Definition of Education

Artur Victoria

There is no agreement among teachers, psychologists, politicians, and philosophers as to

the purpose of education, nor is there any agreement as to what constitutes education. If
the purpose is to train good citizens, we are faced with the fact that conceptions of good
citizens differ in different countries.

Can be an attempt done by the adult members of a human society to shape the
development of the coming generation in accordance with its own ideals of life. This seems
an unsatisfactory definition because:

a - It is a definition of training rather than of education, and

b - The rising generation will live in the world of to-morrow.

Whatever definition we accept of education and of the purpose of education, it will be

coloured by our own philosophy of life. There appears to be a need for each one of us to
define our own ideals and purposes. We may then hope for the good fortune to be able to
realize them in part.

The attainment by each child of his maximum potential intellectual efficiency through the
cultivation of good mental habits would result in an increased measure of human happiness.
There is perhaps nothing new in this, for many will see in this belief merely a variation of a
Greek conception of happiness.

This belief, held by a teacher, gave rise to a personal problem. What means can be evolved
that will result in each child's attaining the maximum possible intellectual efficiency. The
problem has been tackled in a restricted sphere, latterly among a group of children whose
mental powers are so limited that only by exercising them at their maximum efficiency can
they hope to attain any real happiness.

We have to draw attention to a view that the overriding aim of the teacher is the matching
of capacity by attainment.

Education has been passed down from above, and hitherto attempted chiefly through the
medium of words. We believe that it should be built up from below, and that for the
majority it should be chiefly through the medium of the concrete, the visual, and the
everyday.

The first requirement for all who teach, or who aspire to teach, appears to be an
appreciation of:

a - The difference between education and instruction,

b - The different levels of ability among children,

c - The different types of ability among children.

There is a fundamental distinction between education and instruction; between the concept
of the development of talents inborn and individual, and the conveying to a person of a
body of information. The transition in schools from" chiefly instruction to chiefly education
has been delayed by large classes, but it is taking place.

Teaching, as we understand it, should be generally not lecturing or talking by the teacher,
but largely

a - The preparation before the lesson period of exercises that afford opportunities for
activity by the pupil;

b - The stimulation of interest, i.e. the creation of the right emotional environment (in
which, or course, oral teaching has some place).

Learning is the pupil activity:

a - In observing (one aspect of Experience);

b - In comparing and contrasting (Relations);

c - In applying the relationships observed in order to obtain new knowledge (Correlates);

d - In observing given new isolates and bringing them into relation in right sequence with
knowledge and skills that have already been acquired (application); and

e - In planning and thinking in series and sequences.

The Children and the Family

How can we define the word family? To a sociologist the family is one of the many small
face-to-face groups that he calls primary groups. It has certain peculiar characteristics that
differentiate it from other common primary groups such as groups that work together or
meet together regularly for some leisure pursuit.

Firstly, it gives special recognition to the relationship between one male and one or more
females or between one female and one or more males. The former case covers the
common Western European or American family; the latter covers the case found in Tibet
where one woman and a group of brothers form the family unit.

This definition is influenced by the findings of anthropologists among primitive peoples, but
it serves to remind us that the typical family pattern found in Britain is neither the only one
nor even the universal one in this country. T
he purposes that the family serves can be fulfilled in several ways. Temporary liaisons and
men with several spouses, more frequently in succession than at the same time, are found
in all social classes in the so-called civilized countries.

These forms of family will give their offspring an upbringing of a quality very different from
that given to children born into families of the more usual Western European pattern.

Anthropologists have found that some pattern of family organization is a common social
institution even amongst peoples who do not understand the connection between the sex
act and the birth of children.

Even amongst those peoples who are ignorant of the significance of the sex act, there is a
strong feeling between mother and child. The position of the father is less definite, as the
part of the father in the family may be played by a 'social' father rather than by the
biological father.

However, here can be seen the second peculiar characteristic of the family, namely the
stress given to kinship in the way that the family is organized.

The Functions of the Family is one of the ways in which sociologists analyze any institution is
by asking what the consequences for it are of society being organized as it is or, in other
words, what functions it is fulfilling. The concept of function is descriptive, not explanatory,
and has to be used with some care.

There are two types of danger.

One may move from saying that one consequence of the present family system is the
socialization of the young to a position where the claim is made that families exist to
socialize the young.

Secondly, because functional analysis starts from the status quo the assumption can be
made that no change will occur and, furthermore, that there is general agreement with the
present situation.

