the role of education in our life essay

Essay on Importance of Education for Students

500 words essay on importance of education.

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

Importance of Education in Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Importance of Education in Society

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

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

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

FAQs on Essay on Importance of Education

Q.1 How Education helps in Employment?

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

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

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

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

• Our Mission

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.

Role of Education in Our Life

Education is one of the most crucially essential things in the life of each person. People get an excellent opportunity to become real professionals within one or even more spheres and help others grasp all the necessary details. However, nowadays, lots of people may still face problems like race inequality. It is essential to admit that race is not the only point to worry about. Sexual orientation, gender, religion, and even class differentiation play a less important role in education. Tutors and students are so anxious about their belonging, and this is why they cannot concentrate on their knowledge and improvement to their full extent.

The problems in education concern people of different and social status. Young people should care about their further development and career, grown-ups should think about their children’s education, and even businessmen can also be involved in such discussion because proper education reflects the quality of any employee. Each worker should be able to demonstrate his/her high level of education. My report’s audience is the dissertation committee, a group of people who are closely connected to the sphere of education. As no one else, they can face the problems concerning race and gender inequality, differences in education for white and Black people, and the existing priorities. These people are one of those who may affect educational processes and make it available to people of any race and gender. With my investigation’s help, I want to describe how terrible the situation may become if numerous divisions in education will not be stopped. This is why this very research may arouse their interest and even provoke some discussions, which may help find the necessary ways and provide all students with equal chances to get their education, advance their skills, and be useful to society.

Synthesis Report

Race prejudice is one of the most famous and terrible problems in our society nowadays. People start judging people not because of their actions or thoughts but because of their skin color. Race inequality disturbs many people and deprives them of the opportunity to follow their intuition and desire, but makes them consider race, gender, and social status before. Black male education is under a terrible threat because people take into account the color of skin and only then evaluate student’s abilities and potential. Such prejudice is not correct. People of any race have a chance to demonstrate their abilities, and people who evaluate these abilities should stay tolerant and unbiased. Only such an attitude to education will help achieve good results and create the right professionals in different life spheres.

My research turns out to be rather important and useful because it touches upon such issues as the necessity of advancement in education for Black people, improvements in their activities, and social organization. With the help of this research, I want to demonstrate the possible ways to make education available to everyone without considering such issues as gender or race. Black males should have the same opportunities to learn the necessary material to get an equal right to live, earn a living, and help other people. There are numerous activities, which need to be taken to help Black people overcome difficulties and forget about the existed inequalities.

The chosen material for my research is rather exciting and significant. The authors of the articles under consideration concentrate on race issues and black male education from different perspectives. One of the aspects that deserve attention is that the authors investigate other institutions, such as the University of Illinois or Ohio State University. Such an approach is right, indeed, as it evaluates the situation from different points of view and makes the necessary conclusions grounding on the results from several academic institutions. Hamper underlines the importance of activities from institutions’ side, which should increase the number of black men attending colleges with the help of social development. Institutional negligence is one reason why so many black students do not want to visit public or private schools with white people. This author presents reliable facts concerning the enrollment of black people into higher education. The evaluation of these facts helps to clear up the number of students who do want and can study and the reasons they do not study. The severity of social disparity plays a vital role in the education of black and white people. Students have to analyze their social status, gender, and race before they start learning something. Relations between students may be on their ways to clear comprehension of the material. Such distraction has to be changed into some everyday activities, which help develop students’ knowledge and enlarge the number of victories within one or several institutions.

However, it is necessary to admit that lots of information presented in the chosen articles is grounded on past research. Empirical approaches are not inherent to the pieces under consideration. Only a few numbers of works may present facts gathered from the authors’ personal experiences. Such a choice of approaches may become one of the significant shortages of the whole book. To achieve better results, it is possible to use several personal empirical methods and analyze the information obtained. With the help of data described in the articles and personal experience, the results of this research will be much better and more reliable.

Qualitative approaches turn out to be somewhat helpful for any kind of research. The research by Harris and Bensimon uses one of the qualitative methods to clear up why so few African American males are enrolled annually. Without any doubt, numbers are rather considerable for any science. Unfortunately, many do not help to realize why so many black people just do not want to continue their education within effective institutions and deprive themselves of the opportunity to become professionals. One of the mentoring programs, Equity Scorecard, is considered to be a effective means that aims to define who and why are deprived of the opportunity to enter the chosen institution. The analysis of the reasons for low entry will also help to find what kinds of means can change the situation.

Quantitative approaches are not less critical in my research. After I choose this method, I get an opportunity to compare three absolutely different academic establishments: religious institutions, art schools, and research universities. Due to this research, it was defined that black diversity still exists in each of the above-mentioned organizations. Prejudice concerning black male education and other minorities disturb a lot of people. It is necessary to find out some activity that will help to cope with difficulties and be ready to prove personal standpoints. This is why such things as family and campus support remain to be significant. This support helps to destroy all stereotypes and put education, the development of students’ skills, and career into the first place. Public activities also help to unite people with different interests and preferences to create something useful and help other people t be involved in public life where race and gender issues do not play a too significant role.

It is also obligatory to pay attention to the creation of numerous ethnic and racial groups in different institutions. Lots of educational organizations, staff, and counselors considerably influence the inequality between the students as well. Even if these groups are created in order to fight against the existed inequality, their foundations serve as one more reason to divide students and again concentrate on racial issues more than on education itself. This is why, when one more group is going to be created, it is necessary to think over its objectives and effect on the other already existed groups. If people have such an opportunity to develop new activities and affect the improvement of students’ skills, they should use such chances to demonstrate positive and significant results.

Each person knows that our life is full of different prejudices, which may bother day by day. Race and gender are some of the most considerable things, which the vast majority of people are worried about. However, when such points do not allow to get a proper education, it turns out to be a huge problem. People do not want and just cannot understand that prejudice and education should be separated somehow. Some people think that all doubts lie in a person and his/her upbringing. As far as I am concerned, a lot of problems appear not because of the person, but because of the system he/she lives in. This is why our education system should be considerably changed in order to destroy any possible problems. People of any race should get the same education, and the division may happen not because of the color of your skin but because of your personal abilities and desire to learn something.

My research will provide captivating ways, which may improve the education of Black males in the future. The point is that this inequality hurts lots of people and will hurt our future generation if we, at least, do not try to change something. Of course, my project is just one more work that should be analyzed and evaluated thoroughly. But still, statistics and experience are two incontestable facts, which may show that education is not the field of a fight between people of different races or gender. Education is something that helps us to be smarter and wiser. Education is a means that provides us with the opportunities to learn our history, learn from the mistakes made by our ancestry, and take all the necessary steps to live every day and equal life. Race should not influence education because any person has to have a chance to be educative, be able to improve their own skills and be ready to help another person to do the same.

Cite this paper

• Chicago (N-B)
• Chicago (A-D)

StudyCorgi. (2021, March 17). Role of Education in Our Life. https://studycorgi.com/role-of-education-in-our-life/

"Role of Education in Our Life." StudyCorgi , 17 Mar. 2021, studycorgi.com/role-of-education-in-our-life/.

StudyCorgi . (2021) 'Role of Education in Our Life'. 17 March.

1. StudyCorgi . "Role of Education in Our Life." March 17, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/role-of-education-in-our-life/.

Bibliography

StudyCorgi . "Role of Education in Our Life." March 17, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/role-of-education-in-our-life/.

StudyCorgi . 2021. "Role of Education in Our Life." March 17, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/role-of-education-in-our-life/.

This paper, “Role of Education in Our Life”, was written and voluntary submitted to our free essay database by a straight-A student. Please ensure you properly reference the paper if you're using it to write your assignment.

Before publication, the StudyCorgi editorial team proofread and checked the paper to make sure it meets the highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, fact accuracy, copyright issues, and inclusive language. Last updated: March 17, 2021 .

If you are the author of this paper and no longer wish to have it published on StudyCorgi, request the removal . Please use the “ Donate your paper ” form to submit an essay.

Home — Essay Samples — Education — Importance of Education — The Importance of Education for Personal and Social Development

The Importance of Education for Personal and Social Development

• Categories: Importance of Education Personal Growth and Development

About this sample

Words: 712 |

Published: Sep 7, 2023

Words: 712 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, the value of education in personal development, the impact of education on society, educational solutions to social issues.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof. Kifaru

Verified writer

• Expert in: Education Life

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1317 words

1 pages / 511 words

1 pages / 585 words

7 pages / 3286 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Importance of Education

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani woman who became famous for her advocacy for education and women’s rights. Born and raised in Mingora, Swat, she experienced the Taliban’s violent suppression of education, particularly of girls. [...]

Rose, Mike. 'I Just Wanna Be Average.' Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America's Educationally Underprepared, The Free Press, 1989.

Education, a term that spans cultures and epochs, finds itself defined in various ways by different individuals and societies. In this comprehensive essay, we shall delve into the multifaceted concept of the purpose of [...]

Civic education is integral to the development of responsible and engaged citizens in modern society. It is the process through which individuals learn about their rights, responsibilities, and duties towards their communities [...]

Quality According to Harvey (Harvey, 2006) quality has a number of variations. The general meaning of quality in education is the distinctive attribute found with an education system that gives it a degree of the degree of [...]

Under current circumstances, students are always overwhelmed by unity and test. From Preliminary English Test (PET) in elementary school to SAT and GRE in universities, our life is “polished” by all those standardized scores [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Role of Education in Modern Society Essay

There is no use denying the fact that education plays an important role in the life of modern people. It is difficult to imagine a person who wants to achieve some great goals and who does not obtain good knowledge. Education is the thing which helps to obtain this very information. That is why, it is possible to say that a person, who graduates from college, differs greatly from a freshman. Resting on my own practice, it should be said that the thing which is the most important and makes the difference is experience.

It is easy to determine whether a person is experienced or not. The thing is that during the process of study a person obtains not only knowledge. Student teaches how to communicate and how to behave in society. It is a very important process which leads to the formation of experience. However, it is not professional experience as it can be obtained only while working, though, it is that sort of knowledge which will be very useful while communicating with employers and looking for some information.

This experience can also help to use knowledge obtained in the process of study (Dewey 13). Nevertheless, it is another thing which differs me from a freshman. Knowledge, which I was given, will help me to become successful and make me more confident and this confidence can be easily seen.

