Education

Introduction

Scholars of education have sought to base their work on factual or "scientific" authority since the inception of the discipline at the start of the twentieth century. Early students of education, however, were less concerned with the evolution of these academic standards and more interested in how humanistic studies of education might be relevant to their everyday encounters in the classroom. After tracing the development of this tension between academic and presentist concerns, it can be revealed that how this conflict has dramatically reemerged in the field of history since the late 1960s. This historiography illuminates a broader tension between scientific and humanistic concerns in the field of education and seeks to reconcile this dualism. Asserting that educators and researchers need both scientific and humanistic knowledge in order to study education with sufficient power to support sensible policies and effective practices, Humanistic and scientific perspectives must work in partnership, complementing one another with their differences. (Penelope 25-35)

Discussion

I make no claim for myself as a futurist and admit to being a bit skeptical of anyone who professes an ability to foretell the future. I take to heart the remark of J.B. Priestly: “Solemn prophesy is a futile proceeding, except insofar as it makes our descendents laugh.” It is impossible to foretell the future by extrapolating from existing trends with regard to information technology since events and developments which have nothing directly to do with information technology and which cannot be foreseen may have major impact on our future, and may even determine whether we have a future. I want to briefly mention a few lines of development which I believe will be particularly salient for education. (Penelope 25-35)

In 2005, about 43 percent of K-8 students participated in at least one after-school activity. Of these students, 31 percent participated in sports, 20 percent in religious activities, 18 percent in arts (e.g., music, dance, or painting), 10 percent in scouts, 8 percent in community service, 7 percent in academic activities (e.g., tutoring), and 6 percent in school clubs. A greater percentage of females than males were involved in arts (24 percent vs. 12 percent), school clubs (7 percent vs. 5 percent), community service (9 percent vs. 7 percent), religious activities (21 percent vs. 18 percent), and scouts (11 percent vs. 9 percent). However, a greater percentage of males than females participated in sports (34 percent vs. 28 percent).

Civilization would be a progressless sequence of one generation episodes were there not some means to store and transfer the culture from one generation to the next. We lack a term in common usage to indicate the combined totality of resources and processes that accomplish this process. The lack of a term tells us something; it is an indication of how infrequently we consider the issue of transfer of the culture from a holistic perspective. For lack of a better term, I use the term “education” to encompass that totality of processes and means used to perpetuate human culture. In this usage, “education” is ...