the proportion of educated population, and their influence on the Composite Sustainable Development Index from 2000 to 2020, encompassing BRICS and extended BRICS + nations, using the CUP-FM methodology. Results indicate a significant correlation, where a 1% increase in education spending in BRICS + corresponds to an almost 0.15% elevation in sustainable development. This correlation is attributed to enhancements in human capital, innovation, poverty reduction, social equality, and environmental awareness. Nevertheless, the sheer quantity of educated individuals alone does not markedly affect sustainable development, underscoring the importance of educational quality. The study also identifies a robust connection between internet access and sustainability, with a 1% increase resulting in a more than 0.2% improvement. Conversely, challenges arise from waste generation, CPI, and uncertainty, each causing roughly 0.10%, 0.23%, and 0.19% reductions with a 1% increase. Policy implications emphasize the need to prioritize environmentally friendly education, strategically allocate resources, address challenges, and promote digital connectivity for informed decision-making and innovation.

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This study thanks the 2023 National Natural Science Foundation of China Youth Foundation project (No. 52208057); 2023 Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province General Projects (No. 2023A1515011191); and the project of educational science planning in Guangdong Province higher education special project (No. 2023GXJK212).

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Wang, C., He, Q. & Xu, J. Exploring the role of quality and inclusive education in meeting sustainable development goals. Econ Change Restruct 57 , 102 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10644-024-09690-1

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The role of AI in medical education: Embrace it or fear it?  

Artificial intelligence is upon us and likely will forever change the way we interact with learning and education. Despite this reality, educational institutions seem to fall into either of two camps. One camp seems loath to acknowledge that AI exists. A faculty member who helps with curriculum development at one medical school recently shared, “We don’t know what to do about AI. Do we act like it’s not there, or do we acknowledge it?”

The other camp embraces AI and encourages students to employ AI resources, such as ChatGPT. Given the possibility of plagiarism or simply allowing students to bypass any learning whatsoever, it’s understandable why medical schools and other institutions might be conflicted about AI. But even though AI is no replacement for a novel idea or human thought or in medicine placing one’s hands on patients, AI has value in medical education–and not just a little bit. AI may be used as a supplement, resource, or aid when we are learning, teaching, or creating something new.

Just how could medical schools and medical students use AI to assist in educating students? Prior articles have suggested how medical students can utilize chatbots, like ChatGPT, as online tutors to help answer questions or to create quizzes to test their knowledge . For example, bots like ChatGPT can help compare differences in diagnoses, treatments, or procedures that students may be confused about. Those same AI sites can offer a personalized learning experience that schools ought to acknowledge or promote. NYU Grossman School of Medicine has run with this idea and has fully embraced the idea of precision learning from AI by incorporating a “precision education” tool. Each NYU medical student is offered a personalized medical education, with an AI algorithm tailoring subject matter and content format.

In the research space, AI can also be invaluable in medical education. For example, faculty and students alike can also utilize AI to help create data analysis plans, code for various computer languages and scan literature. An online website called Elicit lets users pose a question and then, through AI, scans the internet to find papers and synthesizes their findings into a summary.

Outside of the student experience, professors may also use AI to create lecture outlines and predict the questions that students are most likely to have about certain material. Additionally, professors and faculty must be able to set standards and address the use of AI in the classroom. If they don’t, students may misunderstand the expectations for AI and when or if its use is permissible.

In our own experience, we have used AI to create study guides for courses, create outlines for lectures and book chapters, analyze CVs, and write initial drafts of promotion letters for fellow faculty members. We are certain that the uses of AI that will further simplify our work and assist in medical learning will become clearer and only be seen as greater assets going forward.

Medical schools already offer courses on a wide range of learning and research topics, such as “best study” practices or how to conduct a literature review. Going forward, AI-based tools should be included in these lectures and within the list of online resources for student learning and research. Additionally, schools should teach students what to watch out for when using AI, like bias or flat-out false information and/or non-existent references . Teaching how to use AI in one’s learning promotes a more prepared generation for future technological innovation. This approach may complement courses that explore innovation and AI in medicine.

To those who are hesitant to incorporate AI into education even after reading about NYUs approach and our own ideas, we encourage them to look at how AI has improved other aspects of medicine. From image analysis in radiology and pathology to quick retrieval of medical information and tracking infectious disease outbreaks, this technology has created greater efficiency in health care . Other studies have found that AI can help reduce racial disparities in health care, with one investigation finding that AI better predicted pain from X-rays for underserved patients when compared to radiologists . The technology can be used for good, including in education.

