Is one aim of education be the development of talent ?
Essay : 01
It is only a tiny minority who are born without a talent in one direction or another. Even these people are usually employable. It seems logical, in general, that one aim of education should be to develop latent ability, whatever that ability may be.
However, the pressure from educational theorists today is to concentrate teaching on preparation for employment. Parents, also, feel that the priority for their children is to become equipped to earn a good living. Governments urge concentration on certain subjects, so that a pool of labor can be formed which can move easily into specialized training. These essential subjects include English, or another international language, since these languages possess technical vocabularies and also equip young people to travel overseas in the course of their work. The other favored subjects arc mathematics, the sciences, the use of computers and other office machinery, engineering, and general handwork. Given proficiency in some or all of there, it is a short step to useful employment. Modern job opportunities lie in the fields of the service industries, i.e. banking, insurance and stockbroking, technology and the manufacture of sophisticated products, research and development and computers. Governments see these occupations as essential to national wealth creation, and therefore crucial to the general improvement of the national standard of living.
There will always be young people more interested in the arts than in the sciences. The arts are usually bracketed under the general heading ‘liberal studies’; they include history, languages and literature, philosophy, politics and economics, social and environmental studies. Some require exact knowledge and serious study, while others are ‘soft options’. In any real sense they are totally unproductive, and modern education has spawned a brood of these non-subjects. It is small wonder that both governments and parents discourage some of them nowadays. We live in a real world. Yet the reverse of this coin is the necessary enrichment of the culture of all countries in successive generations. What is material success if there is nothing to engage the artistic side of our nature in our spare time?
Perhaps the greatest concept of education originates in the European cultural renaissance in Italy, and dates back to the late Middle Ages. It is the development of the whole person. Perhaps the modern version of ‘mens sana in corpore sano’, a ‘healthy body in a healthy mind’, still has its place. So even attention to sports training is justifiable.
So music, art and drama must all have their place in the curriculum, even if this is not a prime place. Every country has its own artistic heritage, and it would be tragic if that heritage were lost through neglect. Yet this is not merely a matter of conservation. Artistic pursuits have now become international and offer brilliant careers to gifted young people of every country. It is clear that those with this kind of talent should be encouraged.
Essay : 02
Aims of Education
The aim of education is to achieve the first-rate and the method to get at it is to study humanities. There is no use going through the lessons without keeping this aim in view. Passing the examinations and satisfying the teachers may be incidental objectives. There are many fields of education and man may desire to achieve the excellence in all the fields but man’s energies are limited. So it is not possible to achieve excellence in all the departments. Still the departments in which it is to be achieved are many. In professional education people often achieve the first rate because, in that branch, one has a clear idea of it. Apart from it, sense of significance and belief in quality in vocational education help them to achieve it. But an educated person must know about it in creative and intellectual activities. These activities are important and can often become bad, so it is necessary to know the excellent.