Additionally, knowledge helps to find better job as qualified specialists are more appreciated. Finally, friends and acquaintances are another thing which should be mentioned. In the course of study I made many friends who could help me in the future life. Moreover, some of them can help to find a job and build a career.

With this in mind, it is possible to say that things which differ a freshman from a graduate are knowledge, experience and friends. These things are very important for the future of any person that is why college can be taken as a perfect place which creates a good basis for the further development of a person.

Speaking about all these changes which happen to a person, it should be said that they are possible due to the wise combination of in and out of class activities. The thing is that a students life is comprised not only of classes and the process of obtaining knowledge. There is no use denying the fact that this aspect is very important and it should be given great attention. However, the life of a student out of a class should also be given attention.

Socialization is very important for a person as he/she is a part of society and should understand the main regularities according to which it functions (“Importance of Education Speech” para. 5). That is why, college or some other educational institution is the best place which can teach a person how to behave in society and how to survive.

It is also obvious, that a graduate does not have enough knowledge to become an ideal worker, however, his/her social experience can help and show the best for him/her to develop, obtain knowledge and achieve success. That is why, it should be said that knowledge obtained in class can become useless if a person is not able to understand how to use it. At the same time, self confidence without knowledge can be taken as some sort of arrogance (Kidwai para. 5) and will not have positive influence on the life of a person.

That is why the aspect of education, that supposes in class work, should not be forgotten. Students have to divide their time between different tasks and activities for them to be able to get the most out of the whole course. Thus, they should also choose priorities which, they think, will be the most important in their future life.

Only such subdivision and combination of in and out of class activities can lead to the balanced development of personality of a student. With this in mind, it is possible to say that the majority of changes happen both under the influence of in and out of class exercises which promote a freshman becoming a good specialist in the chosen sphere.

It is obvious that all changes in the life of a person happen under the influence of certain factors which became topical at the given moment of time. Problems that a person faces and stresses connected with it make him/her accept a certain decision which influences the whole life and helps to form the character. The process of studying is not an exception. Being very important for the life of every person, it has its own factors which influence his/her becoming a new person with new skills and experience.

There are several important factors. The first one is stress which a student feels when he/she just enters a college. The thing is that this event can very often be taken as the beginning of a persons individual and independent life. He/she does not live with parents anymore, moreover, he/she should count only on his/her forces. That is why, this period is very important and obviously influences the character of a person. Student teaches how to live alone and how to study.

Moreover, he/she starts to realize himself/herself as the part of society. Adaptation to new conditions can take several month and is obviously the first important event which influences significantly the whole life of a person. The second important event is recognition of the importance of knowledge and experience which are obtained during the course. There is no certain time when it could happen, however, it contributed greatly to changes which appeared.

Having realized necessity of all skills and information which a student can obtain while studying, he/she starts to do his/her best in order to get the maximum (“Education” para. 6). This recognition can be taken as a certain turning point as since that time a person starts to work for himself/herself and do everything which is possible to become the best student of the course. The last important event which could also have significant influence on a person is graduation.

Having received his/her diploma, a person understands that he/she just starts the long way to success and that he/she has to do a lot to succeed. Diploma is the thing which can help, however, a person still has to work hard. Summing it up, it is possible to say that these three events can be taken as the most important things which influence student significantly.

Summarizing the given discussion, it should be said that importance of the whole process of study could hardly be overestimated. A person rises from an inexperienced freshman to qualified specialist who could work and succeed. The process of development is very important and environment and educational institution helps a person to evolve. A graduate obtains priceless experience and knowledge which could help him/her in his/her future life.

These phenomena are obtained due to several factors and events which happen during the whole course. Necessity to become independent and recognition of the role of a specialist in society influence a person and make him/her work harder. Moreover, a student is surrounded by people who help him/her to socialize which is also an important aspect of human life. Some of people will become friends for a student while other will be able to help in some complicated situations.

However, all these people are very important for any person as they comprise the network of acquaintance which is vital for a social being. Additionally, combination of in and out of class activities helps to teach a person not only the knowledge which is the part of curriculum. However, a person also teaches show to divide his/her own free time and how to choose priorities. With this in mind, having analyzed the whole process of study, it is possible to make a certain conclusion.

Education is a thing which helps a person not to get lost in the modern world as it gives confidence and needed experience (“Improve your personality through education” para. 6). It should also be said that a person, who graduated from any educational establishment, can easily be detected as he/she differs from the rest of young people who do not have education (“The Difference Between Being Educated and Uneducated” para.7). Under these conditions, it seems logic to recommend people to obtain education as it gives obvious advantages and helps in their life.

Works Cited

Dewey, John. Experience and Education . n.d. Web.

Education . n.d. Web.

Improve your personality through education . 2010. Web.

Importance of Education Speech . n.d. Web.

Kidwai, Anam. Top 15 Reasons why Education is Extremely Important. 2014. Web.

The Difference Between Being Educated and Uneducated . n.d. Web.

• Academic Reality Check: a Fast, Free, Practical Tool for Freshmen Retention
• How to Choose a College Major
• Achieving Communicative Liberal Learning Outcomes
• College Profanity and Swearing
• American Education and Foreclosure Crisis
• Online Behavior of Students
• The Value of Reanalysis: TV Viewing and Attention Problems
• Effects on Psychological Growth and Self-Esteem
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, April 21). Role of Education in Modern Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-of-education-in-modern-society/

"Role of Education in Modern Society." IvyPanda , 21 Apr. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/role-of-education-in-modern-society/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Role of Education in Modern Society'. 21 April.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Role of Education in Modern Society." April 21, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-of-education-in-modern-society/.

1. IvyPanda . "Role of Education in Modern Society." April 21, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-of-education-in-modern-society/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Role of Education in Modern Society." April 21, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-of-education-in-modern-society/.

• Entertainment
• Environment
• Information Science and Technology
• Social Issues

Home Essay Samples Education Role of Education

Exploring How Education Has Impacted Your Life

Table of contents, knowledge acquisition: illuminating perspectives, skill development: nurturing competence, personal growth: fostering confidence, cultivation of curiosity: lifelong learning, contributing to society: making an impact, references:.

• Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. National Academy Press.
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227-268.
• Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.
• Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• UNESCO. (2015). Education for sustainable development goals: Learning objectives. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000247444

*minimum deadline

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below

• Elementary School
• College Students
• Human Development
• Inequality in Education
• Common Core Standards

Related Essays

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

*No hidden charges

100% Unique Essays

Absolutely Confidential

Money Back Guarantee

By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails

You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic

Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible.

• Current Students
• Faculty / Staff
• Paying for College
• Alumni Services
• Program Finder
• Affordable, Flexible, Accessible
• Distance Education
• All Online Courses & Degrees
• Baccalaureate Online
• Graduate Online
• Start Dates
• Admissions, Costs & Aid
• Partnerships
• Faculty and Contacts
• Academic and Career Support
• Student Testimonials
• Distance Education Advantage
• In-Person Learning
• About Hybrid Learning
• Hybrid Learning Degrees
• Student Life
• Academic Support
• Academic Calendar
• Faculty & Contacts
• Technical Institute for Environmental Professions
• Term Calendar
• Sustainable Ventures
• Careers & Outcomes
• About Unity
• Office of the President
• Announcing Our Evolution
• Sustainable Achievements & Initiatives
• Reinventing College
• Extended Reality (XR)
• Commencement
• Give to Unity Environmental University
• Institutional Communications
• Unity Environmental University News

Home  /  News  /  Why Is Education Important? The Power Of An Educated Society

Why Is Education Important? The Power Of An Educated Society

Looking for an answer to the question of why is education important? We address this query with a focus on how education can transform society through the way we interact with our environment. 

Whether you are a student, a parent, or someone who values educational attainment, you may be wondering how education can provide quality life to a society beyond the obvious answer of acquiring knowledge and economic growth. Continue reading as we discuss the importance of education not just for individuals but for society as a whole. 

Harness the power of education to build a more sustainable modern society with a degree from  Unity Environmental University .

How Education Is Power: The Importance Of Education In Society

Why is education so important? Nelson Mandela famously said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” An educated society is better equipped to tackle the challenges that face modern America, including:

• Climate change
• Social justice
• Economic inequality

Education is not just about learning to read and do math operations. Of course, gaining knowledge and practical skills is part of it, but education is also about values and critical thinking. It’s about finding our place in society in a meaningful way. 

Environmental Stewardship

A  study from 2022 found that people who belong to an environmental stewardship organization, such as the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, are likely to have a higher education level than those who do not. This suggests that quality education can foster a sense of responsibility towards the environment.

With the effects of climate change becoming increasingly alarming, this particular importance of education is vital to the health, safety, and longevity of our society. Higher learning institutions can further encourage environmental stewardship by adopting a  framework of sustainability science .

The Economic Benefits Of Education

Higher education can lead to better job opportunities and higher income. On average, a  person with a bachelor’s degree will make $765,000 more  in their lifetime than someone with no degree. Even with the rising costs of tuition, investment in higher education pays off in the long run. In 2020, the return on investment (ROI) for a college degree was estimated to be  13.5% to 35.9% . 

Green jobs  like environmental science technicians and solar panel installers  have high demand projections for the next decade. Therefore, degrees that will prepare you for one of these careers will likely yield a high ROI. And, many of these jobs only require an  associate’s degree or certificate , which means lower overall education costs. 

Unity  helps students maximize their ROI with real-world experience in the field as an integral part of every degree program. 

10 Reasons Why School Is Important

Education is not just an individual pursuit but also a societal one.  In compiling these reasons, we focused on the question, “How does education benefit society?” Overall, higher education has the power to transform:

• Individuals’ sense of self
• Interpersonal relationships
• Social communities
• Professional communities

Cognitive Development

Neuroscience research  has proven that the brain is a muscle that can retain its neuroplasticity throughout life. However, like other muscles, it must receive continual exercise to remain strong. Higher education allows people of any age to improve their higher-level cognitive abilities like problem-solving and decision-making. This can make many parts of life feel more manageable and help society run smoothly. 

