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Education 211: Midterm Paper

By Kinda Chaib

With Dr. Munir Bashshur.

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“Long ago 3 old men lived in a village in India. Each was born blind. Since the blind men

could not see the world for themselves, they had to imagine many of its wonders. The men were

curious about many of the stories they heard, but they were most curious about elephants. The

old men argued day and night about elephants.

"An elephant must be a powerful giant," claimed the first blind man. He had heard stories about

elephants being used to clear forests and build roads.

"I am sure that an elephant is something magical," said the second blind man. "That

would explain why the Rajah's daughter can travel safely on it throughout the kingdom."

"I don't believe elephants exist at all," declared the third blind man. "I think we

are the victims of a cruel joke." Finally, the villagers grew tired of all the arguments, and they

arranged for the curious men to visit the palace of the Rajah to learn the truth about

elephants. The first blind man reached out and touched the side of the huge animal.

"An elephant is smooth and solid like a wall!" he declared.

"It must be very powerful." The second blind man felt the elephant's giant ear.

"I believe an elephant is like a huge fan or maybe a magic

carpet that can fly over mountains and treetops," he said. The third blind man gave a tug on the

elephant's coarse tail. "Why, this is nothing more than a piece of old rope.

Dangerous, indeed," he scoffed. Their argument continued and their shouts grew louder and

louder. “Wall!" "Carpet!" "Rope!"

"Stop shouting!" called a very angry voice. It was the Rajah, awakened

from his nap by the noisy argument. "How can each of you be so certain you are right?" asked

the ruler. "The elephant is a very large animal," said the Rajah kindly. "Each man touched only
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one part. Perhaps if you put the parts together, you will see the truth. Now let me finish my nap

in peace!” he said.”

This ancient Indian folk tale teaches people about how different perspectives lead to

distinct points of view. The moral of the tale is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute

truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's experiences

which may be equally true. Definitions of terms such as education, society, school and etc. may

vary according to the domain or perspective from which one might be speaking. In this paper, I

will attempt to define some terms from an educational perspective, and then address the concept

of structural/functional approach while focusing more on the function of selection.

Education is a process of interaction (direct or indirect) between two or more persons, the

end result of which is the transmittal and/or modification of the cultural content. This is one of

the many definitions there are of education, depending on the perspective and the point of view.

Education may be divided into three categories:

- Formal education: meticulously structured and given in institutions, like schools,

universities, technical colleges, etc. Usually the formal school is characterized by three

levels, namely primary level, secondary level and tertiary level. In formal education

institutions, learning is usually, if not always, evaluated.

- Non-formal education: it is usually provided to out-of-school kids and adolescents who,

for some reason or another, did not have the opportunity to attend school. A couple of

examples of non-formal education would be adult literacy training, or family planning.

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Non-formal education is usually voluntary, and it usually takes place in common areas

and open spaces, to allow access to all.

- Informal education: Informal education takes place outside schools and is exchanged by

resources and resourceful people in the community. Informal education is not structured

whatsoever. Most of the learning that occurs is almost unintentional. Here the individual

learns from his/her family, friends, experiences and environment. Informal education is

not associated with grades and certificates. But its impact tends to be more permanent,

because informal education occurs in its own way, at its own pace by its own means

throughout each person’s life.

We previously established that education is achieved through the transmittal and/or

modification of cultural content. What is cultural content? What is it composed of? Linton

claims: Cultural content is a set of “ideas, habits, and conditioned responses.” He divides items

of culture into four main categories that can be simplified as follows:

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The elements or items of culture are divided depending on their acceptance or commonality to

members in a particular society. In the center, he puts those that are most common and calls

them “universals”. Those which are less common and are chosen or accepted by some but not all

are called “specialties”. Moving outwards to an area of more refined choice where people may

have chosen the same elements but exhibit differences as to how they apply or interpret them, we

encounter the area defined by Linton to be the area of “alternatives”. And, finally he adds a

special layer of elements chosen only by very few people in society that he calls “peculiarities”.

A good example to help understand these areas that I mentioned would be, as Ottaway writes in

his book Education and Society, “The changing position of women during the century provides

some good examples of alternatives becoming more and more universal. Note, for example from

the following list of activities how they were at first individual peculiarities for women but have
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gradually come to be normally accepted behavior shared by many women and transmitted to

their children.

Riding bicycles, smoking, using makeup in public, playing cricket, going into public houses,

earning a living after marriage…”.

The cultural content can also be classified into the 3 H’s:

a) The cognitive culture (Head): according to L. Talmy, the cognitive culture system within

an individual, “assesses the conceptual-affective and behavioral patterns that it observes

exhibited by others, as well as attending to instruction of such patterns and internalizes

what it has abstracted.” In other words, the cognitive culture permits people to learn from

what they see in a certain environment and space, and hence, enables them to know how

to act if a similar situation presents itself.

b) The affective culture (Heart): affective culture describes how a certain culture expresses

its emotions. Affective cultures, such as Latin and Middle Eastern, for example, express

emotions more immediately, openly and passionately. They have a wider range of facial

expressions and physical gestures during conversation… in contrast with neutral cultures,

such as Anglo-Saxon and Asian who do not openly or directly show emotions and

opinions and consider it inappropriate to exhibit emotions in certain situations.

c) The psychomotor culture (Hand): it is a wide range of actions involving physical

movement guided by signals of the environment. For example, sewing, throwing a ball or

driving (eye-hand coordination). Psychomotor culture can also be said to be “the

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acquisition of movement skills, the manual dexterities required for mechanical operations

and high precision tasks”, as defined by Dr. Simon Biesheuvel in his book, Development

of African Abilities, published in 1967.