To illustrate that we are not just talking about the potential values of AI in medical school education, in thinking about writing this essay, we asked ChatGPT, “how can artificial intelligence be used to teach medicine and enhance learning in medical schools.” The answers ChatGPT provided included personalized learning, virtual patients, data analysis and research, smart tutors, and educating students about the limitations, biases, and potential risks of AI tools.

As anyone ought to do when using AI, we analyzed ChatGPT’s response, and ultimately–although this might not always be the case–we agree with its recommendations. Therefore, given that we are intent on practicing what we’re now preaching, we couldn’t have written our piece without emphasizing those elements, among others.

Amelia Mercado is a medical student.  J. Wesley Boyd  is a psychiatrist.

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The role of Israeli higher education in Palestinian oppression: In conversation with Maya Wind

03 May 2024, 3:00 pm–5:00 pm

Maya Wind speaks about her new book, "Towers of Ivory and Steel", in which she writes about Israeli academia’s complicity in what she defines as Israel’s settler-colonial project.

This event is free.

Event Information

Availability.

In this talk, Maya Wind will draw on the book to maintain that academic disciplines, degree programs, campus infrastructure, and research laboratories service Israeli occupation and apartheid, while universities violate the rights of Palestinians to education, stifle critical scholarship, and violently repress student dissent. 

In conversation with staff and students from UCL, Maya Wind will reflect on the implications of these insights for universities internationally.

This event will be particularly useful for those interested in higher education, social justice, colonialism.

Sponsored by

• Centre for Sociology of Education and Equity
• Critical Childhood Studies Research Group
• Refuge in a Moving World
• UCL Action for Palestine
• UCL Students for Justice in Palestine

This seminar is part of a tour of Ireland and the UK organised by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP).

Useful links

About the speaker.

Postdoctoral Fellow at University of British Columbia

Maya Wind is a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Her research on the reproduction and international export of Israeli security expertise has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Killam Laureates Trust. Her first book, published by Verso in 2024, "Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom", investigates the complicity of Israeli universities in Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid.

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Turning Back the Tide: The Critical Role of States In Reducing Chronic Absenteeism

Chronic absenteeism has risen drastically in our country — increasing from 16% of students before the COVID-19 pandemic to nearly 30% by the 2021-22 school year . During the 2021-22 school year, 14.7 million students missed so much school they were at academic risk. When schools experience such high levels of chronic absence, the education experience of all students — not just those frequently missing school — is adversely affected.  

A close look at 2021-22 school year data reveals that every state in the country experienced a substantial increase in the number of schools and districts with high and extreme levels of chronic absenteeism.   

States play a critical role in advancing effective approaches to improve attendance in schools because current levels of chronic absence can easily overwhelm a district’s capacity to respond.   

To assist states, our team used available 2021-22 school year data to produce charts for every state showing levels of high and extreme chronic absence. A short data highlight report is available for each state. You can also view the data on this interactive map . If possible, states may benefit most from conducting their own analysis with 2022-23 school year data since it is not yet available at the federal level.  

States can consider adopting a tiered approach . They can offer basic resources to help all schools and districts, particularly those with limited experience addressing chronic absence, and offer more intensive support to the districts facing the most significant attendance challenges. In a tiered approach, state actions may include:   

Publishing comparable, timely and accurate data. Publicly available data helps everyone — educators, families, policymakers and potential community partners — understand where action is needed. States can ensure comparable data among districts by providing a common definition for a day of attendance and ensuring all absences (i.e., excused, unexcused and suspensions) are included in their chronic absence data calculations. Connecticut , Massachusetts and Rhode Island publish chronic absence data frequently so action can be taken throughout the year.  

Creating and promoting messaging about the importance of attendance every day for student success and well-being. Long periods of virtual learning may have led some to think in-person attendance no longer matters. However, state leaders (e.g., governors, state chief school officers, public health agency directors, policymakers and agency leaders) can collaborate on messaging that can be tailored locally to reinforce the importance of attendance. Excellent examples of state campaigns include New Mexico , Massachusetts and Rhode Island .   

Building capacity to address chronic absence. For example, Ohio offers an Attendance Guide that explains state law and offers early intervention practices. At the same time, with support from Attendance Works, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce is strengthening the capacity of its staff and regional intermediaries to offer high quality technical assistance.   

Rather than creating a separate set of supports, Ohio is building on statewide investments in positive behavior intervention and supports so attendance improvement efforts augment existing resources.  