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is key to workplace success.  Studies  show that people with emotional intelligence exhibit more:

• Self-awareness
• Willingness to try new things
• Innovative thinking
• Active listening
• Collaboration skills
• Problem-solving abilities

By attending higher education institutions that value these soft skills, students can improve their emotional intelligence as part of their career development in college.

Technological Literacy

Many careers in today’s job market use advanced technology. To prepare for these jobs, young people likely won’t have access to these technologies to practice on their own. That’s part of why so many STEM career paths require degrees. It’s essential to gain technical knowledge and skills through a certified program to safely use certain technologies. And, educated scientists are  more likely to make new technological discoveries .

Cultural Awareness

Education exposes individuals to different cultures and perspectives. Being around people who are different has the powerful ability to foster acceptance. Acceptance benefits society as a whole. It increases innovation and empathy. 

College also gives students an opportunity to practice feeling comfortable in situations where there are people of different races, genders, sexualities, and abilities. Students can gain an understanding of how to act respectfully among different types of people, which is an important skill for the workplace. This will only become more vital as our world continues to become more globalized.

Ethical and Moral Development

Another reason why school is important is that it promotes ethical and moral development. Many schools require students to take an ethics course in their general education curriculum. However, schools can also encourage character development throughout their programs by using effective pedagogical strategies including:

• Class debates and discussions
• Historical case studies
• Group projects

Unity’s distance learning programs  include an ethical decision-making class in our core curriculum. 

Ready To Learn More About Unity Environmental University?

Communication Skills

Effective written and verbal communication skills are key for personal and professional success. Higher education programs usually include at least one communication course in their general education requirements. Often the focus in these classes is on writing skills, but students can also use college as an opportunity to hone their presentation and public speaking skills. Courses such as  Multimedia Communication for Environmental Professionals  provide many opportunities for this. 

Civic Engagement

According to a  Gallup survey , people with higher education degrees are:

• More likely to participate in civic activities such as voting and volunteering
• Less likely to commit crimes
• More likely to get involved in their local communities

All these individual acts add up to make a big difference in society. An educated electorate is less likely to be swayed by unethical politicians and, instead, make choices that benefit themselves and their community. Because they are more involved, they are also more likely to hold elected officials accountable.

Financial Stability

The right degree can significantly expand your career opportunities and improve your long-term earning potential. Not all degrees provide the same level of financial stability, so it’s important to research expected salary offers after graduation and job demand outlook predictions for your desired field. Consider the return on investment for a degree from an affordable private school such as  Unity Environmental University .

Environmental Awareness

We have already discussed why education is important for environmental stewardship. Education can also lead to better environmental practices in the business world. By building empathy through character education and ethics courses, institutions can train future business leaders to emphasize human rights and sustainability over profits. All types and sizes of businesses can incorporate sustainable practices, but awareness of the issues and solutions is the first step.

Lifelong Learning

The reasons why education is important discussed so far focus on institutional education. However, education can happen anywhere. Attending a university that values all kinds of learning will set students up with the foundation to become lifelong learners.  Research  demonstrates that lifelong learners tend to be healthier and more fulfilled throughout their lives. When societies emphasize the importance of education, they can boost their overall prosperity.

The Role Of Unity Environmental University In Society

Environmentally conscious education is extremely valuable and should be accessible to all.   Unity Environmental University  offers tuition prices that are comparable to public universities, and financial aid is available to those who qualify. Courses last five weeks so that students can focus on only one class at a time. This ensures all learners are set up for academic success. 

Unity believes in supporting students holistically to maximize the power of education. This includes mental health services,  experiential learning opportunities , and  job placement assistance . Students in our  hybrid programs  can take classes at several field stations throughout Maine and enjoy the beautiful nature surrounding the campus for outdoor recreation.

Sustainable Initiatives

Some highlights from Unity Environmental University’s many sustainable initiatives:

• All programs include at least one sustainability learning outcome
• All research courses are focused on sustainability research
• Reduced building energy use by 25% across campus
• 100% of food waste is recycled into energy 
• Campus features a  net-zero LEED Platinum-certified classroom/office building

While many schools value sustainability, Unity stands out because  everything  we do is about sustainability. We also recognize our responsibility to model how a sustainable business can operate in a manner that’s fiscally viable and socially responsible.

Make An Impact At Unity Environmental University

While the phrase ‘education is power’ may sound cliche, it is also resoundingly true. Higher education has the power to transform individuals and societies. Unity Environmental University understands its power to make a positive impact on the world. That’s why we were the first university to divest from fossil fuels. 

This year, we celebrated our  largest incoming class ever , showing that students want an education system that aligns with their values. In addition to our commitment to sustainability, we offer flexibility to students with start dates all year round for our  online degree programs .

Start Your Journey

Looking for Answers

Get More Info

© Unity Environmental University 2024. “America’s Environmental University.™”

Privacy Overview

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.

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

Forty thought-provoking quotes about education..

Posted May 12, 2014 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

Role of Education and its importance in building a character

tooba yousufi

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil” ~ C.S. Lewis.

Education is a way that improves our lives and pushes us to be better people. It gives us an understanding of the world around us. It offers opportunities allowing us to use our experiences and knowledge to gain respect and lead a better life in the future. 

What is Education? It is one of the simplest questions that have different answers — each with its own unique perspective. Some say that education is essential to gain knowledge about the past and the present that leads to a better future. It just doesn’t include readable information present in the books used in schools and colleges such as the best books on weather for kids or the scientific knowledge delivered to the young students—although it plays an important part in setting our mind — it is more complicated than just being disciplined to acquire values and skills that serve society and generations of humanity. 

The goal of true education is more than the cerebral aspect of understanding the various modes of critical, abstract, visual, and creative thought processes. It is rather about addressing the corporeal aspect of a person making a holistic individual. 

Simply put, it can be said that Education is a platform that can break all barriers allowing us to discover and explore our limits. 

Character and personality: the soul of Education

The personality and character of a person is something that makes an individual different from others. Some associated character to be the moral values and ethics of a person. However, it is an optimistic approach to life and a process of continuous learning which can be acquired at any time, no matter the time and age. 

In order to understand the relation between the character and Education in character building, imagine a situation where a human has knowledge but no character or personality that can differentiate his character from others. Such a person is indeed knowledgeable, but it is merely a robot that does work and carries out tasks without having moral and ethical values. 

Role of Education in the development of character

The key to knowledge — lack of knowledge can have an effect on the pleasing quality of politeness and involvement in discussions with educated people. Knowledge lets you indulge with learned people giving a boost to your personality and character. Besides providing you with an opportunity to be better at every task, it can enhance your decisions and set a better perception of your personality, among others.

Makes you choose between right and wrong — blind faith and superstitions are something in which people get trapped very easily. Bad faith and false perceptions can harm society more than doing good for it. Being an educated person helps in eliminating false beliefs enabling us to pick out right from wrong. This is not just true in a religious way but also provides better opportunities to the people rather than limiting their mindset. 

The teacher of ethics — failing provides a path to success which has hurdles and difficulties. Education provides light and knowledge to successfully cross those hurdles. The quality of an educated person is that they learn to be better by working out a way that is both fair and successful. 

A confidence booster — a confident personality and character are important to thrive in this world. Establishing healthy communication while clearing doubts on any subject or topic. Education gives you the confidence to put forward the facts which can create a perfect impression in the eyes of the audience. 

A foundation for lifelong learning — education gives humility. Humility, by definition, is the act of being modest. By that, it is meant, an educated person is willing to learn new things and aspects of life. Education provides a person with experiences opening gates to better opportunities and chances to enhance life.

Teach healthy habits — healthy habits here means mannerisms which include the way a person eats, drinks, sits, stand, talk, and many other related characteristics. These are the first things that a person is taught as a part of character building, and it becomes that first thing that you are judged upon as an individual. Healthy habits also come around behavior and cleanliness, which determines your character as a healthy person who can affect your personality as a person. 

Increase memory and thinking skills — thinking skills and a good memory can impress anyone leading to healthy discussions. A healthy brain remembers the facts and facets of a particular discussion and allows you to put your point in front of the audience with clarifications. Having better conversation leaves a positive mark on the audience, and your personality is praised for its charm as a keen thinker and true speaker.

Enhances the decision-making capabilities — being educated means being able to turn your weakness into a strength. Education empowers an individual to make decisions based on past experiences and present situations. It enables the individual against wrongs and taking charge of their lives without being dependent on others. 

The importance of character education  

As said above, character education and the development of personality are merely the promotion of ethical values and understanding of the world that is necessary for the development of a human mind. Simply put, it is the act of nurturing of those values that differentiate us from being humanized robots and computer intelligence. 

Character building in simple words is the relationship between two different types of knowledge—one, the knowledge that encompasses a wide range of subjects obtained through reading and training in a particular field of studies and two, the beliefs and moral codes of an individual which influences the understanding between the right and the wrong gained through past experiences and life lessons.

Character education has become a necessary part of today’s society. One of the major reasons for that is the continuous degrading of moral values; our society has fallen into “moral crises”. Individuals are struggling to cope with the disturbing trends such as violence, racism, and xenophobia, to name a few. Character education, on the other hand, can build a better personality leading to the development of a better society. 

The role of character education in academics 

Character building and Education has a major role to play in academic studies. One of the traits that character education teaches the students is the sense of responsibility and persistence which encourages the students to learn and maintain their focus on what’s important. This drives their will to learn better and do well in their academics. 

Other than that, building characters also helps in developing a moral code for interactions with the teachers and classmates, developing a positive environment, and influencing discipline among the students. 

The psychological factors determining the character of a person

It is true to say that every individual has different perceptions and beliefs that affect the development of the personality of the person. The character development of an individual depends mainly on one’s personal motives, interests, attitudes, and intellectual capacity, i.e., one’s perception, observation, the capability to reason and imagine. 

These factors are some of the major psychological aspects that determine the reactions and perceptions of a situation and thus affect the growth and development of one’s personality and character.

Conclusion 

The character of an individual is similar to a seed that has the potential to grow into a fully grown fruitful tree with proper nurturing and support. Education is something that supports the human mind and nourishes it, developing a better personality and character, allowing us to break barriers and explore limitations.  

