Aims of Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Aims of Education - Essay Example There are now a lot of bodies of knowledge that education has morphed to branch out to several expertise schools. Their aims have become as varied. This paper will set out to determine the aims of education by providing insights from various experts with differing views, and determine how writing fits in it. Educational Aims The twisting of the phrase has been seen to connote changes of points of view from the learners’ and teachers’ end. It was suggested by Winch that â€Å"the formulation of educational aims for a society is a political matter and must be worked out by the interest groups involved,† (635). Aims, for Winch, are compromised so that aside from children, parents, and teachers, the employers, unions, educators, and the government are also included to determine the aims. Decision is not limited to educators but will also lie on all stakeholders or interest groups. Specifically, Winch has proposed that â€Å"it is not the business of the schools to p repare children for jobs, but, in the 13-16 age phase, to orient children who are beginning to form an interest of what would be involved in it† (Winch 2, 107-108). There is a distinction between education and schooling so that education is concerned with educational values against schooling being to instrumental ones. Then, there is also the argument that preparation for paid employment can be part of an individual’s preparation for life as proposed earlier by Peters who insisted that a job requires the individual to prepare for it in school and motivates the individual to focus for his education. Training should be extensive to encompass understanding of principles for wider practicality and human concern, and should be given at the right time for the individual to determine his chances at life (Peters, 48). In the context of human life, aims of education had been assailed to be narrower than life aims (Clarke and Mearman, 251) so that universities must be providing d ating services although both acknowledged the education on preparing the young to enter into relationships. Winch insist that in preparing young people for life through education, then, this necessitates education as preparation for all of aims in one’s life (636). Therefore, when an individual is preparing to become a teacher, he or she does not only get education to become a teacher but to prepare a life of a teacher, walking the talk and all. Winch clarified, too, that not all life aims are educational aims; such as the life aim of an individual to live in a big house may not be an educational aim to distinguish life aim and educational aim. Thus: The point of saying that the aim of education is to prepare one for life is to assert that it is to prepare one with respect to the general orientation of one’s life, particularly by equipping one with the knowledge, ability and understanding to follow that orientation (Winch, 636). Another specific example pointed out by Winch was about the aim to live an autonomous life of which with respect to education, is in preparing one to make rational and informed choices in pursuing wishes in life. This preparation will make the individual