« HEALTH AND EDUCATION IN THE MODERN WORLD « Education for a
Changing World
By Kathleen Mazor, EdD, MS
Contributing Writer
There is a critical need worldwide for education to prepare
students to lead successful, fulfilling lives. In today’s world, this
means providing young people with educational experiences that
nurture their passions, curiosity, and creativity, that develop
critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and that enable life-
long learning. The best solutions involve teachers, parents,
students, schools, and communities, take advantage of available
resources, are based on evidence, and draw inspiration from
successful models.
In the U.S. and other Western democracies, commitment to public
education has gone hand-in-hand with growth and prosperity. Since
the mid-19th century, free public education has provided a
foundation for millions of people to create a life for themselves and
their families, and to become informed, engaged citizens. Today, in
the developed world, we take for granted that children start school
around the age of five and go through about 11 years of compulsory
schooling.
While a primary goal of education is to prepare students to become
successful adults, what it takes to be successful is changing at an
ever-increasing pace. The 21st century world has seen changes that
no one would have envisaged even 20 years ago, and classrooms
and curricula have not kept up. In the United States disparities in
school funding across states and districts, coupled with poverty and
racism, have created distressing inequities.
Now is the time for all of us – leaders, educators, parents, students,
and society – to think deeply about education and how we can
achieve the critical but elusive goal of preparing young people to be
successful, engaged, responsible and fulfilled adults.
How We Got Here: Education for a Bygone Era
Educational systems both reflect and shape the economic, social,
cultural, and political realities in operation in any given time and
place. The Industrial Revolution was a period of major economic
and social transformation; not surprisingly major changes in
education occurred during that period as well.
During the Industrial Revolution, production methods changed
from hand production to machines, new technologies and industries
came into being, and rapid increases occurred in trade and
urbanization. These changes created an increased demand for
literacy and numeracy skills, as well as technical and scientific
knowledge, and contributed to the expansion of public education.
Parents and students saw education as bringing value to the extent
that it could improve students’ prospects of gainful employment.
There were also those who argued for public education for the
common good, rather than the benefits to the individual. According
to the book School: The Story of American Public Education, by
education historians David Tyack, Carl Kaestle, Diane Ravitch,
James Anderson, and Larry Cuban, in the United States, Thomas
Jefferson and others advocated for widespread, systematic,
supervised public education to produce educated citizens who
would be able to “understand issues and elect virtuous
leaders.” Others, such as Horace Mann, an early advocate of public
education in the US, believed in the “equalizing capacity of the
school” and envisioned public schools as places where the elite and
the poor came together. Still others saw education as a means of
instilling values, though there was not always agreement as to what
those values might be. Not surprisingly, while the mid-nineteenth
century saw greater access to education, the system was far from
perfect, with “not only financial inequalities, but also cultural
bigotry, racism and gender discrimination.”
Colonialism and Education
Colonialism led to new forms and systems of education, including
new schools, curricula, examinations, certificates, and degrees,
which often served the needs and interests of the colonial
administration and economy.
As education scholar Sugata Mitra points out, some countries such
as Britain and France not only needed clerical and administrative
staff for new domestic institutions but also diplomats and civil
servants with clerical skills to create and maintain their enormous
colonial bureaucracies overseas.
What was required, says Mitra, were workers who were essentially
identical to each other. “They must know three things: They must
have good handwriting, because the data is handwritten; they must
be able to read; and they must be able to do multiplication,
division, addition and subtraction in their head. They must be so
identical that you could pick one up from New Zealand and ship
them to Canada and he would be instantly functional.” The
Victorians, Mitra says, “created a computer of people, a
bureaucratic machine and schools to prepare people to run that
machine. This is still happening.”
The introduction of new education systems typically disrupted and
marginalized existing education systems rooted in local culture
which had largely been transmitted via oral traditions,
apprenticeship, religious instruction, and indigenous schools. For
example, the French Empire abolished madrasas in Algeria, and
replaced them with French secular schools teaching French
language and culture. Some colonized peoples resisted colonial
education, boycotting it, sabotaging it, or using it as a tool for
political and social mobilization. Others used it as a means of
personal and professional advancement. For example, in South
Africa the African National Congress used the colonial education
system to train and educate its leaders and members, who later led
the anti-apartheid struggle.
As colonized countries and regions gained independence, they
challenged the colonial education systems. India, for example,
reformed its education system to reflect its own national identity,
culture and aspirations. Similarly, Algeria restored and reformed
the madrasas and introduced Arabic as the official language of
education
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