The Role of Education in Development

• First Online: 30 August 2019

Cite this chapter

• Tristan McCowan 6  

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education ((PSGHE))

1760 Accesses

1 Citations

Understanding the role of education in development is highly complex, on account of the slippery nature of both concepts, and the multifaceted relationship between them. This chapter provides a conceptual exploration of these relationships, laying the groundwork for the rest of the book. First, it assesses the role of education as a driver of development, including aspects of economic growth, basic needs and political participation. Second, it looks at the constitutive perspective, involving education as national status, human right and human development. Finally, it assesses the ‘other face’ of education and its negative impacts, as well as the specificities of higher education in relation to other levels.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Almond, G., & Verba, S. (1963). The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy five nations . London: Sage.

Book   Google Scholar  

Becker, G. S. (1962, October). Investment in human capital: A theoretical analysis. Journal of Political Economy, 70 (Suppl.), 9–49.

Article   Google Scholar  

Beckett, K. (2011). R. S. Peters and the concept of education. Educational Theory, 61 (3), 239–255.

Bengtsson, S., Barakat, B., & Muttarak, R. (2018). The role of education in enabling the sustainable development agenda . London: Routledge.

Boni, A., Lopez-Fogues, A., & Walker, M. (2016). Higher education and the post 2015 agenda: A contribution from the human development approach. Journal of Global Ethics, 12 (1), 17–28.

Google Scholar  

Boni, A., & Walker, M. (2013). Human development and capabilities: Re-imagining the university of the twenty-first century . London: Routledge.

Boni, A., & Walker, M. (2016). Universities and global human development: Theoretical and empirical insights for social change . London: Routledge.

Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life . New York: Basic Books.

Bush, K., & Saltarelli, D. (2000). The two faces of education in ethnic conflict . Paris: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre.

Brundtland Commission. (1987). Our common future (Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bynner, J., Dolton, P., Feinstein, L., Makepiece, G., Malmberg, L., & Woods, L. (2003). Revisiting the benefits of higher education: A report by the Bedford Group for Lifecourse and Statistical Studies, Institute of Education . Bristol: Higher Education Funding Council for England.

Castells, M. (1994). The university system: Engine of development in the new world economy. In J. Salmi & A. Verspoor (Eds.), Revitalizing higher education (pp. 14–40). Oxford: Pergamon.

Coleman, J. S., Campbell, E. Q., Hobson, C. F., McPartland, J., Mood, A. M., Weinfeld, F. D., et al. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity . Washington, DC: U. S. Office of Education.

Dewey, J. (1966 [1916]). Democracy and education . New York: MacMillan.

Diamond, J. M. (1997). Guns germs and steel: The fate of human societies . New York: W. W. Norton.

Fraser, N. (1998). From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a ‘post-socialist’ age. In A. Philipps (Ed.), Feminism and politics . New York: Oxford University Press.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed . London: Penguin Books.

Garrod, N., & Macfarlane, B. (2009). Challenging boundaries: Managing the integration of post-secondary education . Abingdon: Routledge.

Giroux, H., & McLaren, P. (1986). Teacher education and the politics of engagement: The case for democratic schooling. Harvard Educational Review, 56 (3), 213–240.

Green, A. (1990). Education and state formation: the rise of education systems in England, France and the USA . London: Macmillan.

Hanushek, E. (2013). Economic growth in developing countries: The role of human capital. Economics of Education Review, 73, 204–212.

Hanushek, E., & Woessmann, L. (2008). The role of cognitive skills in economic development. Journal of Economic Literature, 46 (3), 607–668.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom . London: Routledge.

Huntington, S., & Nelson, J. (1976). No easy choice: Political participation in developing countries . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Klees, S. J. (2016). Human capital and rates of return: Brilliant ideas or ideological dead ends? Comparative Education Review, 60 (4), 644–672.

Lucas, R. E. (1988). On the mechanics of development. Journal of Monetary Economics, 22 (1), 3–42.

Luescher-Mamashela, T. M., Kiiru, S., Mattes, R., Mwollo-ntallima, A., Ng’ethe, N., & Romo, M. (2011). The university in Africa and democratic citizenship: Hothouse or training ground? Wynberg: Centre for Higher Education Transformation.

Mamdani, M. (2018). The African university. London Review of Books, 40 (14), 29–32.

Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72, 413–434.

Marginson, S. (2017). Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287–301.

Martin, C. (2018). Political authority, personal autonomy and higher education. Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 25 (2), 154–170.

Mazrui, A. A. (1975). The African university as a multinational corporation: Problems of penetration and dependency. Harvard Educational Review, 45, 198.

McCowan, T. (2004). The growth of private higher education in Brazil: Implications for equity and quality. Journal of Education Policy, 19 (4), 453–472.

McCowan, T. (2009). Rethinking citizenship education: A curriculum for participatory democracy . London: Continuum.

McCowan, T. (2013). Education as a human right: Principles for a universal entitlement to learning . London: Bloomsbury.

McCowan, T. (2015). Theories of development. In T. McCowan & E. Unterhalter (Eds.), Education and international development: An introduction . London: Bloomsbury.

McCowan, T., Ananga, E., Oanda, I., Sifuna, D., Ongwenyi, Z., Adedeji, S., et al. (2015). Students in the driving seat: Young people’s views on higher education in Africa (Research Report). Manchester: British Council.

McGrath, S. (2010). The role of education in development: An educationalist’s response to some recent work in development economics. Comparative Education, 46, 237–253.

McGrath, S. (2014). The post-2015 debate and the place of education in development thinking. International Journal of Educational Development, 39, 4–11.

McMahon, W. W. (2009). Higher learning, greater good . Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.

Milbrath, L., & Goel, M. (1977). Political participation: How and why do people get involved in politics? (2nd ed.). Chicago: Rand McNally College.

Milton, S. (2019). Syrian higher education during conflict: Survival, protection, and regime security. International Journal of Educational Development, 64, 38–47.

Milton, S., & Barakat, S. (2016). Higher education as the catalyst of recovery in conflict-affected societies. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 14 (3), 403–421.

Mincer, J. (1981). Human capital and economic growth (Working Paper 80). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w0803.pdf .

Newman, J. H. (1947 [1852]). The idea of the university: Defined and illustrated . London: Longmans, Green.

Novelli, M., & Lopez Cardozo, M. (2008). Conflict, education and the global south: New critical directions. International Journal of Educational Development, 28 (4), 473–488.

Nussbaum, M. (2000). Women and human development: The capabilities approach . Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Oketch, M. O., McCowan, T., & Schendel, R. (2014). The impact of tertiary education on development: A rigorous literature review . London: Department for International Development.

Parsons, S., & Bynner, J. (2002). Basic skills and political and community participation: Findings from a study of adults born in 1958 and 1970 . London: Basic Skills Agency.

Perkin, H. (2007). History of universities. In J. J. F. Forest & P. G. Altbach (Eds.), International handbook of higher education (pp. 159–206). Dordrecht: Springer.

Peters, R. S. (1966). Ethics and education . London: George Allen and Unwin.

Pherali, T., & Lewis, A. (2019). Developing global partnerships in higher education for peacebuilding: A strategy for pathways to impact. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00367-7 .

Prakash, M. S., & Esteva, G. (2008). Escaping education: Living as learning in grassroots cultures (2nd ed.). New York: Peter Lang.

Rist, G. (2002). The history of development: From western origins to global faith . London: Zed Books.

Robertson, S. (2016). Piketty, capital and education: A solution to, or problem in, rising social inequalities? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37 (6), 823–835.

Romer, P. M. (1986). Increasing returns and long-run growth. The Journal of Political Economy, 94 (5), 1002–1037.

Sachs, J. D. (2008). Common wealth: Economics . New York: Penguin Press.

Santos, B. de S. (2015). Epistemologies of the south: Justice against epistemicide . New York: Routledge.

Schultz, T. W. (1961). Investment in human capital. American Economic Review, 51, 1–17.

Sen, A. (1992). Inequality re-examined . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Sen, A. (1999a). Development as freedom . New York: Oxford University Press.

Sen, A. (1999b). Democracy as a universal value. Journal of Democracy, 10 (3), 3–17.

Smith, A., & Vaux, T. (2003). Education, conflict and international development . London: DFID.

Stewart, F. (1985). Planning to meet basic needs . London: Macmillan.

Stiglitz, J. E. (2007). Making globalization work . London: Allen Lane.

Streeten, P. (1977). The basic features of a basic needs approach to development. International Development Review, 3, 8–16.

Takayama, K., Sriprakash, A., & Connell, R. (2015). Rethinking Knowledge production and circulation in comparative and international education: Southern theory, postcolonial perspectives, and alternative epistemologies. Comparative Education Review , 59 (1), v–viii.

Tilak, J. B. G. (2003). Higher education and development in Asia. Journal of Educational Planning and Administration, 17 (2), 151–173.

Tomaševski, K. (2001). Human rights obligations: Making education available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable. Right to Education Primers No. 3. Gothenburg: Novum Grafiska.

Unterhalter, E. (2003). The capabilities approach and gendered education: An examination of South African complexities. Theory and Research in Education, 1 (1), 7–22.

Willis, P. (1978). Learning to Labour: How working class kids get working class jobs . Aldershot Gower: Saxon House/Teakfield.

Winch, C. (2006). Graduate attributes and changing conceptions of learning. In P. Hager & S. Holland (Eds.), Graduate attributes, learning and employability (pp. 67–89). Dordrecht: Springer.

Wolff, J., & de-Shalit, A. (2013). On fertile functionings: A response to Martha Nussbaum. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 14(1), 161–165.

World Bank. (1999). Knowledge for development. World Development Report. New York: Oxford University Press.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

UCL Institute of Education, London, UK

Tristan McCowan

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tristan McCowan .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

McCowan, T. (2019). The Role of Education in Development. In: Higher Education for and beyond the Sustainable Development Goals. Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19597-7_2

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19597-7_2

Published : 30 August 2019

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-19596-0

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-19597-7

eBook Packages : Education Education (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Transforming lives through education

Transforming education to change our world

UNESCO provides global and regional leadership on all aspects of education from pre-school to higher education and throughout life. It works through its Member States and brings together governments, the private sector and civil society to strengthen education systems worldwide in order to deliver quality education for all. As a thought leader it publishes landmark reports and data for policy-makers, implements programmes on the ground from teacher training to emergency responses and establishes and monitors norms and standards for all to guide educational developments.  

