For girls, research suggests that there are benefits to be gained from an additional set of supportive conditions that include close proximity of schools to homes, female role models, single-sex learning environments when needed, and curricula that challenge female students, particularly in mathematics and the sciences. Other measures include reducing the costs of educating female students by waiving school fees or providing monetary incentives to families as a means of compensating for lost income (because their children are not working). Outside the classroom, agencies and community-development specialists emphasize the benefits of education while countering beliefs that the education of daughters is contrary to religious doctrine or cultural traditions. Social and family interaction
Research further indicates that parent participation in schools is an important factor in the success of their children’s academic work. Generally, parents from more affluent backgrounds have both the resources and the confidence to play a more active role in schools and to act as advocates for their children. Moreover, the formal content of instruction and even the pedagogies employed tend to reflect the values, language, and instructional and learning patterns of the middle classes as well as the more privileged and powerful social classes. Various measures initiated by schools to equalize opportunities for less-advantaged groups include establishing closer and more systematic involvement of teachers with parents (rather than only when problems arise), arranging for parent-teacher conferences to take place at convenient locations and times, making information about the workings of the education system and individual schools available in the home language, and focusing on children’s strengths and abilities. In the absence of other social service agencies in rural areas and depressed urban neighborhoods, schools have been called upon to offer a number of educational and social services, such as extended day care, recreational activities and sports programs, health programs (including inoculations and birth control information), and literacy and adult education classes. Alternative forms of education
Developments in Internet-based communications and instructional technologies since the late 20th century provide previously unimaginable opportunities for people of all ages to tap the vast stores of world knowledge. Many of these technologies inevitably bring forth new forms of socialization. Contradicting the long-term historical movement away from apprenticeships or learning within a family setting and toward institutionalized education controlled by central governments, distance learning and other technological developments have opened the possibilities of learning in multiple ways at various sites—all under the control of individual learners. Technologies that promise to bring people together to share knowledge and life experiences, conversely, may also lead to the isolation of individuals and to the absence of face-to-face interactions among peers and teachers that are critical to preparation for adult roles as members of particular cultures and societies. Homeschooling has also raised concerns about childhood socialization, though consortia of homeschooling parents (whereby students can meet and attend classes with other home-based students) are increasingly common. The use of learning packages and degree programs exported from the metropolitan centres of North America, Europe, and the Pacific (notably Australia) to the countries of the Southern Hemisphere, while providing opportunity for advanced studies, may also include culturally inappropriate content, disregard for traditional knowledge, and the displacement of local languages by an international lingua franca, such as English.
Finally, it should be noted that, in addition to state-regulated schooling, there are many parallel or supplementary systems of education often designated as “nonformal” and “popular.” Many private and public agencies provide various forms of instruction, aimed at specific populations, to serve needs not met by public schooling. In Sweden, for example, reforms implemented in the 1990s enabled private, for-profit schools to provide free public education in exchange for government funding. Another internationally recognized example is BRAC (the Bangladesh Rural Action Committee), a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that combines community-based literacy and basic education programs with income generating activities for girls and women. BRAC and other NGOs helped raise enrollments in Bangladeshi schools from 55 percent in 1985 to 85 percent by the 21st century.
In programs such as these, education for job entry, upgrading, or promotion occurs on a vast and systematic scale, sometimes offering educational certificates equivalent to college degrees for educational goals achieved while working. Religious institutions, as they have done in the past, instruct the young and old alike not only in sacred knowledge but also in the values and skills required for participation in local, national, and transnational societies as well. And mass media may also be considered a parallel education system that offers worldviews and explanations of how society works, commonly in the form of entertainment, and that systematically reaches larger audiences than formal schooling. These parallel systems may complement, compete with, or even conflict with existing state-sponsored systems of schooling, and they provide challenges that current school systems, as in the past, must confront and reconcile as well as they can. Robert F. Arnove
Citation Information
Article Title: Education
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 26 June 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/education
Access Date: August 16, 2019
Additional Reading General works
General histories of education are mainly concerned with the educational history of the West. In some works early chapters survey non-Western educational developments in the context of ancient civilizations, and medieval Muslim education is frequently treated because of its impact upon Western education. Given these limitations, among the best general histories are Ellwood P. Cubberley, The History of Education (1920, reissued 1948); James Bowen, A History of Western Education, 3 vol. (1972–81); William Boyd and Edmund J. King, The History of Western Education, 11th ed. (1975, reprinted 1980); R. Freeman Butts, The Education of the West (1973); Robert Ulich, The Education of Nations, rev. ed. (1967), and History of Educational Thought, rev. ed. (1968); Harry G. Good and James D. Teller, A History of Western Education, 3rd ed. (1969); James Mulhern, A History of Education: A Social Interpretation, 2nd ed. (1959); Mehdi Nakosteen, The History and Philosophy of Education (1965); and Margaret Scotford Archer, Social Origins of Educational Systems (1979).
Despite its age, the five-volume A Cyclopedia of Education, ed. by Paul Monroe (1911–13, reprinted 1968), remains a comprehensive source of historical information. Its influence was recognized in Foster Watson (ed.), The Encyclopaedia and Dictionary of Education, 4 vol. (1921–22), a British work whose foreign contributors included John Dewey and Benedetto Croce. Lee C. Deighton (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Education, 10 vol. (1971), also has numerous historical references. There are many national encyclopaedias of historical interest in education.