The institution of marriage has changed greatly over the last century; it is coming to be
viewed today more as a partnership of equals than, as was the case, as a relationship
between a dominant male and an almost servile female.

The family has ceased to provide all the meals and most of the clothes, since many meals
and clothes are now bought outside the family.

The family has come to be used as a very specialized agency for providing the affection that
helps to ensure the emotional stability needed If men and women are to manage their lives
successfully under modem conditions.
The primitive family was a subsistence unit that organized the raising and getting of food.
The family held and farmed the land. In countries where hunting and fishing were important
means of food supply the family organized the labour for these purposes.

Today, production of most goods and services is carried out in factories or outside the
household and members of the family are employed as individuals, not as one unit. Rewards
in the form of money wages are paid to individuals who are often adolescents. Work and
home or family has become separated.

Different codes of values may rule in both, with the result that there is a loss of emotional
unity within the family.

There is a further economic function that the family used to fulfil. Before the industrial
revolution it was normal for the child, whether boy or girl, to learn his future occupation
with the family; son usually was following the father.

This continuity is now no longer common, though in some of the professions there is
evidence that this 'self-recruitment' of occupations still occurs; the case may be cited of the
sons of doctors following their fathers.

Today the child does not learn the technical skills of a job from his father, but picks up the
social skills and the background to the job. A

gain, in areas where one industry is predominant, such as in a mining village, the possibility
that a son can do other than follow his father is remote. But the majority of children live
today in urban areas that contain a diversity of industries and occupations. In these
conditions the family cannot fulfil its former function.

Most parents can give neither the specialized training necessary nor the advice that a child
needs if he is to match his abilities and aptitudes to the local opportunities for employment
in the best possible way.

Socializing the Children

The nuclear family can teach a child when to shake hands or how to eat a meal, but it
cannot easily teach the child how to read or to do complicated mathematics, particularly if
both parents go out to earn a living.

Two problems are at once raised. At what age should education outside the family begin
and what alternatives should be available both at the start and later?

These are administrative decisions and here the important point is that, by the age of five or
six when children in most European countries start at school, the family has already done a
great deal of an educational nature. Much of the culture has by this age been transmitted.
Also, during the next few years when the majority of children are very malleable the school
works alongside the family which still has a very potent influence. There is the possibility of
a partnership of or a clash between the two institutions that are socializing the child.

The danger of conflict is probably lessened by the fact that the school tends to stress the
instrumental learning needed for future life in a complex industrial community, whilst the
family on the whole stresses the expressive development of the personality and the
emotions.

A nuclear family is of one social class and mainly meets members of the same or almost the
same social class. In industry, however, a manager or a workman must meet all social
classes and know how he is expected to behave in each different social situation.

The school can provide experience of a wider range of adult roles in a less emotional frame
of reference than the family. This opening of the world to the child is one important
function of the school that is often forgotten by teachers in their stress on sheer knowledge
and on the inculcation of moral virtues.

Yet though the family cannot do everything and may clash with the school it does much
more than teachers are sometimes prepared to admit.

Children come to learn what is expected of them and of others. 'You're a big boy now, you
mustn't cry.' 'You don't do that to smaller children, do you?'

They begin to learn how their family views adults of other social classes that impinge on
them; the middle-class child who imitates his mother's telephone voice when she orders
from the local grocer has begun to learn something of the social class system. Vocational
aspirations may be mainly of an unrealistic type in very young children. 'I want to be a
fireman.'

But, when the child is older, the family has been found to have a very strong influence on
occupational choice, and often this power is exercised without the more precise knowledge
that the school could give. Sex roles are learnt, as are views on modesty, the latter often in
the process of toilet training. Nursery rhymes are the songs, first at home and then in early
schooling, begin to stress the moral virtues.

The family teaches the child a great deal, both consciously and unconsciously, during the
first few years. Later the school takes over part of the task, but few teachers come to
influence a child as deeply as his parents do.

This deep influence does not only extend to the transmission of the outward signs of the
culture. It has already been pointed out that the child tends to become the roles that he
plays. The connection between the family and personality therefore requires attention.
Socialization between Children and Family
The socialization of the young has a more direct relevance to education.

Although any group must initiate its recruits, the family socialize its young in a different way
because of its peculiar structure. This ensures that there is a difference in age between the
older members - the parents, and the new recruits - the children. Thus, particularly where
the children are young, the parents can exert great power over them.

