The Evolution of Education

Education as a historical artifact is one tale that dates back a thousands years from now. Each generation, from the beginning of human evolution and writing, has made sure cultural and social values, traditions, morality, religion and skills, are passed on for primary human survival. Enculturation and the learning of social values and behaviors followed through with the act of socialization were the primary methods of learning at the earlier stages of education. Such accounts of edification stand as human history in itself. Where in pre-literate societies education was achieved orally and through observation and imitation, has now evolved through writing into a formal schooling of the recorded past. The passing ages have stamped education as an ‘integral must’ for any development of a human being or a civilization.

Straying from the universal historical background of education, the article highlights the evolution of such an artifact. The origins of our kind are believed to have evolved from the ‘hunter-gather’ type. It is safe to say that the human race were once nomadic, whether that is the case now is a debatable matter. The bands or tribes of the nomadic period had traditions, beliefs, values, and practices they passed on to the younger orally and informally through parents, extended families and kins. At later stages of their lives, they received instructions of a more structured and formal nature, imparted by people of their civilization or clan. These traditional forms of knowledge were and still are expressed through stories, legends and folktales. The advent of ‘writing’ came out primarily with carving then with paper and we all know the rest, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Phoenician writing system, Greek and Latin alphabets, Aramaic script, so on and so forth. With writing knowledge became universal, world wide and spread faster with each passing day. Now we have systems like SSC, HSC, O and A levels, IB, and the Madrasah leading Bangladesh forward with education, and the lights for further development.

The ‘pre to post’ genres of education that merge in from the beginning to the end of a civilization has left countries of today fighting to stand a chance at gaining an above average literacy rate. Bangladesh comes into the frame with a 54% adult literacy rate. The Bangladeshi educational board of the intermediate and secondary education was set up on 7^th of May in 1921 with the recommendation of Sadler Commission. Its purpose, as posted, was ‘according to the ordinance of the board, The East Pakistan Intermediate and Secondary Education Ordinance, 1961 (East Pakistan Ordinance No. XXXIII of 1961) and its amendments No. XVI of 1962 an No. XVII of 1977, it is responsible for the organization, regulation, supervision, control and development of the Intermediate and Secondary level public examinations and educational institutions’. The British stand as the primary contributors to the Bangladesh curriculum board of education that now follow the O and A level standards.

In Bangladesh education, as we see it now, has more or less turned the commercial corner as per levels of standards. The schools we tend to look up to are that of the missionaries or catholic schools that have aged about 50 years and above. Schools such as St. Gregory’s High School, built in the 1880’s, St. Joseph High School, Holy Cross School, both built in the 1950’s, and Greenherald, the oldest private English school of the nation built by the Catholic Archdiocese, are ones that were developed under the Christians and have now urbanized a highly disciplined Bengali-Christian literate name.

Saint Joseph seems to top the lot with the quality of education and the success records of the students in their public examinations, discipline, practice of leadership, sports and co-curricular activities. Where discipline is the key to education remains the higher literate of the lot.

Education has branched out to develop many categories and sections, but the trunk seems to uproot itself with every turn towards capitalism. In a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to the Principal of the school where his son was studying, he mentions that the qualities that he expected his son to acquire at school were of truthfulness, justice, optimism, love of fair play, awe for the sublime and beautiful in nature, self confidence, faith in one's own ideas or the courage of conviction and the paradoxical qualities of gentleness and firmness. Lincoln’s list for true edification may parallel our efforts at tedious learning. As a writer, I find it hard to parallel the word tedious and education. The shades I seem to wear sees curiosity as the only means to education. If a child isn’t curious he will not ask questions, if he doesn’t ask questions he will not know, if he lacks knowledge he will not be captivated in the true essence of knowledge. Madhu Wal, vice principal of DPS STS School explains this at its best, “The aim of education is to cultivate a spirit of free enquiry and independent thinking. Our sole ambition is not that our products should attain 90% marks in their Boards, but that they should be cultured, educated, disciplined, self-reliant, confident and worthy citizens of a new and modern world, well- equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. A well- balanced curriculum comprises not only the academic subjects which form the syllabi, and where the students should have an amazingly vast range to choose from, but it should also include manifold activities like debating, elocutions dramatics, hobbies camps treks, and of course games and sports whose educational value is undisputable. As such, to students, the gates of learning should be opened, not by the joyless rote learning of facts and cramming, but by an appeal to their sense organs, through the opportunity of seeing, touching, feeling, finding, and discovering. A school is not the place ‘in which the future warrior in life's battle is to be entirely occupied in manufacturing the amour with which he shall be armed, but in learning the use of the arms’.”

The idea of education thus remains the instinct of curiosity and of learning that should and are being guided by the term schooling or formal guidance providing the discipline needed to become a literate citizen. And is where education and the evolution of it becomes a process that needs integral attention and relentless effort. 

Source: http://mahmudsumi.blogspot.com/2010/08/evolution-of-education.html

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