Integrating attention to chronic absence into existing initiatives. Existing programs and initiatives such as family engagement, expanded learning, intensive tutoring, community schools and science of reading efforts can incorporate efforts designed to increase engagement and attendance. Connecticut , for example, integrated attendance into family engagement strategies . Virginia ’s campaign, ALL In VA , combines a dual focus on attendance and intensive tutoring.  

Creating a tailored action plan based on current data and existing resources. To determine where additional capacity is most needed, states can take stock of existing resources and combine that analysis with data examining how much particular schools, districts and student groups are affected by chronic absence.   

Re-establishing regular student attendance will require thoughtful and sustained planning and action. While national data for 2022-23 has not been released, available state data shows chronic absence is starting to decline from its peak in 2021-22 but remains high.    

When all is said and done, we know that efforts to support student’s academic recovery — and improve learning and well-being outcomes for all students — are unlikely to have the desired results unless students are present in school to benefit. If you are interested in learning more, listen in to this recent webinar on Comprehensive State Strategies to Reduce Chronic Absence.   

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At Education Commission of the States, we believe in the power of learning from experience. Every day, we provide education leaders with unbiased information and opportunities for collaboration. We do this because we know that informed policymakers create better education policy.

Copyright 2024 / Education Commission of the States. All rights reserved.

Kentucky education commissioner designate sits before Senate education committee

FRANKFORT, Ky. (WKYT) - Kentucky’s education commissioner candidate Dr. Robbie Fletcher detailed his vision for the role in front of the Senate Education Committee in a Friday afternoon committee hearing.

“There’s no greater honor, there’s no greater trust, there’s no greater responsibility than when somebody tells you, ‘I’m going to send my child to your school,’” said Dr. Robbie Fletcher, education commissioner designate.

Dr. Fletcher has 28 years of education experience, with his current role being superintendent of Lawrence County schools.

The committee discussion included answering questions on hot-button education topics, such as the opposed school choice amendment.

When it comes to the relationship the potential commissioner could have with the legislature, Dr. Fletcher gave praise to this year’s education budget but said there is always room for improvement.

“I’ll probably ask for more, just to be clear, but at the end, this is absolutely the best budget that we’ve had thus far,” he said.

Dr. Fletcher said he may not agree with everyone in Frankfort on every issue, but that communication would be a priority of his in the role.

“If I know your heart is for the kids, and my heart is for the kids, but yet we disagree, then maybe I need to listen a little better,” said Dr. Fletcher.

Dr. Fletcher still has to undergo a Senate confirmation before he is officially named as the state’s education commissioner.

Copyright 2024 WKYT. All rights reserved.

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What you need to know about education for sustainable development

What is education for sustainable development  .

Education for sustainable development (ESD) gives learners of all ages the knowledge, skills, values and agency to address interconnected global challenges including climate change, loss of biodiversity, unsustainable use of resources, and inequality. It empowers learners of all ages to make informed decisions and take individual and collective action to change society and care for the planet. ESD is a lifelong learning process and an integral part of quality education. It enhances the cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural dimensions of learning and encompasses learning content and outcomes, pedagogy and the learning environment itself. 

How does UNESCO work on this theme?  

UNESCO is the United Nations leading agency for ESD and is responsible for the implementation of ESD for 2030 , the current global framework for ESD which takes up and continues the work of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) and the Global Action Programme (GAP) on ESD (2015-2019). 

UNESCO’s work on ESD focuses on five main areas: 

• Advancing policy
• Transforming learning environments
• Building capacities of educators
• Empowering and mobilizing youth
• Accelerating local level action

UNESCO supports countries to develop and expand educational activities that focus on sustainability issues such as climate change, biodiversity, disaster risk reduction, water, the oceans, sustainable urbanisation and sustainable lifestyles through ESD. UNESCO leads and advocates globally on ESD and provides guidance and standards. It also provides data on the status of ESD and monitors progress on SDG Indicator 4.7.1, on the extent to which global citizenship education and ESD are mainstreamed in national education policies, curricula, teacher education and student assessment.  

How does UNESCO mobilize education to address climate change?   

Climate change education is the main thematic focus of ESD as it helps people understand and address the impacts of the climate crisis, empowering them with the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes needed to act as agents of change. The importance of education and training to address climate change is recognized in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change , the Paris Agreement and the associated Action for Climate Empowerment agenda which all call on governments to educate, empower and engage all stakeholders and major groups on policies and actions relating to climate change. Through its ESD programme, UNESCO works to make education a more central and visible part of the international response to climate change. It produces and shares knowledge, provides policy guidance and technical support to countries, and implements projects on the ground. 

