Once the Greek philosopher Aristotle said,” the natural purpose of education is for the attainment of good life or the enrichment of the quality of life and that the state was there for the promotion of good life for Its citizens”. It means that states should promote the good life that education Is aimed at, therefore states should have the responsibility of providing education for Its citizens. That Is, Aristotle says that states should promote education, which will result In the promotion of the quality of life.
In this report, the researcher will discuss why we can say “education promotes the laity of life” and how state/government should promote education in order to enrich the quality of life. The researcher considers the promotion of the quality of life which Aristotle mentions as a development. It is because, under situation of poverty, it is said that lives are battered, happiness stifled, creativity destroyed, freedoms eradicated by misfortunes of poverty. (Cofferdam:xiii) (though we have to see poverty as unforeseen of various sorts. Therefore, the promotion of quality of life which states should alma at should be the development/reduction of poverty. According to Aristotle, the promotion of good life (reduction of poverty/ development) Is attained by education. Then is it true? From below, we will discuss that matter. To find out the answer to the question, first of all, looking at the present situation of poverty In the world, we will find what situation that should be changed by education, what quality of life should be changed by education in the 1 SST paragraph.
And then, we will discuss what is development, where the quality of life should go, in the 2nd paragraph. In that paragraph, we will find that development is best achieved through combination of active citizens, which suggested that education promotes development. In the 3rd paragraph, we find evidence that education promotes development by looking at many scholars saying so. And finally, we will discuss how states should actually promote education for its citizen’s quality of life. 1 . The present situation of poverty (concerned by education) Two-thirds of the world’s population Is the poor.
These poor are the vast majority, but, not all, of the population of developing countries. Many of them are Inadequately fed and housed, In poor health, and illiterate. A careful estimate of international protein and calorie distribution indicates that about 1. 4 billion of the world’s 5. 8 billion people are under nourished. (Infringer 1997:3) People living in poverty certainly lack opportunities such as access to decent education, health care, water, and sanitation, and assistance to help them cope with the shocks of everyday life. Sofas 2008:11) Poor people don’t have power over their own destinies and over the factors that influence them, such as party politics, the Justice system, and the markets for land, labor, and goods and services. There are 30 million fewer children of primary school age out of school now, but more than 70 million still do not receive an education, 57 percent of them are girls (Sofas 2008:9) When looking at Africa, although primary schools are numerous In Africa, and can be found anywhere In the remote areas, most often they are characterized by Inadequate resources In terms of teachers and funds to run them. Kafuffle’s) Where primary school exists, they often lack intellectual material and children grow older. (Kafuffle’s) On average, 50 percent children leave primary school before completing the course. (Kafuffle’s) 2. What is the development? According to Kevin Watkins (2000), development is a form of society in which certain conditions prevail for human beings: such conditions are: Safety: when the society generally non violent, and that individuals are protested from visualization by the state or the police or each other.
Sufficiently: is that the people have enough food, clothing and other material things so that they are not prevented from making the full use of their potential. Satisfaction: is that the people’s lives are generally pleasant and that sufficiency is not achieved at the cost of psychological and cultural disruption and disturbance. Stimulus is that the people are kept aware of their intellectual, emotional, spiritual tenability , and encourage. (Kevin Watkins 2000) All these conditions cannot be achieved without economic growth, but economic growth is not an ending itself but a means of achieving development. Kafuffle’s) The UNDO, for example, argues that the purpose if development is to enlarge all human choices, not Just income’ and one of its four essential components of human development paradigm is empowerment:’ development must be by people, not only for them. People must participate fully in the decisions and process that shape their indicators such as human rights and political choice are not easy to measure , the UNDO has begun to discuss and evaluate political change in its assessment of world development Many of the world’s state, through international conventions and commitments, have recognized education as a human right (Kafuffle’s).
Education equips individual to lead full lives, understand to lead full lives, understand the world, and ultimately, gain the self-confidence to make themselves heard. (Sofas 2008:42) Sofas international claims that the development (… )is best achieved through a combination of active citizens and effective states(Cofferdam:12). Active citizenship means “combination of rights and obligation that link individuals to the state, including paying taxes, obeying laws, and exercising full range of political, civil and social rights.
Active citizens use these rights to improve the quality of political or civic life, through involvement in the formal economy or formal politics” (Cofferdam:12) Educated skilled population means population who can operate in democratic societies and meet changing labor market needs (The World bank 1999:vii). We can say that active citizen is educated skilled population, according to Sofa’s remarks and World Banks remarks.