Right to education in a ruined world

Southern Italy, 1950. Three children are huddled around a makeshift desk made out of reclaimed wood, scribbling in their notebooks. The classroom has an earthen floor and roughly clad walls. The children’s clothes are ragged. They are wearing home-made slippers because shoes and the money to buy them are rare commodities in the war-ravaged south. 

Although World War II ended five years earlier, the scars of conflict are still visible in this black and white photo from a report commissioned by UNESCO from legendary photojournalist David Seymour. 

At the time when the photograph was taken, less than half of Italy’s population could read and write and just a third completed primary school. 70 years later, these children’s grandchildren enjoy an over 99% literacy rate. In the wake of the war, UNESCO led a major education campaign in Europe to respond to the education crisis, to rebuild links between people and to strengthen democracy and cultural identities after years of conflict. The emphasis then was on the fundamental learning skill of literacy.  

Immediately after World War two UNESCO led a major education campaign in Europe to respond to the education crisis, fix and rebuild links between people and strengthen cultural identities after years of conflict. David Seymour’s images show the extent of the fight against illiteracy led by the post-war Italian government and non-governmental organisations backed by UNESCO. 

Looking back at the deprived surroundings Seymour captured in his photo essay, one can see the extent of success. Seventy-one years later, those children’s grandchildren enjoy a 99.16 per cent literacy rate. 

Similar programmes were held across the globe, for instance in devastated Korea where UNESCO led a major education textbook production programme in the 1950s. Several decades after, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations and Korean citizen Ban Ki-Moon expressed the importance of such a programme for the country's development: 

The flowering of literacy

In a Korea devastated by war and where UNESCO led a major education textbook production programme in the 1950s, one student, Ban Ki-Moon, now Former Secretary-General of the United Nations, saw the world open up to him through the pages of a UNESCO textbook. Several decades after, he expressed the importance of such a programme for his country's development on the world stage.

Reaching the remote villages perched atop the Andes in Peru during the early 1960s wasn’t without its challenges for UNESCO’s technical assistance programme to bring literacy to disadvantaged communities. While Peru’s economy was experiencing a prolonged period of expansion, not all Peruvians were able to benefit from this growth which was limited to the industrialised coast. Instead, Andes communities were grappling with poverty, illiteracy and depopulation. 

Today, the number of non-literate youths and adults around the world has decreased dramatically, while the global literacy rate for young people aged 15-24 years has reached 92 %. These astonishing successes reflect improved access to schooling for younger generations.

Photojournalist Paul Almasy has left us the poignant image of a barefoot older man while he’s deciphering a newspaper thanks to his newfound literacy skills.

The classroom at the UNESCO mission in Chinchera, in the Andean highlands of Peru, had allowed the old man to discover the world beyond his tiny village.

However, there are still huge obstacles to overcome. Data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics shows that 617 million children and adolescents worldwide are not achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics. Since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 it is still the case that globally more than 450 million children - six out of 10 - have failed to gain basic literacy skills by the age of 10. And beyond literacy programmes, massive investments in skills for work and life, teacher training, and education policies are needed in a world that is changing ever faster. 

Global priorities

Africa, home to the world’s youngest population, is not on track to achieve the targets of SDG 4. Sub-Saharan Africa alone is expected to account for 25% of the school-age population by 2030, up from 12% in 1990, yet it remains the region with the highest out-of-school rates. Girls are more likely to be permanently excluded from education than boys. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequalities, with 89% of learners not having access to computers and 82% lacking internet access to benefit from distance learning. The lack of trained teachers further jeopardizes progress towards SDG4: pre-pandemic only 64% of whom were trained at the primary level and 58% at the lower secondary level.

As part of its Priority Africa Flagship 2022 – 2029 , UNESCO has launched Campus Africa: Reinforcing Higher Education in Africa with the objective to build integrated, inclusive, and quality tertiary education systems and institutions, for the development of inclusive and equitable societies on the continent.

Gender    

There are immense gender gaps when it comes to access, learning achievement and education, most often at the expense of girls and women. It is estimated that some 127 million girls are out of school around the world. For many girls and women around the world, the classroom remains an elusive, often forbidden space. UNESCO monitors the educational rights of girls and women around the world and shares information on the legal progress toward securing the right to education for women in all countries. Despite important progress in recent decades, the right to education is still far from being a reality for many girls and women. Discriminatory practices stand in the way of girls and women fully exercising their right to participate in, complete, and benefit from education. And while girls have difficulty with access, boys face increasing challenges, and particularly disengagement , from education at later stages. Globally only 88 men are enrolled in tertiary education for every 100 women. In 73 countries, fewer boys than girls are enrolled in upper-secondary education.

UNESCO's Her Atlas analyzes the legal frameworks of nearly 200 states to track which laws are enabling---or inhibiting---the right to education for girls and women. This interactive world map uses a color-coded scoring system to monitor 12 indicators of legal progress towards gender equality in the right to education.

Monitoring the right to education for girls and women

What makes me proud is that soon I will finish building a new house. I have already been able to buy a cow and I will soon be able to have another pond

Madagascar’s coastal Atsinanana region is known for its lush rainforests and fish breeding.

The country has a young population, but only one out of three children can complete primary education. Among those who are able to finish primary school, only 17% have minimum reading skills, while just a fifth of them have basic maths competencies. Once they leave school, children face a precarious labour market and unstable jobs, just like their parents.

Natacha Obienne is only 21 years old, but she is already in charge of a small fish farm, a career that is usually pursued by men. As one of the many out-of-school women in her area, she was able to set up her own business after vocational training taught her the basics of financial management and entrepreneurship, as well as the practicalities of breeding fish.

She understood that fish feeding depends on the temperature of the water. If it’s well managed, a higher number of fish is produced. ‘I immediately applied everything I learnt’ she says.

The classroom she attended changed the course of her life and she hopes other young people will follow in her footsteps.

I no longer depend on my parents and I am financially independent

She’s not alone. Around 3,000 youths in Madagascar have been trained since the start of the UNESCO-backed programme, some of whom have set up their own business and achieved financial independence. Education was the best way to ease people's emancipation.

Like Emma Claudia, 25, who after her vocational training started a restaurant with just a baking tray and a saucepan.

What does my family think? They are surprised and amazed by my evolution because I haven’t been able to complete my studies. I don’t have any school diplomas.

While Natacha and Emma Claudia have been able to transform their world through education, millions of children out of school around the world are still denied that dream.

Discrimination against girls remains widespread and nearly one billion adults, mostly women, are illiterate. The lack of qualified teachers and learning materials continues to be the reality in too many schools.

Challenging these obstacles is getting harder as the world grapples with the acceleration of climate change, the emergence of digitization and artificial intelligence, and the increasing exclusion and uncertainty brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.

We resumed school a while ago and it’s been stressful. We are trying to retrieve what we lost during quarantine, the worst thing about not being in school is the number of things you miss. Learning behind a screen and learning in person are incomparable.

Aicha is lucky to be able to continue her education. Her country has the highest rate of out-of-school children in the world – 10.5 million – and nearly two-thirds are women. To compound the problem, Nigeria’s northern states suffer from the violence that targets education.

In Russia, too, Alexander and his school friends had to cope with virtual learning and the lack of interactions.

All Russian students were moved to online studying. Needless to say, it was a rough year for all of us, several friends were struggling with depressive moods. They were missing their friends and teachers. So did I.

To protect their right to education during this unprecedented disruption and beyond, UNESCO has launched the Global Education Coalition , a platform for collaboration and exchange that brings together more than 175 countries from the UN family, civil society, academia and the private sector to ensure that learning never stops.

Building skills where they are most needed

Crouched over a pedal-powered sewing machine, Harikala Buda looks younger than her 30 years. Her slim fingers fold a cut of turquoise brocade before deftly pushing it under the needle mechanism.

Harikala lives in rural Nepal, where many villagers, particularly women, don’t have access to basic education. Women like Harikala rely on local community UNESCO-supported learning centres to receive literacy and tailoring skills. In a country where 32% of people over 15 are illiterate, particularly women and those living in rural areas, education is the only route to becoming self-reliant.

I have saved a small amount. My husband’s income goes towards running the house, mine is saved. We must save today to secure our children’s future

Having access to a classroom is the first step to creating a better world for the student, the student’s children and the student’s community. This is a lesson that matters a lot to

Kalasha Khadka Khatri, a 30-year-old Nepali mother. She grew up in a family of 21, with no option to go to school. Two of her children didn’t survive infancy because she was unable to pay for medical treatment. After acquiring sewing skills at her local community learning centre, Kalasha can now provide for her family.

Harikala and Kalasha were able to learn their skills through the support of the UNESCO’s Capacity Development for Education Programme (CapED), an initiative that operates in some 26 least-developed and fragile countries. 

Reimagining the future of education

As the world slowly recovers after the COVID-19 crisis, 244 million children and youth worldwide are still out of school. And a 2022 survey by UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank and OECD finds that one quarter of countries have yet to collect information on children who have and have not returned to school since the pandemic started.

Rebuilding how and where we learn requires policy advice, stronger education legislation, funds mobilisation, advocacy, targeted programme implementation based on sound analysis, statistics and global information sharing. Quality education also calls for the teaching of skills far beyond literacy and maths, including critical thinking against fake news in the digital era, living in harmony with nature and the ethics of artificial intelligence, to name a few of the critical skills needed in the 21st century. 

UNESCO  captured the debate around the futures of education in its landmark report from 2022 entitled Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education.

The Transformative Education Summit , that took place during the United Nations General Assembly in September 2022, as well as the Pre-Summit hosted by UNESCO to forge new approaches to education after the COVID-19 crisis, address the toughest bottlenecks to achieving SDG 4 and inspire young people to lead a global movement for education. World leaders committed to put education at the top of the political agenda. UNESCO has been mobilizing and consulting all stakeholders and partners to galvanize the transformation of every aspect of learning. UNESCO launched a number of key initiatives such as expanding public digital learning, making education responsive to the climate and environmental emergency, and improving access for crisis-affected children and youth.

The two children sitting at their makeshift desk in Italy in 1950 could not have imagined what a modern learning space might look like or how a modern curriculum or the tools and teacher training to deliver it might have been thought out and shaped to offer them the most from education. They could not have imagined the global drive to ensure that everyone was given a chance to learn throughout life. The only thing that has not changed since the photo was taken is the fact that education remains a fundamental and universal human right that can change the course of a life. To the millions still living in conditions of poverty, exclusion displacement and violence it opens a door to a better future.