UNESCO encourages Member States to develop and implement their  country initiative  to mainstream education for sustainable development. 

What is the Greening Education Partnership?

To coordinate actions and efforts in the field of climate change education the  Greening Education Partnership  was launched in 2022 during the UN Secretary General's Summit on Transforming Education. This partnership, coordinated by a UNESCO Secretariat, is driving a global movement to get every learner climate-ready. The Partnership addresses four key areas of transformative education: greening schools, curricula, teachers training and education system's capacities, and communities.

How can I get involved?   

Every single person can take action in many different ways every day to protect the planet. To complement the ESD for 2030 roadmap , UNESCO has developed the ESD for 2030 toolbox to provide an evolving set of selected resources to support Member States, regional and global stakeholders to develop activities in the five priority action areas and activities in support of the six key areas of implementation. 

UNESCO also launched the Trash Hack campaign in response to the 2 billion tons of waste that the world produces every year, waste which clog up the oceans, fill the streets and litter huge areas. Trash Hacks are small changes everyone can make every day to reduce waste in their lives, their communities and the world.   

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The work of First Nations to provide post-secondary education to their communities will be supported by ongoing funding provided under new legislation, reflecting the integral role of First Nations-mandated post-secondary institutes as a key pillar of B.C.’s post-secondary education system.

“This legislation and the funding it commits will support the critical work underway at First Nations-mandated institutes,” said sumaxatkʷ Tracey Kim Bonneau, chair of the Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association. “Our institutes provide culturally safe and supportive post-secondary and adult education to their communities, including addressing the urgent need for language learning and revitalization. We look forward to working with the Province to jointly develop the policies and processes to implement this legislation.”

The Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, the First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC) and the Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association (IAHLA) have worked together to develop new legislation that commits the Province to contribute ongoing operational funding and capacity funding for eligible institutes.

First Nations-mandated institutes play a vital role by providing First Nation learners with access to a safe and culturally relevant education rooted in their language and culture that supports successful experiences and outcomes.

“Supporting First Nations post-secondary education is a critical step in reconciliation,” said Lisa Beare, Minister of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills. “Our work with the First Nations Education Steering Committee and the Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association on this new legislation commits to providing funding to support eligible institutes in British Columbia.”

Annual funding of $6.45 million has been allocated through the StrongerBC: Future Ready Action Plan for eligible institutes.

The new legislation commits operational and capacity funding to support institutional priorities in the delivery of adult and post-secondary education. These priorities include growing First Nations’ capacity toward a skilled and diverse workforce, revitalizing their languages and cultures, and addressing the continuing impacts of colonialism and racism.

“This legislation recognizes First Nations-mandated institutes as integral to B.C.’s post-secondary system,” said Tyrone McNeil, president, First Nations Education Steering Committee. “We appreciate the stability this legislation will offer to our institutes as they grow to meet the needs of their communities. We look forward to the work ahead to implement the B.C. First Nations tripartite post-secondary education model in the spirit and intent of Article 14 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

The new legislation addresses the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, specifically Article 14(1), and delivers on commitments in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (Declaration Act) Action Plan. Through continued consultation and collaboration, the Province will work with the First Nations Education Steering Committee and the Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association to implement the new legislation.

“For years, the right to a post-secondary education was denied to First Nations learners,” said Murray Rankin, Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation. “Culturally appropriate opportunities did not exist. Through this new legislation, which addresses a key commitment in the Declaration Act Action Plan, the Province is helping First Nations-mandated institutes better prepare First Nations learners for a bright future in whatever field they choose.”

IAHLA represents more than 40 Indigenous adult and post-secondary educational institutes in British Columbia. Theses institutes offer a broad spectrum of courses and programs, including college and university programs leading to certificates and diplomas, adult basic education leading to the adult Dogwood diploma for secondary school completion, language instruction, and occupation specific training and upgrading.

FNESC works under the direction of First Nations in British Columbia to advance quality First Nations education. FNESC is accountable to all First Nations in B.C. and has a formal protocol with the First Nations Leadership Council that recognizes FNESC as the lead policy and advocacy body for First Nations education.

Learn More:

To learn more about IAHLA, visit: https://www.iahla.ca/

To learn more about FNESC, visit: http://www.fnesc.ca/

To learn more about Declaration Act Action Plan, visit: https://declaration.gov.bc.ca/  

For more information about B.C. legislation, visit: https://strongerbc.gov.bc.ca/Legislation

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