Identify FOUR Values that are associated with education in the Caribbean. Explain how these values have shaped your choices and behaviours.

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Identify FOUR Values that are associated with education in the Caribbean. Explain how these values have shaped your choices and behaviours.

According to Emille Durkheim, “Education is the acquisition of knowledge and the learning of skills. It often helps to shape beliefs and moral values.” Education is one of the very tools through which social change and transformation can be achieved.

Education, and in particular the teaching of history provides a link between the student and society and also a sense of belonging. The teaching of history helps to shape an individual’s belief’s and values of what was taught and passed on through generations. For example, teaching a student about slavery and learning about how their ancestors revolted to claim their freedom can teach an individual to have a sense of pride in their history. Durkheim believed that school serves as a function which cannot be provided by the family or peer group. Being a member of a family is based on relation and being part of a group of friends depends on choice but being a member of society lies in neither of these categories. School teaches individual’s to learn to interact and cooperate with people who are neither friend nor family; therefore, school provides the perfect atmosphere to acquire interaction skills. The school allows the students to interact under a fixed set of rules and these experiences allow the student to grow and prepare themselves for interaction with the wider society. Durkheim also added that school rules must be enforced and punishments should me put in place where necessary. This in turn helps the student to learn that their act was wrong and would be able to exercise self- discipline not only to avoid punishment but because their action has done damage to that social system. “It is by respecting the school rules that the child learns to respect rules in general, that he/she develops the habit of self- control and restraint simply because he/she should control and restrain himself/herself.” Therefore the rules in schools help individuals to make the right choices and shape them as a person.

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        Education also teaches individuals certain skills that would be necessary for their future occupation which is usually in an industrial society with its increasing division of labour for example, a developing nation like Trinidad and Tobago which makes most revenue on oil would need more people to work in that sector such as engineers and rig workers. Individuals who wish to pursue this would need to study certain subjects such as physics or chemistry. In pre- industrial society it was common for parents could have passed on occupational skills to children without a need for formal education. Schools therefore, transmit ...

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