The Crucial Role of Education

Education is any process (formal or informal) by which an individual is encouraged to fully develop his or her potential. It also provides an individual with the necessary knowledge, skills, and character to be a productive member of society. That's the crucial role of education!

FORMAL EDUCATION

The term 'education' is often used to mean formal education. Formal education is a conscious effort by human society to pass on skills and information considered vital for socialization. Learning that takes in schools, or a similar environment is a form of formal education.

In countries with developing cultures, you can often find only limited formal education. Many children will learn from the adults surrounding them and the environment where other individuals will serve as their teachers. A highly developed and efficient way of transmitting accumulated knowledge and values (the school system and teachers) will become necessary in more developed societies.

INFORMAL EDUCATION

On the other hand, informal education results from the constant effect of the environment and its power to shape values and habits. Individuals acquire informal education from the world - families, peers, books, media, etc.

In a broad sense, the term 'education' covers formal learning, value-building, and day-to-day experiences that lead to a healthy balance. Simply put, all that individual experience is a certain form of education.

KIDS IN SCHOOL

For most families, the annual trek back to school is one event in a year that mobilizes all the planning, effort, and resources the entire family can afford. Education is on top of the list of priorities of a family, especially the parents in developed cultures.

Within the confines of the classroom, kids are supposed to learn not only academic subjects but also values and principles that are the basic tenets of being righteous citizens and good persons.

The values of truth, honesty, fairness, patriotism, and service to others and family are highly regarded, also in homeschooling programs. When kids graduate from high school, it is hoped that they have imbibed all these values as they pursue higher education in college and eventually their own lives.

ALL THE WORLD IS A CLASSROOM

But what is it that schools really teach kids in grade school and high school? Is their education just really confined within the four walls of the classroom? Shakespeare once said, “All the world is a stage.” In this day and age, all the world is a classroom would be more appropriate. This is one reality everybody needs to be aware of.

Schools alone do not produce excellent students. The home, the family, the schools, the churches, the community, and the nation are all responsible for making kids better persons, citizens, and workers.

Parents send their kids to school because they believe they owe it to their children to equip them with the necessary knowledge, skills, and values to better compete with others once they leave the school campus. Parents take comfort in the knowledge that the school and its teachers will provide the kids with proper education and teach them how to be honorable citizens and productive workers.

In truth, kids start their education at home, learning from their parents, siblings, and neighbors. Kids get the affirmation of their values and principles from the daily happenings that transpire around them, thus, the need for elders to set good examples.

Going to school should be a positive influence on kids to at least offset some of the unpleasant things that, sad to say, surround them in the real world. It is undoubtedly a tough job for schools these days.

Needless to say, the school is not a fortress where students are protected from the harsh realities of the outside world. It is a place where kids are taught how to deal with them and be better persons to make the world a pleasant place to live in, but this calls for concerted efforts from everybody around.