Education

Theories
Bertrand Russell For whom education is?
Russell strongly criticized the idea of education being restricted to the wealthy and the aristocratic. He asserts that it has no place in an egalitarian society. Instead, he suggests that Education should take a form that enables it to be available to all children, or at least all children capable of benefiting from it. The education system we should aim for is one in which every boy and every girl is given the opportunity to attain the highest level of education in this world. In addition, Russell argues that individuals with special needs should be given specific education.

What is education for?

In Russells words, there is a dispute as to Whether education is for practicality or for embellishment; whether education should focus on technical skills that would train a merchant or a professional as quickly as possible. We are faced with the problem whether education shall aim for packing the childrens brains with practical knowledge or giving them intellectual treasures. He asserts that education ought to be practical because the educational process is a means to an end, and not an end in itself.

His core ideas

Education should aim for the happiness of each student. Therefore, Russell opposed dividing the society into practicality and embellishment. He argues that both types of knowledge should be provided. Children should acquire knowledge for material gain as well as knowledge for intellectual pleasure. Education should have both utility and humanity as components. For him, education must not be a way of controlling children for specific purposes. Rather, it must encourage the childrens natural inquisitiveness and help them to solve problems and gain happiness on their own initiative.

Russell is also prescient in pointing out the importance of early education. The role of parents as educators in the formative years is vitally important. It is the foundation and the first step of the education for happiness. Sadly, it is easy to use education for imposing specific beliefs on children. In Japan during the Second World War, children were given very lopsided knowledge and philosophy for the purpose of aggrandizing the nation. Similar characteristics were evident in Nazi-era education. Such educational systems were very effective, but the tragic result is known to all. What was harmful in these situations was that the children were not the purpose of education but was a means to achieve a specific purpose. As Russell says, Children are not the means but the purpose.

 Perennialism (Richard Livingstone & Mortimer Adler) What is it?

Against the progressive emphasis on change and novelty, perennialists call for allegiance to absolute principles. In a world of increasing precariousness and uncertainty nothing can be more beneficial than steadfastness of educational purpose and stability in educational behaviour.

Main tenets
1) Despite differing environments, human nature remains the same everywhere; hence, education should be the same for everyone. 2) Education is not an imitation of life but a preparation for it.
The school can never be a real-life situation. It remains for the child an artificial arrangement in which he becomes acquainted with the finest achievements of his cultural heritage.

3) The student should be taught certain basic subjects that will acquaint him with the worlds permanencies. 4) Students should study the great works of literature, philosophy, history, and science in which men through the ages have revealed their greatest aspirations and achievements.
The problems they deal with and the ideas they present are not subject to the law of perpetual and interminable progress.

Critique
Perennialists may be accused of fostering an aristocracy of intellect. They fail to appreciate that, although many children lack the particular intellectual gifts perennialism emphasizes, they nevertheless become good citizens and productive workers. To subject them to the same sort of rigorous academic training as that given to students of university calibre is to ignore this difference and perhaps to injure their personal growth. Indeed, such practice actually may retard the development of attributes that are equally as valuable as any academic qualities they may have acquired in school.

 Progressivism (John Dewey) What is it?

Taking the pragmatist view that change, not permanence, is the essence of reality, progressivism in its pure form declares that education is always in the process of development. Educators must be ready to modify methods and policies in the light of new knowledge and changes in the environment. The special quality of education is not to be determined by applying perennial standards of goodness, truth, and beauty, but by construing education as a continual reconstruction of experience.

Main tenets
1) Education should be life itself, not a preparation for living. 2) Learning should be directly related to the interests of the child.
The child, then, should learn because he needs and wants to learn, not necessarily because someone else thinks that he should. He should be able to see the relevance of what he learns to his own life and not to an adults conception of the sort of life that a child of his age should be leading.

3) Learning through problem solving should take precedence over the inculcating of subject matter. 4) The school should encourage cooperation rather than competition.
Progressivists maintain that love and partnership are more appropriate to education than competition and personal gain. School as an avenue to socialise children

5) The teachers role is to advise not to direct.

Critique
The child is given too much autonomy in choosing what they want to pursue. We must understand that the child is not a little adult and that he must not be treated simply as a scholar. It is useless to expect a child to indulge in abstract intellectual pursuits until he had reached the age of reason. Progressivism also runs the risk of presentism, where the child struggles to attain lasting educational improvement. It is also difficult to see how the school could be a replica of life, even if it tried. Inevitably the school is an artificial learning situation, beset with restrictions and prohibitions different from those encountered in life as a whole.