Family provides not only physical care, but also teaches to the children the parents'
interpretation of social reality around them, and it is within the family that the child's
personality is developed in the early and the formative years.

The family is not a necessary social institution from the biological point of view, since
reproduction of the species does not demand such an organization. But within the limits set
by hereditary potentiality the personality is formed, and in most contemporary societies this
development takes place best through the socialization of the young within a small group
such as the family.

The child learns the patterns of behaviour needed to exist in his environment. The young
learn not just how to subsist but how to exist socially. Boys learn what to wear and how to
treat other boys and girls.

They learn what behaviour to expect from other children of the same and the other sex.
They notice how their parents behave, often internalizing these patterns through their play,
as, for example, when children dress up to play at weddings.

It is important to note the complementary nature of any role, since it includes both the
expected behaviour of that role and also the behaviour expected in others towards that
role. Furthermore, to be fully competent in their social existence, children must ultimately
learn the relevance of third parties to themselves and to the others with whom they
interact.

It only by knowing each other's roles that we can cooperate with one another. Children may
play at roles like actors in the theatre, but ultimately they become these roles. The girl
playing at mother takes on the characteristics of personality associated with women in that
society; the personality expected in an American woman is different from that expected in
an English woman.

In their earliest years children are egocentric, but as they grow older they gradually achieve
the capacity to put themselves in the positions of others.

This process takes place mainly within the family. For example, the child comes to know that
his mother may be too busy to attend to his immediate needs. In sociological terms he has
begun to appreciate that roles are complementary. The child learns that age governs
behaviour as he watches his mother and father. He comes to have a wider view of adult
roles as he makes visits with his parents and observes other adults. He also learns from his
parents and other adults the many occupational and leisure roles that are current in his
environment. As the child grows older the process becomes more complex.

The older child or adolescent comes into contact at school or at work with values that may
be very different from those held within his own family. His parents, as members of an older
generation, may not change their values as quickly as the younger generation.

There can, therefore, be discontinuities between the values of the family and its young. This
becomes more possible after the adolescent has left school, as he meets an even wider
range of values. The young worker can have encountered three different and conflicting
codes of honesty, that of the home, of the school and of the factory.

Thus it is that the process of socialization often ends in conflict and sometimes in rebellion
by the adolescent.

Children Socialization
The members of any social group, whether it is as large as a nation or as small as a village
darts club, have expectations of how those who join it should behave. If the group is to
survive in its present form, they must somehow or other ensure that those who join their
group learn the behaviour expected of them when they fill the new positions that they
occupy as nationals or as darts club members.

In the case of a nation, in the first place parents teach their children, often without
conscious thought, how to be good whilst in a formal organization such as a sports club,
frequently only those likely to conform are allowed to join, training prior to membership
may be compulsory and clear rules specify what behaviour is normal for those filling the
position of member.

In all these cases where a situation is being defined or clarified to the newcomers to any
group or where social arrangements exist to ensure that mutual behavioural expectations or
roles are learnt, sociologists give to the process of induction the name of socialization.

Any group may be seen as made up of a number of social positions which interlock in a
patterned way because the members have mutual expectations of each other. This is most
clearly seen in military units where clear-cut expectations of behaviour based on accepted
patterns of authority are known to all members, but similar patterns exist in all groups with
any elements of permanence.

This idea has been extended beyond such simple groups to whole societies, so that
sociologists speak of the social structure. On this scale there are numbers of positions that
form possible routes or pathways through the social structure. These positions may cluster
around similar activities. For example, around the family there are such positions as father,
mother, son or daughter; within education there are the positions of teacher, inspector,
pupil or school caretaker; in the economy the positions of manager, worker, doctor or
plumber; and, finally, within political institutions such positions as prime minister, civil
servant, mayor or voter.

Any child may be expected to prepare himself so that when he is older he can play the roles
successively of pupil, worker, father and voter. Any adult may be expected to behave at
more or less the same time as a father, a worker and a voter.

One very important effect of having to play successions of roles and several roles
concurrently is that the social structure holds together in a more or less cohesive manner,
since individuals have many connections with many different parts of the society of which
they are members.

The Life Cycle Anthropologists have given much attention to the ways in which different
societies have divided up the succession of roles that are particularly associated with the
family. In simple societies, and even in the rural sectors of more advanced societies, where
the family forms the unit of subsistence, these roles are central to much of social life.

