EDUCATION STUDIES 1 (EDU16BO) TME & EMS

UNIT 1
Histoy of Education as a field of Scholarship and Historiography of South
African Education:

We live in a time of rapid change, a time of moving forward.We tend to

define ourselves in terms of where we are going, not where we come from,
as such, we risk negleting the importance of our history/ or where we come
from. History is important as it helps us to know the past, understand why
our present is as it is, and be able to understand the problems of the present.
It helps us to shape the way we respond and respond to the current
problems in an attempt to secure a better future.
The need for education arises in a specific context, therefore, to adequate
understand any aspect of education, one has to gain a thorough
understanding of its context.
In this regard it should be borne in mind that every society, considered at a
given moment in its development, has a system of education which is
imposed on individuals. Every society sets itself a certain ideal of what a
person should be from the intellectual, physical and moral points of view.
This ideal is the crux of education, the purpose of educaion is described as
the persevation and enhancement of knowledge and the development of
character within a given form of society which will best prepare the
individual to deal with the present situation and also to cope with the
conditions of the future.
As such the purpose of education is dependant on the form of the family and
society, and the historical context and place within which an individual is
raised. Therefore, if one is to understand the nature of education provided
over the course of time, a study needs to be made of the profound driving
forces that have shaped education provision in the past.
According to Marwick (2001:31-32;37), a society without knowledge of its
past is like an individual without memory. Without memory, people have
difficulty in relating to others, finding their bearings and making intelligent
decisions. They lose their senses of identity. People are not born with
knowledge of the past; they need to learn it and that learning comes from
the research and writings of historians.
History should be characterised by debate, the way it is interpreted.
Historians, for example, do not argue whether the National Party came into
power in 1948, but could argue about the impact this event has had on, for
example, the provision of education for blacks. In fact, some do argue that it
was positive because for black children whereas others argue that the
education proposed was imed at further subjugating the black population to
white dominance.
The education of youth is a universal human phenomenon- it has always
been important and will continue to be so for the rest of human existence.

 Humankind is everywhere and always caught up in an intricate web of

social relations. Without it, a newborn baby would almost surely perish
and, even after the children grow to relative physical independence,
they enter a long period of social infancy in which they are dependent
on others for guidance and support in the customs of their social
group. Similarly, social groups are just as dependent on
individuals.They exist in and by communication between individuals.
As can be derived from the following account of education in South
Africa before the existence of schools, social and educational processes
are essentially the same. Brubacher (1969:9) has indicated, learning to
know oneself is both an affair of private introspection and of seeing
how others behave, as well as of recognising and identifying feelings of
others with feelings of one’s own.
Before South African colonisation by the Westerners, non-literacy informal
indigeneous education served to prepare and integrate the young into
society for the various social roles that would be played throughout their
lifetime. The main aims of African customary education were to preserve the
cultural heritage of the extended family, the clan and the tribe, as well as to
adapt members of the new generation to the physical environment by
teaching them how to control and use it. Education was an attempt to
explain to chidren that their own future, and community, depends on the
understanding and perpetuation of the institutions, laws, language and
values inherited from the past.
 African children were raised by the community and educated in the
culture and traditions of their people.
 The child was seen as an asset of the community, in whom the
community mantained the stake.
 Every member of the community contributed to the upbringing of the
child whether the child was an offspring, family relative, extended
family member, or simply another member of the clan.
 This traditional form of education was transmitted informally by
parents and elders in society and formally through initiation rites or
apprenticeships to craftsmen.
 The training of children took note of gender difference very early.
 Boys and girls at a later age would be expected to perform different
tasks, such as boys mostly in farming, house building, herding and
hunting, and girls in cooking, keeping the home and child-rearing.
 Boys were ridiculed if they do girls tasks.
 Gender roles were emphasised in like manner.
 The socialisation of women, although sometimes done within age
groups, were more often in small groups of siblings or cousins, and it
emphasised domestic and agricultural skills necessary to the survival of
the family.

 From the mid 1600s, colonial education under both the Dutch and later
on the British-which was primarily aimed at white children and to a
lesser extent the children of slaves and indegineos people-introduced a
basic literacy which helped in spreading the religion and inculcating the
distinctive culture and traditions of the colonists.
 Schooling was mainly in the hands of parents and the church and rarely
extended beyond an elementary level.
 Mission education introduced towards the end of the eighteenth
century served mainly children of the black communities and has as its
core purpose the spreading of the Christian gospel, providing basic
 literacy and teaching skills that were believed would be useful in
procuring gainful employment.
 This type of education did not consider the traditions and culture of its
recipients-indeed, it was aimed at overlaying the value and knowledge
system of the recipients with that of the providers.
 Expansion in the interiorby the Boers to escape British imperialism and
domination and to secure their independence occurred during the mid
1800s.
 The discovery of minerals in the interior exacerbated tentions between
the British ana the Boers and ultimately led to the outbteak of the
South African war, which due to the fact that the Boers were the
majority, the British sought the establishment of the Union of South
Africa in 1910, a self governing state within the Brish empire.
 The ascendency of the Afrikaners to power in 1948 set up a
government with policies that would work in favour of the whites in
general and Afrikaners in particular.
 The ideological aspirations of the ruling party were legislated, and a
period of separete development based on race-apartheid-affected the
way education was viewed and provided, ensued.
 Schooling was formalised and compulsory education was introduced-
initially for the white children.
 Education was used to achieve the socio-political and economic
ambitions of the ruling party, which was the National Party.
 Black political movements that protested against apartheid were
unable to establish a solid mass following at the time and it was during
the 1970s that effective resistance was offered. (i.e.1976 uprisings)
 In the 1980s, attempts at social and politica reform were negotiated
and culminated in the establishment of a democracy in 1994.