Explore all the work and expertise of UNESCO in education

Related items.

Education Dice

Your One-Stop Resource for University Study Material

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.

Recommended Reading: Best Time-management Apps for College Students

• Recent Posts

• The Role of Education in Society: How It Impacts Our Lives? - March 12, 2022

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

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.

• Adler, Jonathan E., 2002, Belief’s Own Ethics , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• –––, 2003, “Knowledge, Truth and Learning”, in Curren 2003: 285–304. doi:10.1002/9780470996454.ch21
• Anderson, Elizabeth, 2007, “Fair Opportunity in Education: A Democratic Equality Perspective”, Ethics , 117(4): 595–622. doi:10.1086/518806
• Archambault, Reginald D. (ed.), 1965, Philosophical Analysis and Education , London: Routledge.
• Audi, Robert, 2017, “Role Modelling and Reasons: Developmental and Normative Grounds of Moral Virtue”, Journal of Moral Philosophy , 14(6): 646–668. doi:10.1163/17455243-46810063
• Baehr, Jason, 2011, The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604074.001.0001
• ––– (ed.), 2016, Intellectual Virtues and Education: Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology , New York: Routledge.
• Bailey, Richard, Robin Barrow, David Carr, and Christine McCarthy (eds), 2010, The SAGE Handbook of the Philosophy of Education , Los Angeles: Sage. doi:10.4135/9781446200872
• Bailin, Sharon and Harvey Siegel, 2003, “Critical Thinking”, in Blake et al. 2003: 181–193. doi:10.1002/9780470996294.ch11
• Ben-Porath, Sigal R., 2006. Citizenship Under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Blake, Nigel, Paul Smeyers, Richard Smith, and Paul Standish (eds.), 2003, The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education , Oxford: Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9780470996294
• Brighouse, Harry, 2005, On Education , London: Routledge.
• –––, 2009, “Moral and Political Aims of Education”, in Siegel 2009: 35–51.
• Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift, 2009, “Educational Equality versus Educational Adequacy: A Critique of Anderson and Satz”, Journal of Applied Philosophy , 26(2): 117–128. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5930.2009.00438.x
• Bull, Barry L., 2008, Social Justice in Education: An Introduction , New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
• Burbules, Nicholas C., 1994, “Marxism and Educational Thought”, in The International Encyclopedia of Education , (Volume 6), Torsten Husén and T. Neville Postlethwaite (eds.), Oxford: Pergamon, second edition, pp. 3617–22.
• Burnyeat, Myles F., 1980, “Aristotle on Learning to be Good”, in Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics , Berkeley CA: University of California Press, pp. 69–92.
• Callan, Eamonn, 1997, Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy , Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/0198292589.001.0001
• –––, 2006, “Love, Idolatry, and Patriotism”, Social Theory and Practice , 32(4): 525–546. doi:10.5840/soctheorpract200632430
• Carr, David, 2003, Making Sense of Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Theory of Education and Teaching , London: RoutledgeFalmer.
• Carter, J. Adam and Ben Kotzee, 2015, “Epistemology of Education”, Oxford Bibliographies Online , last modified: 26 October 2015.
• Carter, J.Adam and Duncan Pritchard, 2017, “Epistemic Situationism, Epistemic Dependence, and the Epistemology of Education”, in Abrol Fairweather and Mark Alfano (eds.), Epistemic Situationism , Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 168–191. doi:10.1093/oso/9780199688234.003.0010
• Cartwright, Nancy D., 2013, Evidence: For Policy and Wheresoever Rigor Is a Must , London: London School of Economics and Political Science.
• Cartwright, Nancy D. and Jeremy Hardie, 2012, Evidence-based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing It Better , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Chambliss, J.J. (ed.), 1996a, Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia , New York: Garland.
• Chambliss, J.J., 1996b, “History of Philosophy of Education”, in Chambliss 1996a, pp. 461–472.
• Clayton, Matthew, 2006, Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0199268940.001.0001
• Cleverley, John and D.C. Phillips, 1986, Visions of Childhood: Influential Models from Locke to Spock , New York: Teachers College Press.
• Curren, Randall R., 1998, “Education, Philosophy of”, in E.J. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , vol. 3, pp. 231–240.
• –––, 2000, Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• –––, (ed.), 2003, A Companion to the Philosophy of Education , Oxford: Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9780470996454
• –––, (ed.), 2007, Philosophy of Education: An Anthology , Oxford: Blackwell.
• –––, 2013, “A Neo-Aristotelian Account of Education, Justice and the Human Good”, Theory and Research in Education , 11(3): 231–249. doi:10.1177/1477878513498182
• –––, 2018, “Education, History of Philosophy of”, revised second version, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online . doi:10.4324/9780415249126-N014-2
• Curren, Randall, Emily Robertson, and Paul Hager, 2003, “The Analytical Movement”, in Curren 2003: 176–191. doi:10.1002/9780470996454.ch13
• Curren, Randall and Charles Dorn, 2018, Patriotic Education in a Global Age , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Dworkin, Ronald, 1977, Taking Rights Seriously , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Elgin, Catherine Z., 1999a, “Epistemology’s Ends, Pedagogy’s Prospects”, Facta Philosophica , 1: 39–54
• –––, 1999b, “Education and the Advancement of Understanding”, in David M. Steiner (ed.), Proceedings of the 20 th World Congress of Philosophy , vol. 3, Philosophy Documentation Center, pp. 131–140.
• Galston, William A., 1991, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139172462
• Gellner, Ernest, 1959, Words and Things: A Critical Account of Linguistic Philosophy and a Study in Ideology , London: Gollancz.
• Gilligan, Carol, 1982, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Goldberg, Sanford, 2013, “Epistemic Dependence in Testimonial Belief, in the Classroom and Beyond”, Journal of Philosophy of Education , 47(2): 168–186. doi:10.1111/1467-9752.12019
• Goldman, Alvin I., 1999, Knowledge in a Social World , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198238207.001.0001
• Greene, Maxine, 1988, The Dialectic of Freedom , New York: Teachers College Press.
• Gutmann, Amy and Dennis F. Thompson, 1996, Democracy and Disagreement , Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Hand, Michael, 2006, “Against Autonomy as an Educational Aim”, Oxford Review of Education , 32(4): 535–550. doi:10.1080/03054980600884250
• Hardie, Charles Dunn, 1941 [1962], Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory , New York: Teachers College Bureau of Publications.
• Hirst, Paul, 1965, “Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge”, in Philosophical Analysis and Education , Reginald D. Archambault, (ed.), London: Routledge, pp. 113–138.
• Hirst, Paul and R.S. Peters, 1970, The Logic of Education , London: Routledge.
• Hollis, Martin, 1982, “Education as A Positional Good”, Journal of Philosophy of Education , 16(2): 235–244. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9752.1982.tb00615.x
• Howe, Kenneth R., 2003, Closing Methodological Divides: Toward Democratic Educational Research , Dordrecht: Kluwer. doi:10.1007/0-306-47984-2
• Jacobs, Lesley A., 2010, “Equality, Adequacy, And Stakes Fairness: Retrieving the Equal Opportunities in Education Approach”, Theory and Research in Education , 8(3): 249–268. doi:10.1177/1477878510381627
• Kotzee, Ben (ed.), 2013, Education and the Growth of Knowledge: Perspectives from Social and Virtue Epistemology , Oxford: Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781118721254
• Kristjánsson, Kristján, 2015, Aristotelian Character Education , London: Routledge.
• –––, 2017, “Emotions Targeting Moral Exemplarity: Making Sense of the Logical Geography of Admiration, Emulation and Elevation”, Theory and Research in Education , 15(1): 20–37. doi:10.1177/1477878517695679
• Kvernbekk, Tone, 2015, Evidence-based Practice in Education: Functions of Evidence and Causal Presuppositions , London: Routledge.
• Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, 2000, An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Educational Research , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Locke, J., 1693, Some Thoughts Concerning Education , London: Black Swan in Paternoster Row.
• Lucas, Christopher J. (ed.), 1969, What is Philosophy of Education? , London: Macmillan.
• Lyotard, J-F., 1984, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1984, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory , second edition, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Martin, Jane Roland, 1985, Reclaiming a Conversation: The Ideal of the Educated Woman , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Mehta, Ved, 1963, Fly and the Fly-Bottle: Encounters with British Intellectuals , London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
• Miller, Richard W., 2007, “Unlearning American Patriotism”, Theory and Research in Education , 5(1): 7–21. doi:10.1177/1477878507073602
• National Research Council (NRC), 2002, Scientific Research in Education , Washington, DC: National Academies Press. [ NRC 2002 available online ]
• Noddings, Nel, 1984, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , Berkeley: University of California Press.
• –––, 1992, The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education , New York: Teachers College Press.
• –––, 2015, Philosophy of Education , fourth edition, Boulder, CO: Westview.
• O’Connor, D.J., 1957, An Introduction to Philosophy of Education , London: Routledge.
• Park, J., (ed.), 1965, Bertrand Russell on Education , London: Allen and Unwin.
• Peters, R.S., (ed.), 1973, The Philosophy of Education , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1981, Moral Development and Moral Education , London: G. Allen & Unwin.
• Phillips, D.C., 1985, “Philosophy of Education”, in International Encyclopedia of Education , Torsten Husén and T. Neville Postlethwaite, (eds.), pp. 3859–3877.
• –––, 1987, Philosophy, Science, and Social Inquiry: Contemporary Methodological Controversies in Social Science and Related Applied Fields of Research , Oxford: Pergamon.
• –––, 2009, “Empirical Educational Research: Charting Philosophical Disagreements in an Undisciplined Field”, in Siegel 2009: 381–406.
• –––, 2010, “What Is Philosophy of Education?”, in Bailey et al. 2010: 3–19. doi:10.4135/9781446200872.n1
• –––, (ed.), 2014, Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy , Los Angeles: Sage.
• Pritchard, Duncan, 2013, “Epistemic Virtue and the Epistemology of Education”, Journal of Philosophy of Education , 47(2): 236–247. doi:10.1111/1467-9752.12022
• –––, 2016, “Intellectual Virtue, Extended Cognition, and the Epistemology of Education”, in Baehr 2016: 113–127.
• Rawls, John, 1971, A Theory of Justice , Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 1993, Political Liberalism , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Robertson, Emily, 2009, “The Epistemic Aims of Education”, in Siegel 2009: 11–34.
• Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (ed.), 1998, Philosophers on Education: New Historical Perspectives , New York: Routledge.
• Satz, Debra, 2007, “Equality, Adequacy, and Education for Citizenship”, Ethics , 117(4): 623–648. doi:10.1086/518805
• Scheffler, Israel, 1960, The Language of Education , Springfield, IL: Thomas.
• –––, 1965, Conditions of Knowledge: An Introduction to Epistemology and Education , Chicago: Scott, Foresman.
• –––, 1973 [1989], Reason and Teaching , Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
• Schouten, Gina, 2012, “Fair Educational Opportunity and the Distribution of Natural Ability: Toward a Prioritarian Principle of Educational Justice”, Journal of Philosophy of Education , 46(3): 472–491. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9752.2012.00863.x
• Scriven, Michael, 1991a, “Beyond Formative and Summative Evaluation”, in Milbrey McLaughlin and D.C. Phillips (eds.), Evaluation and Education: At Quarter Century , Chicago: University of Chicago Press/NSSE, pp. 19–64.
• –––, 1991b, Evaluation Thesaurus , Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Siegel, Harvey, 1988, Educating Reason: Rationality, Critical Thinking, and Education , New York: Routledge.
• –––, 1997, Rationality Redeemed?: Further Dialogues on an Educational Ideal , New York: Routledge.
• –––, 2004, “Epistemology and Education: An Incomplete Guide to the Social-Epistemological Issues”, Episteme , 1(2): 129–137. doi:10.3366/epi.2004.1.2.129
• –––, 2005, “Truth, Thinking, Testimony and Trust: Alvin Goldman on Epistemology and Education”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 71(2): 345–366. doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2005.tb00452.x
• –––, 2007, “Philosophy of Education”, in Britannica Online Encyclopedia , last modified 2 February 2018. URL = <https://academic.eb.com/levels/collegiate/article/philosophy-of-education/108550>
• –––, (ed.), 2009, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195312881.001.0001
• –––, 2016, “Israel Scheffler”, In J. A Palmer (ed.), Routledge Encyclopaedia of Educational Thinkers , London: Routledge, pp. 428–432.
• –––, 2017, Education’s Epistemology: Rationality, Diversity, and Critical Thinking , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2018, “The Epistemology of Education”, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online , doi:10.4324/0123456789-P074-1.
• Skinner, B.F., 1948 [1962], Walden Two , New York: Macmillan.
• –––, 1972, Beyond Freedom and Dignity , London: Jonathan Cape.
• Smeyers, Paulus, 1994, “Philosophy of Education: Western European Perspectives”, in The International Encyclopedia of Education , (Volume 8), Torsten Husén and T. Neville Postlethwaite, (eds.), Oxford: Pergamon, second Edition, pp. 4456–61.
• Smith, B. Othanel and Robert H. Ennis (eds.), 1961, Language and Concepts in Education , Chicago: Rand McNally.
• Snook, I.A., 1972, Indoctrination and Education , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Stone, Lynda (ed.), 1994, The Education Feminism Reader , New York: Routledge.
• Strike, Kenneth A., 2010, Small Schools and Strong Communities: A Third Way of School Reform , New York: Teachers College Press.
• Warnick, Bryan R., 2015, “Taming the Conflict over Educational Equality”, Journal of Applied Philosophy , 32(1): 50–66. doi:10.1111/japp.12066
• Watson, Lani, 2016, “The Epistemology of Education”, Philosophy Compass , 11(3): 146–159. doi:10.1111/phc3.12316
• Winch, Christopher and John Gingell, 1999, Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Education , London: Routledge.

