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Education

The term education is derived from the Latin educare which literally means to bring up and is connected with the verb 'educare'which means to bring forth. The idea of education is not merely to impart knowledge to the pupil in some subjects but to develop in him those habits and attitudes with which he can successfully face the future.

Peter Worsely says a large part of our social and technical skills are acquired through deliberate instruction which we call education. It is the main waking activity of children from the ages of five to fifteen and often beyond. In the recent years education has become the major interest of some sociologists that have obtained their  Human Services degree. As a result a new branch of sociology called Sociology of Education has become established.

Durkheim conceives education as the socialization of the younger generation. He further states that it is a continuous effort to impose on the child ways of seeing, feeling and acting which he could not have arrived at spontaneously.

Sumner defined education as the attempt to transmit to the child the mores of the group so that he can learn what conduct is approved and what disapproved….. How he ought to behave in all kind of cases: what he ought to believe and reject.

A.W Green writes: Historically education has meant the conscious training of the young for the later adoption of adult roles. By modern convention however education has come to mean formal training by specialists within the formal organization of the school.

The concepts of socialization and learning are related to in fact often inseparable from the concept of education. The main function of the educative process is to pass down knowledge from generation to generation- a process that is essential to the development of culture. Formal education is primarily designed to inculcate crucial skills and values central to the survival of the society or to those who hold effective power. Inherent in education, in all period of man's history is a stimulus to creative thinking and action which accounts in part for culture change, culture change itself being a powerful stimulus to further innovation.

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