 The importanceof studying history of education

- History of education is of fundamental importance to a professional
teacher
- History of education gives teachers in training the opportunity of
studying other people’s educational ideas and programmes with the
aim of developing ours
- It also gives teachers in training a solid foundation to plan for our
present and future educational development
 - History of education helps teachers to understand how schools
developed in the past can help them make good decisions about
how they should look now and in the future
- When you study the past, you are able to understand the process of
education and how it evolved up to the present
- In this way, the present not only becomes clear but also helps to
illuminate the future
- It provides identity and shows up models of good and responsible
behaviour, as well as teaching us how to learn from the mistakes of
others
- History helps us understand how society can change and develop
- It helps us develop a better understanding of the world
- Helps us understand ourselves
- Helps us learn to understand other people
- Teachers are able to understand changing systems of education
- Gives them tools they need to be decent citizens
- Makes them to be better decision makers
- Helps teachers to become better citizens, get a better paid jobs,
shows the difference between good and bad
- Education shows teachers, the importance of hard work and at the
same time, helps them to grow and develop.
- Helps them with the ability to shape a better society to live in by
knowing and respecting rights, laws, and regulations
 Education is the social institution through which society provides its
members with important knowledge, including basic facts, job skills
and cultural norms and values
 One of the important benefits of education is that it improves personal
lives and helps the society to run smoothly

 History of education is studied for the following reasons:

1. Improving the quality of education

- The study past educational experience has many lessons that can be
used to improve present educational theory and practice
 - The problems and challenges we face in our education today are
not unique, others have faced the same problems and attempted
solutions with varying degrees of success or failure
- We can adopt their successes and avoid their mistakes in
attempting to improve our education
- History of education is rich in both failures and breakthroughs for us
to run away from or copy respectively

2. Strengthening the professional competence of the teacher

- a proper study of the history of education affects the way in which

teachers or student teachers conduct their personal and
professional activities
- this contributes to strengthening both by encouraging the teacher
to examine, evaluate, accept or modify the cultural heritage, and to
become an educational critic and agent for intelligent cultural
transmission and change, rather than blinds accepts the educational
status quo, ideas, practices and unchallenged claims
- in other words, an examination of educational theories and
practices in their historical context encourages teachers to adopt a
critical attitudes present theories and practices

3. Understanding our own educational systems

- The past illuminatesthe present, history not only teaches when
education is, but also where it comes from, why it came to be, and
what it is bound to become in the future
- History of education is a narrative of the origins, growth and
development of educational institutions methods, cocepts, aims,
curricular, theory and practice without which they would appear
new, uexplored, and untried to us in the present world
- History of education thus hepls us to appreciate the road travelled
by education to reach where it is today
4. Making comparisons within a historical perspective
- History of education helps one to draw comparisons of the origins
and development of several ideas, practices and theories of
education in different societies
- In that way, it can help one to formulate better ideas, patterns and
principles and provide a larger perspective
- It may also enable one to represent by a single cultural experience.
Apart from drawing a copmarison in the evolution of educational
ideas, one is also able to show the development of a particular
theory and practice in historical context, and demonstrate the
particular conditions out of which such a theory or practice arose
and the specific purpose it was intended to serve
- Making comparisons within a historical perspective enables one to
use the power of contextual study to introduce innovation by
formulating new and better questions, generating fruitful
hypotheses and initiating unexplored lines of enquiry

5. Satisfying intellectual curiosity

- History of education is like other areas of knowledge, with its own
body of knowledge and conventional methods of acquiring this
knowledge
- Human beings, and no less teachers and teachers-to-be are
possessed with the inherent desire or curiosity to explore and know
what education is where it came from, and where it is going
- Studying history of education satisfying this inmature desire
- One need not go beyond this reason to justify the study of history
of education

6. Developing power of
- The fruitful study of education compels us to train and exercise all
our aspects of intellectual activity excites curiosity and the spirit of
enquiry, discioplines and the faculty of reasons, and cultivates the
arts of self-expression and communication
- Historica study is also basic to cultivating the attitudes of the mind
that charactirise the educated person, the habits of scepticism and
criticism, of thinking with broad perspective and objectivity, of
distinguishing between the good and the bad in human experience
 - The historical study of education gives one of the discerning eye to
give shape, form, organisation, sequence and interrelationship, and
relative importance of ideas

7. Exposing one to knowledge in other

- Historians of education must always go beyond the confines of their
discipline to fully understand the nature of the phenomena they
study
- They particularly need to be acquainted with the social sciences
such as sociology, psychology, philosophy and comparative
education, which can be used in a mutually enriched way to analyse
important educational ideas
- Through scholars in each discipline may operate from their own
particular perspective, they must of necessity all draw from the well
of history, which contains the raw record of human experience, and
sets the context of events in a time continuum within which others
disciplines must operate
- The study of history of education thus, exposes one to knowledge in
other social sciences and humanities, which are engaged in the
study of human affairs