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.

• PES (Philosophy of Education Society, North America)
• PESA (Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia)
• PESGB (Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain)
• 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

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Essay on Importance of Education in Our Life

Essay on importance of education in our life: – We all know the importance of education in our life. It is also said that the modern age is the age of education. Today Team GuideToExam brings to you a few essays on the importance of education.

You can also use these essays to prepare an article on the need of education or a speech on the importance of education as well.

So Without any DELAY

Lets START!

Table of Contents

(Importance of Education Essay in 50 Words)

We all know the value of education in our life. The word education comes from the Latin word educare which means ‘to bring us’. Yes, education brings us up in society. Education is very much necessary to grow up in society.

Simply education means the process of earning knowledge. We can’t deny the importance of education in our life. Life without education is like a boat without a rudder. Thus we all should understand the value of education and try to educate ourselves.

(Importance of Education Essay in 100 Words)

We all are aware of the importance of education. In order to go ahead in society, education is very necessary. Education is a process that helps a person grow his mental strength. It also improves the personality of a man.

Basically, our education system is divided into two sections; formal education and informal education. We earn formal education from schools and colleges. On the other hand, our life teaches us a lot. That is informal education.

Formal education or school education is categorized into three sections; primary education, secondary education, and higher secondary education. Education plays a vital role in our life. So we all should be aware of the importance of education in our life and try to earn it to upgrade our life.

Importance of Education Essay in 150 Words

(Essay on importance of education in our life)

In this competitive world, we all know the importance of education in our life. Education plays a vital role in shaping our life and personality. Education is very important for getting good position and jobs in society.

Education opens many ways for us to succeed in our life. It not only improves our personality but also upgrades us mentally, spiritually, intellectually. Every person wants to get success in his/her life. But success can be got only through earning proper education.

At the very early stage of life, a kid dreams of becoming a doctor, lawyer, or IAS officer. Parents also want to see their kids as a doctor, lawyers, or higher-level officers. This can be possible only when the child gets a proper education.

In our society, the higher officials, doctors, and engineers are respected by all. They are respected for their education. So it can be concluded that the importance of education in our lives is immense and we all need to earn it to get success in our life.

Importance of Education Essay in 200 Words

It is said that education is the key to success. Education plays a vital role in our life. Human life is full of challenges. Education reduces the stress and challenges of our life. Generally, education is a process of gaining knowledge.

The knowledge a person gets through education helps him in coping with the challenges in his life. It opens the various ways of life that have been draped earlier.

The importance of education in life is immense. It strengthens the base of a society. Education plays a vital role in removing superstition from society. A child involves in the process of education from a tender age.

A mother teaches her child how to speak, how to walk, how to eat etc. It is also a part of education. Gradually the child is admitted in school and starts to earn formal education. His success in life depends on how much education he/she gets in his career.

In our country, the government provides free education to students up to the secondary level. A country can’t be developed in a proper way if the citizens of the country are not well educated.

Thus our government is trying to conduct different awareness programs in different remote areas of the country and trying to make the people aware of the importance of education.

Long Essay on the importance of education in our life

(Importance of Education Essay in 400 Words)

Introduction to importance of education essay: – Education is an essential ornament that can lead us to success. Generally, the term education means a process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or college.

According to Prof. Herman H. Horn ‘education is a perennial process of adjustment’. The importance of education in our life is immense. Life can’t be got success without having an education. In this modern world, all who have attained success are well educated.

Types of Education: – Mainly there are three types of education; formal, informal, and non-formal education. Formal education is earned from schools, colleges, or universities.

A child gets admitted to a kingdergarten and gradually he goes through secondary, higher secondary, and university and earns formal education in his life. Formal education follows the specific syllabus and it is also entitled with certain sets of specific rules and regulations.

Informal education can be earned throughout our life. It doesn’t follow any specific syllabus or time table. For example, our parents teach us how to cook food, how to ride a bicycle. We don’t want any institution to earn an informal education. We earn informal education as our lives go on.

Another type of education is non-formal education. Non-formal education is a type of education that occurs outside the formal school system. Non-formal education is often used interchangeably with terms such as community education, adult education, continuing education, and second-chance education.

Importance of education: – Education is important in every sphere of life. In today’s era success can never be imagined without education. Education is important for the socio-economic development of a nation.

Education opens our minds and shows us different paths to success and prosperity. Life brings to us different challenges. But education helps us in dealing with those challenges. Education also removes different social evils like superstitions, child marriage, the dowry system, etc. from our society. As a whole, we can’t deny the value of education in our life.

Conclusion: – According to Nelson Mandela Education is the most powerful weapon which can be used to change the world.

Yes, education helps in the rapid development of the world. Human civilization has developed a lot only because of the growth of the literacy rate. It also improves the standard of living. Education always plays a significant role in nation building.

Long Essay on Importance of Education in our life

“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet” – Aristotle

Education is a form of learning in which knowledge, skills, and habits are transferred from one generation to another. Education is important for the all-around development of human beings like the personal, social, and economic development of the nation.

Talking on importance of education in our life, we must say that it improves our personal lives and helps societies to run smoothly by protecting ourselves from harmful events.

Types of education

There are mainly three types of education, namely, Formal education, Informal education, and Non-formal education.

Formal Education – Formal education is basically a process of learning where a person learns basic, academic, or trade skills. Formal education or formal learning begins at the elementary level and continues till the college, or university level.

It comes under a certain set of rules and regulations and it may grant a formal degree after completion of the course. It is given by specially qualified teachers and under strict discipline.

Informal Education – Informal education is the type of education in where people are not studying in a specific school or college or do not use any particular learning method. A father teaching his son how to ride a bicycle or a mother teaching his son/daughter how to cook also comes under this category of Informal Education.

A person can take his informal education by reading some books from a library or educational website. Unlike formal education, informal education has no definite syllabus and specific time period.

Non-formal Education – Programs like adult basic education and adult literacy education comes under Non-formal Education. Non-formal education includes home education, distance learning, fitness program, community-based adult education courses etc.

Non-formal education has no age limit and the timetable and syllabus of these types of education can be adjustable. Moreover, it has no age limit.

Importance of education in our life –

Education is important for the personal development and socio-economic development of the nation. Education is important to live happily as it empowers our minds to conceive good thoughts and ideas.

In order to remove corruption, unemployment, and environmental problems, education is necessary. Education makes huge chance in national development process as the standard of living of the citizens largely dependent on the level of education.