Culture is made up of the beliefs, conduct, objects and other characteristics of a particular

party or society. But what is society? The society in which we live regulates everything from the

food we eat to the decisions we take. The word society comes from the Latin root socius,

meaning “companion” or “being with others.” A society comprises people who share a territory,

who interact with each other, and who share a culture. Our societies teach us how to act, what to

accept and believe, and how we’ll be disciplined if we don’t follow the rules or regulations in

place. Examples of societies can range from a village to a religion or cult, and even to the

classroom that a student learns in.

“All that society has accomplished for itself is put, through the agency of the school, at the

disposal of its future members.” Those were the wise words of John Dewey, extracted from his

book The School and Society, published in 1907 by the University of Chicago. But what exactly

is a school? From an educational viewpoint, the definition of the term School differs than the

philosophical definition, for example. For instance, a school, in educational terms, is a formal

institution for the purpose of education, whereas in philosophical terms, a school is the

perspective of a group of people who share common characteristics of opinion or outlook of

a philosophy, discipline, or belief (e.g. Epicureanism, Stoicism…).

Back to the school from an educational approach, we can say that all schools have both structure

and function.
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Schools consist of several elements that make up the structure, such as people (teachers,

students, staff, parents? Etc.), material (classrooms, playgrounds, tables, chairs…),

curriculum/subject matter (language, math, science…) and rules and regulations (admission,

tuition, attendance…).

Functions are a set of roles that schools play in shaping or sculpting the students into acceptable

and/or successful members of society. All schools perform the same functions, but no two

schools perform them in exactly the same way.

We may now ask ourselves: what are these functions? They can be divided as follows:

- Socialization: how the school class “internalizes in its pupils both the commitments and

capacities for successful performance of their future adult roles”, according to Parsons’

article, The school Class as a Social System: Some of its Functions in American

Society. An example of socialization would be preparing an employee who has been

working in sales to become assistant manager or acquainting an immigrant or a foreign

person to the life, culture and traditions of a new society.

- Manpower Allocation: looks at graduates and the positions they occupy in society after

graduation, as Parsons said : “…while on the one hand, the school class may be regarded

as a primary agency by which these different components of commitments and capacities

are generated, on the other hand, it is, from the point of view of the society, an agency of

“manpower” allocation…”.
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- Social Mobility: the movement of someone up or down the social class structure. For

example, a factory worker, goes back to college and resumes his education, only to

become a successful businessman.

- Selection: can be described as two things. Either the selection of what is taught and

learned (subject/matter) or the selection of children (extent to which children have

opportunity to enter schools).

“The educational system does not create capacity, it merely, or largely, selects the men of

capacity.” Extract from Selection-An Unnoticed Function of Education, by W. B. Pillsbury,

published in 1921. The school system appears to be a sorting device with various selective

principles operating.

Selection of children is also termed a function access. i.e. the extent to which children have

opportunity to enter schools. The guiding principle here is that of equality of educational

opportunity. The latter can be illustrated in the following matrices:

- Who: refers to children in their many and different attributes. For example, all children

are the same, but no two children are exactly the same, hence different attributes, such as

sex (male/female), religion (Christian/Muslim…), social background (rich/poor) …

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- What: refers to what kind of school children go to. For example, all schools are the same,

but no two schools are exactly the same, e.g. public/private, single sex/mixed sex, no

tuition/low tuition/high tuition…

- When: refers to the age at which children start school. For example, some children start

school later than others, some children do not enter school at all…

- For how long: some stay in school for only a few years, others continue all the way until

the end of the secondary, or the BA, or the MA or Ph.D.…

Let A be a school that selects students based on their social background and B a school that

selects students after taking a standardized test and according to their result.

In my judgement, school A performs its function badly, and school B performs its function

adequately. Students are not defined by their economic background, and this element says

strictly nothing about their intellectual and cognitive capabilities.

Everyone deserves a chance to show their true potential in education, especially if they

are not capable of doing so on their own, be it due to financial problems, cultural traditions (girls

aren’t allowed education in some countries like Pakistan), or physical inability (disabled people,

blind, deaf, mute…). This is where equity comes into play. Equality is treating everyone the
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same. Equity is providing everyone what they need to be successful. Equality aims to promote

justice and fairness, but it can only work if everyone starts from the same place and needs the

same help. But not everyone has the same capabilities and capacities, and not everyone has the

same needs, as Albert Einstein once said, “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its

ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Finally, to answer, W. Lloyd Warner’s question: Who shall be educated? My answer is:

EVERYONE.

References:

- Pillsbury, W. (1921). Selection--An Unnoticed Function of Education. The Scientific

Monthly, 12(1), 62-74. Retrieved March 29, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/6753

- Biesheuvel, S. (1967). The development of African abilities. Salisbury.

- Dewey, J. (1907). The school and society. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing.

- Linton, Ralph. (1936). /The Study of Man (Vol. XVI). Appleton Century Co.

- Ottaway, A. K. C. (1962). Education and society: an introduction to the sociology of

education. New York, NY: Routledge.

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- Parsons, T. (1989). The school class as a social system: some of its functions in American

society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review.

- Talmy, L. (1995). The cognitive culture system. Duisburg: Linguistic Agency, University

of Duisburg.

- Unknown (2007). The Blind Men and the Elephant. Retrieved from

https://www.peacecorps.gov/educators/resources/story-blind-men-and-elephant/

- Warner, W. L., Havighurst, R. J., & Loeb, M. B. (1944). Who shall be educated? New

York: Harper.

- Dr. Munir Bashshur’s Education 211 prompts.