This succession of divisions has been called the life cycle. Eight major positions with specific
expectations of behaviour existed: baby, child, lad/maiden, newly married, father/mother,
widow(er), old person, and, finally, that role for which we are all destined, deceased
person.' To anyone who has been socialized into a Westernized urban society there is one
obvious omission here, the role of a mother or father whose family has left home.

This omission highlights the fact that the rural cycle differs both between and within
societies. There are rural and urban versions of the role which a boy or a girl must learn, but
there are also differences in what is considered normal behaviour for an adult woman in
different countries.

The Dimensions of Socialization with Children

Some behaviour is expected of us in all the settings into which we enter whilst we are
expected to behave in certain other ways only in one specific position. There are patterns of
behaviour relating to such roles as that of a church sides man at morning service on Sunday
that are played in only one setting.

These will be called tertiary roles. In addition there is a large number of roles that are played
in some, but not all settings. These secondary roles form a large and important part of what
we learn whilst being socialized. Some examples will be mentioned very briefly here, though
further consideration will be given to such secondary roles in later chapters.
The way in which we analyze secondary socialization is determined by the nature of the
social system with which we are concerned. Thus, in advanced urban societies there are
clusters of closely interrelated roles that centre on economic and on political institutions,
but members of these societies do not play these roles constantly.

Such roles may, there-fore, be considered as secondary roles, and much secondary
socialization takes place in childhood. By the age at which adolescents leave school they
already have learnt, partly at home and partly at school, an incomplete, but wide,
knowledge of the occupational structure. In other words, their economic socialization as
producers is well under way.

At an earlier age they have learnt something of their national role, knowing who to support,
for example, in a war or in an international sporting event. Similarly, children gradually learn
their political roles so that they know not only such details of their own particular political
system as how to vote, but also feel that they are part of it and have a greater or lesser
degree of power to take part in and to influence political decisions that concern them.

Clearly socialization is a forward-looking process. In the political and economic examples

that have just been given the child was enabled to learn more efficiently the behaviour that
was later expected of him because, whether consciously or not, prior preparation had been
given to him.

This preparation has been termed anticipatory socialization. The teaching of social studies at
school is often a very relevant part of the child's preparation for the economic and political
roles that he will play in the future.

The engaged couple rehearse together prior to marriage many of the behavioural patterns
that they will later play as husband and wife. Likewise, the pregnant woman, at least
mentally, prepares herself for her future as a mother.

This process of anticipatory socialization is important in that, if it is apt, it eases the

transition into future positions. The young person who has been taught at school to study in
the more independent way expected of him at a university or college will more easily move
from the role of secondary pupil to that of tertiary student.

Discontinuities in behavioural expectations are to some degree eliminated. However,

anticipatory socialization may be misplaced and thereby discontinuities may remain or even
be increased. The child who does not achieve the particular occupation to which he has
been led to aspire because either his parents or his school have unduly raised his hopes will
have greater difficulties in moving into his economic role than might otherwise have been
the case.

One final point must be made before completing this examination of socialization from the
structural perspective. Since we can talk of a life cycle of roles through which individuals
move, socialization must clearly be a lifelong process. In recent years, as sociologists have
realized that this concept and the analytical tools associated with it are equally applicable to
the learning of adult roles, much work on adult socialization has been done. Socialization is
not something that happens only in childhood.

New roles must be learnt, and often old behaviour must be forgotten because it is no longer
apt for the new positions that are assumed or the new groups that are joined. This is
particularly true as persons grow older.

They are no longer expected to behave as young folk do. This is attested by the existence of
such phrases as 'mutton dressed as Iamb'. Adult socialization, however, builds greatly on the
foundations laid in childhood mainly because, as psychologists have shown us, what we
learn as children is more permanent in nature than what we learn in later life.

Children - Main Agents of Socialization

In advanced, urban societies four agents seem crucial, namely the family, the school, the
peer group and the mass media. Through these agents a version of social reality is created in
the minds of the next generation which may match that of adults or may, along some
dimensions, be deviant by their criteria.

I. The Family

In the past, and still in most simple societies, the family provided the main setting where
roles of all types were learnt. As a result of experiences gained largely within the family the
child became a loyal member of his tribe which was a political system in itself, a worker
within the subsistence unit of his own family, and, in addition to this secondary socialization,
he learnt from the members of his large, multi-generational family such primary roles as his
sex role.

In our contemporary society the family still acts as a powerful agent of socialization,
especially for primary roles and for much of the knowledge of routine activities that has
been called recipe knowledge.