Now let’s look at the following points to understand why education is becoming one of the most important parts of our life.

Education helps us to acquire new skills and thus it becomes easier for us to do our day-to-day life activities in the best possible ways.

Education is important to raise a person’s standard of living because it gives us all the necessary tools and awareness about how we can increase our earnings using our knowledge.

An educated person can easily identify right from wrong and good from the bad as it gives him knowledge about ethical and moral responsibilities.

Education is important for a balanced society because an educated person respects everyone who is elder than him.

Importance of education in society –

Education is important for our society because it improves our personal lives and helps societies to run smoothly. Education teaches us how to live in our society with ethical values. It helps our society to progress further and live a quality life.

Importance of education in student life –

Education is one of the most important things in a student’s life. It helps students to do analysis while making important life decisions. Here, we are trying to enlist some of the important points why education is important in a student’s life.

Education is essential for selecting a good career. A good career gives us financial freedom along with mental satisfaction.

Education helps us to improve our communication skills such as speech, body language etc.

Education helps us to use technology in a better way in this era of rapid technological development.

Education helps students to become self dependent and build a great confidence among them to accomplish difficult tasks.

Some More Essays on Importance of Education

Essay on education importance.

(Need of Education Essay in 50 words)

Education plays an important role in shaping our life and carrier as well. We all know the importance of education in a person’s life.  A person needs to be well educated to go ahead smoothly in his/her life.

Education not only opens the jobs opportunity in a person’s life but also it makes a person more civilized and social as well. Moreover, education also uplifts a society socially and economically.

(Need of Education Essay in 100 words)

We all know the importance of education in our life. A person needs to be well educated to prosper in life. Education changes the attitude of a person and shapes his carrier as well.

The education system can be categorized into two main divisions – formal and informal education. Again formal education can be divided into three divisions- primary educations, secondary education, and higher secondary education.

Education is a gradual process that shows us the right path in life. We start our life with informal education. But gradually we start to acquire formal education and later we establish ourselves as per our knowledge that we acquire through education.

In conclusion, we can say that our success in life depends on how much education we acquire in life. So it’s very necessary for a person to get a proper education in order to prosper in life.

(Need of Education Essay in 150 words)

According to Nelson Mandela Education is the most powerful weapon that can be used to change the world. It plays a vital role in the development of an individual. Education makes a man self-sufficient. An educated man can contribute to the development of a society or a nation. In our society education has a great demand because everyone knows the importance of education.

Education to all is the primary goal of a developed nation. That is why our government provides free education to all up to 14 years. In India, every child has the right to get free govt. education.

Education has the utmost importance in a person’s life. An individual can establish himself by acquiring proper education. He /She gets much respect in society. So it is necessary to be well educated to earn respect and money in today’s world. Everyone should understand the value of education and try to earn proper education to prosper in life.

Long Essay on Education Importance

(Need of Education Essay in 400 words)

The significance and responsibility or role of education is very high. Education is very much important in our life. We should never underestimate the importance of education in life be it any education, formal or informal. Formal education is the education we get from school colleges etc. and the informal one is from parents, friends, elders, etc.

Education has become a part of our life as education now a day is needed everywhere it is literally a part of our life. Education is important to be in this world with contentment and affluence.

To become successful, we need to be educated first in this generation. Without education, people will dislike you think of you as a majority, etc. Also, education is significant for the individual, communal and monetary development of the country or nation.

The worth of education and its consequence can be unstated as the truth that the minute we are born; our parents begin educating us about a vital thing in life. A toddler starts learning innovative words and develops a vocabulary based on what his parents teach him.

Educated people make the country more developed. So education is also important to make the country more developed. The importance of education can’t be felt unless you study about it. Educated citizens build up high-quality political philosophy.

This automatically means that education is responsible for the high-quality political philosophy of a nation, state a particular place doesn’t matter of its area.

Now a day the standard of someone is also judged by someone’s education qualification which I think is right because education is very important and everyone should feel the importance of education.

Essay on Caring for Elderly

The obtainable learning or educational system today has been abridged to a swap of commands or instructions and information and not anything extra.

But if we compare today’s educational system with the before ones that are in previous times the purpose of education was to instill high-quality or superior or good values and ethics or principles or morality or simply morals in an individual’s consciousness.

Today we have drifted away from this ideology because of the rapid commercialization in the education segment.

People suppose that an educated being is one who is able to become accustomed to his situations as per the necessity. People should be able to make use of their skills and their education to conquer difficult blockages or obstacles in any area of their life so that they can take the correct decision at that correct moment.  All this quality makes a person an educated person.

A good education makes an individual develops socially. Economically.

400 Words Essay on the importance of education

What is Education – Education is the process of gathering knowledge by learning things and experiencing ideas that provide an understanding of something. The purpose of Education is to develop a person’s desire and increase his ability to think and learn new things.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” – Nelson Mandela

Importance of education in our life – education is considered as the most important thing for all-round development in a person’s life. In order to live a happy life and enjoy the good things that the world has offered to us, we just need to get educated.

Education increases our understanding of the difference between right and wrong. It is the only thing by which we can see the world as a fair place where everyone is given equal opportunities.

Education takes a big role in making us both financially and socially independent. As we know the importance of money for survival in Today’s world, we must make ourselves educate to choose better career options.

Importance of education in society – The Importance of Education in a Society can never be neglected as it contributes to Social Harmony and peace.

As being educated, a person is well aware of the consequences of illegal actions and there is very less chance for that person to do something wrong or illegal. Education makes us self-dependent and it makes us wiser enough to take our own decisions.

Importance of education in student life – Education is undoubtedly the most important thing in a student’s life. It is just like oxygen as it gives us the required knowledge and skills to survive in this competitive world.

Whatever we want to become in life or what career we choose, education is the only thing that makes us able to achieve our goals. Besides its socio-economic benefits, education gives us the confidence to express our views and opinions in society.

Final Words

Education is the most important ingredient to changing the world. It helps us to acquire knowledge and that knowledge can be used to make a better living.

Most importantly knowledge and education is something that can never be destroyed by any type of natural or manmade disaster. It plays an important role in the development of the society and the overall development of the Nation also.

A Complete Essay on Caring for the Elderly

Essay on Social Media Advantages and Disadvantages

1 thought on “Essay on Importance of Education in Our Life”

Thanks for essey

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Letter of Recommendation

What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.

30,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Meet top uk universities from the comfort of your home, here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

• School Education /

Essay on Playground for Children in English for School Students

• Updated on  
• May 21, 2024

Essay on Playground: A playground is a vibrant space where children engage in recreational activities, fostering physical, social, and cognitive development. It serves as a haven for exploration, creativity, and joyful interactions, promoting health and well-being in communities worldwide. Let’s discuss an essay on playground to understand their importance in our lives.

Table of Contents

• 1.1 Physical Development
• 1.2 Social Interaction
• 1.3 Cognitive Stimulation
• 1.4 Safety Measures
• 1.5 Community Engagement
• 1.6 Conclusion
• 2 Essay on Playground in 200 Words

Quick Read: Write a Letter on Mother’s Day

Essay on Playground in 500 Words

Playgrounds serve as more than mere recreational spaces; they are essential arenas for fostering children’s holistic development. With a blend of physical challenges, social interactions, and cognitive stimulation, playgrounds play a pivotal role in shaping the future generation.

Physical Development

At the heart of playgrounds lies the promotion of physical activity, crucial for developing gross motor skills, balance, and coordination. Climbing structures strengthen muscles, while swings promote sensory integration and spatial awareness. The varied terrain encourages exploration, enhancing agility and proprioception. Additionally, outdoor play fosters a connection with nature, promoting healthier lifestyles and reducing the risk of childhood obesity.

Social Interaction

Playgrounds act as bustling hubs where children learn vital social skills. Through unstructured play, they navigate social dynamics, negotiate conflicts, and develop empathy. Cooperative games foster teamwork and communication, while imaginative play encourages creativity and problem-solving. Moreover, playgrounds facilitate interactions across diverse backgrounds, fostering inclusivity and cultural understanding.

Quick Read: Essay on Voting Rights in India: 500 Words in English for Students

Cognitive Stimulation

Beyond physical activity, playgrounds provide valuable cognitive stimulation. Imaginative play nurtures creativity and divergent thinking as children invent scenarios and role-play different roles. Navigating playground equipment enhances spatial reasoning and problem-solving skills. By experimenting with cause and effect, children learn valuable lessons about risk-taking and decision-making.

Safety Measures

While playgrounds offer numerous benefits, safety remains paramount. Proper surfacing materials, such as rubber mulch or synthetic turf, cushion falls and reduce injuries. Regular maintenance ensures equipment remains safe and functional, while supervision by caregivers promotes responsible play. Furthermore, inclusive design principles accommodate children of all abilities, creating a welcoming environment for everyone.

Community Engagement

Playgrounds serve as focal points for community engagement, fostering social connections among families. They provide opportunities for parents to interact while their children play, strengthening neighbourhood bonds. Community-led initiatives, such as volunteer clean-up efforts or fundraising for new equipment, promote a sense of ownership and pride in local parks.

Playgrounds are indispensable for children’s development, offering a multifaceted approach to physical, social, and cognitive growth. By providing safe and stimulating environments for play, communities can nurture the next generation of healthy, empathetic, and creative individuals. Recognizing the importance of outdoor play in a digital age, investing in playgrounds becomes essential for building resilient and thriving communities. Through collaboration and commitment, we can ensure that playgrounds remain vibrant spaces where children can thrive and flourish.

Essay on Playground in 200 Words

A.1 A playground, playpark, or play area is a place designed to provide an environment for children that facilitates play, typically outdoors.

A.2 My school has the largest playground in the entire city, This playground is better than the other one. We play in the playground in the evening. The playground is swampy because of rain.

A.3 A playground is made for physical and sporty activities like running, jumping, football, cricket, badminton, hockey, etc.

Popular Essay Topics for Students

For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu.

Aayushi Vardhan

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

Connect With Us

30,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today.

Resend OTP in

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

January 2024

September 2024

What is your budget to study abroad?

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

Have something on your mind?

Make your study abroad dream a reality in January 2022 with

India's Biggest Virtual University Fair

Essex Direct Admission Day

Why attend .

Don't Miss Out