Thus, the Sofa’s remark that the development is best achieved through a combination of active citizens and effective states is equivalent to the remark we can say education provides active citizens, because, active citizen is educated skilled population. So it is going without saying that education provides active citizen and active citizen should result in development through a combination of effective states. 3. Is it true that education promotes development? We will look at evidence that many scholars claim that “it does” supported by evidence.
There are four academic (2007) The Millennium Development Goals Report. According to it, over the past ten years, the Brazil has managed to reduce its historically extreme inequality to its lowest level in 30 years, in large part by providing education to poor people along with social protection schemes. Schooling is single most powerful way to break the transmission of deprivation from one generation to the next. When school services are paid for progressive taxation, the impact in reducing inequality is all greater.
Second academic achievement is from Sofas, they say that Education is crucial in breaking the cycle of poverty. It is alright in itself, and it equips individual to lead full fives, understand to lead full lives, understand the world, and ultimately, gain the self-confidence to make themselves heard. (Sofas 2008:42) Thirdly, The World Bank claims that Education is a crucial part of comprehensive development framework that recognizes that sustainable development requires many social and structural elements in addition to strong economic growth. The World bank 1999:vii )Quality is the key to achieve the imperative for the new millennium-and educated skilled needs. (The World Bank 1999: vii) In rapidly changing world, education has become more important than ever before. The World bank 1999: viii)All agree that the single most important key to development and to poverty alleviation is education (The World bank 1999: iii). Finally, Clive Harder also mentions the relation between the education and development.
He says education’s role-?”socializing young people into the political norms, values, attitudes and behaviors of democracy’ (Harder 1997:1)Democracy provides the only political mode which in long run can provide the peaceful context for development that Africa so badly needs. (Harder 1997:1) In fact, other regional surveys have found that 69%of Africans… Live that democracy is ‘always preferable to other political systems (Barometers 2006 ;Latin barometer, quoted in C. Graham and S.
Astrakhan 2004) Education which promotes democracy 69% of Africans think as preferable suggest that it can promote development. Additionally, according to world bank, “If all this demagnification is to survive and flourish, education will be have the key contribution to make in helping citizens develop the capabilities required to be well informed, understand difficult issues, make wise choices, and hold elected officials accountable for delivering their promises”. The World bankable:iii) 4. The role of states/governments So far, we have looked at why we can say that education promotes the development.
In this paragraph, we would like to discuss how states should promote education. In today’s situation concerned about education, there are two points. Before we discuss the question above, we should clear what is the effective state the researcher mentioned above as one of source of development. Effective state is the state that can guarantee security and the rule of law, and can design and implement and effective strategy to ensure inclusive economic growth. Effective states, often as “developmental states” must be accountable to citizens and able to guarantee their rights. Cofferdam:12)Transformation will be done by effective states which guarantee education and so on. The extraordinary transformations of countries have promote and manage the process of economic growth. (Sofas 2008:12). It is important to remember that development needs active citizen and effective state, and without active citizen, effective citizen cannot exist, because active citizens use these rights to improve the quality of political or civic life, through involvement in the aroma economy or formal politics and these create effective state.
Thus, active citizen is more important than effective citizen. We have found the importance of education again. The first point of question above is “quality of education”. Too many more are enrolled but learning little in developing countries do not have the foundation skills required to survive (let alone the academic skills needed to thrive)(The World Bank 1999:iii) Quality is the key to achieve the imperative for the new millennium-and educated skilled population who can operate in democratic societies and meet changing labor market needs.
The World Bank 1999:vii) Even if there are many schools ,resources invested in teaching and learning are wasted if people are not gaining skills, the knowledge and values they need. (Kafuffle’s)The quality of education is still important. The second point is educating women and girls. It is important because it enables them to challenge inequality with men, with in the family and in wider society. It makes it more likely that a woman can earn money of her own, which means she is more likely to be able to remain single if she chooses, or to leave an abusive or unhappy relationship.
And education of woman can also break down the stereotypes of woman’s and men’s roles in society which restrict the horizons of both girls and boys and girls in particular can gain the self confidence to challenge discrimination. (Cofferdam:43) What is more, academic research shows that an expansion of women’s education may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for reducing fertility. It is important to provide productive employment to the educated women’s labor force and to raise their general status in the society to reduce fertility significantly. (Ghats 1995:240) 5.
Conclusion Aristotle says that states should promote education which aims at providing a good life for its citizen. In fact, education promotes development through creating educated population/ active citizen according to many academic achievements. And educated population/active citizen generate not only development but also the effective state, which accelerate the development as well. States should keep improving the quality of education as well as that of quantity for development of a country. And it is important for states/governments to promote the educating women and girls.