With the growth of the capitalist economy the social class system has developed and
different styles of life have evolved in various social groupings. These have been and are
passed on from one generation to the next.

One result of this is that whereas in simple societies most people knew very much the same,
the stock of knowledge is now distributed differentially amongst the groupings within any
complex society.

This clearly will have important implications for education, and a separate chapter must be
set aside in which the differences between the manners of socialization in the main social
classes will be considered. Whatever the social class, much of what is taught is passed to the
next generation without any conscious thought. Often the main method of socializing the
child would seem to be the regular presence of a role model to be imitated.

Who has power or is highly valued and who persistently behaves in a consistent manner.
Inconsistency, particularly with regard to sanctioning behaviour, muddles the child, who
often feels insecure since he does not know which actions are approved and which are not.

Unusual family structure has an effect on the way in which children are socialized. Thus,
children in families where owing to bereavement or divorce there is only one parent
undergo anomalous upbringings.

Evidence shows that children of both sexes brought up by a mother alone tend to take more
of a woman's view of the world than is usual, and that in the more rare case where a man
brings up his family alone the children interpret reality more from a man's viewpoint than is
normally the cases In this connection it could be of interest to study the children of fathers
who have such occupations as trawler man, commercial traveller or long-distance lorry
driver.

2. The School

Not only does the way in which families differ in their life-style distribute certain kinds of
knowledge differentially throughout society, but the very complex and specialized nature of
contemporary economic roles also implies a further distribution of the stock of social
knowledge.

In addition, the educational demands of many occupations are such that very few parents
are today capable of teaching their children what they need to know to play such roles.
Many parents have difficulty helping their children with simple algebra or elementary
science when set as homework, and would not know where to begin if asked to teach them
quadratic equations or advanced physics.

Because families from different social classes differ in their values there is the likelihood
that some children may come to school with values that clash with those held by their
teachers. This can lead to a discontinuity between school and home. A clear and perhaps
extreme case will indicate the nature of the problem.

Though the school can be a powerful agent of socialization, it is such constraints as those
just mentioned that must be examined if the success or failure of socialization within formal
educational organizations is to be assessed. Frequently counter-influences are encouraged
by the presence within the school of groups of young persons who support each other in
negating the influence of the school.

3. The Peer Group

Strictly, the term peer group should describe any group of equals according to some stated
criterion, but sociologists usually apply it to groups made up of persons who are of the same
age and most often to groups of children or of adolescents.

The groups with which we are here concerned play a normal part in the process of
socialization in most societies. They provide experiences to those who are growing up of a
type that are not available in their own families.

From children point of view families are hierarchical since their parents are superior in
power to them. Before children leave their families of origin to go to work and eventually to
set up families of their own, they need to have certain experiences that they cannot
undergo in their own homes, but which will provide skills required in adult life.

For example, they should mix in groups that do not have great differences in rank and
where individuals may achieve status on their own behalf rather than be ascribed the status
of an inferior member.

Discontinuities between the role of child and that of adult will also be lessened by mixing
with those of the appropriate sex who are not members of one's own family. Many adults
look back with amused embarrassment on their first date, but they should remember that
their awkwardness in meeting the opposite sex became less because of their membership of
various peer groups.

Once again a social mechanism can be seen to function as an agent of socialization, though
equally clearly no one doubts the spontaneous and real joy that individuals experience
during the times that they spend with their young friends.

There is something of a paradox here. The family, to which many people ascribe the duty of
socializing the next generation, often does so without parents or other members of the
family giving much thought to the process. Schools were established as formal organizations
to socialize children because the task of recreating social reality was thought to have passed
beyond the capability of the family, but nevertheless they are for one reason or another
only partially successful.

Yet the peer group, by nature a spontaneous group dedicated to leisure, is a powerful agent
for socializing the young both by its own lights and even by some socially acceptable criteria.

4. The Mass Media

Over the last century the circulation of newspapers, magazines, comics and books has risen
to match the rising spread of literacy. More recently films and the radio have become
available to the majority of the population in advanced, urban societies.

However, during the last twenty years the phrase 'the mass media' has become increasingly
associated with one particular medium, namely television. This medium penetrates into
almost every home in contemporary society and provides information, entertainment and
role models of great apparent power to children. Examples are the currently fashionable
pop stars and aggressive heroes, whose speech, habits and clothes are widely imitated,
particularly by teenagers. What has to be considered is how and in what way television and
other mass media influence the socialization of children.