conclusion of importance of education

The Importance of Education in a Conclusion Essay

• by Jackie Hobbs
• October 21, 2023

Education plays a fundamental role in our lives, shaping our knowledge, skills, and understanding of the world around us. Whether formal or informal, education equips us with the tools we need to navigate through life and achieve our goals. In this blog post, we will explore the significance of education, particularly in the context of conclusion essays . Along the way, we will delve into the meaning of social education, the importance of language, the social process of education, the role of the government, and much more. So sit back, relax, and let’s dive into the world of education and its crucial role in conclusion essays.

Why Education is Vital in a Conclusion Essay

In this final section, let’s dive into why education plays such a crucial role in a conclusion essay. Yes, we’re nearing the end of our journey, but don’t worry, this subsection will educate you before we bid adieu. So, let’s get started, shall we?

Education: The Key to Unlocking Insights

Education serves as the key that unlocks the door to a world of knowledge and insights. By acquiring knowledge through education, we gain a deeper understanding of the subject we’re writing about. This understanding empowers us to formulate a well-rounded conclusion that resonates with our readers.

Crafting a Conclusion that Leaves an Impression

Just like the sprinkles on a cupcake, a conclusion adds that final touch to your essay. Education equips us with the tools to analyze and evaluate the information we’ve gathered. With these skills in our arsenal, we can craft a conclusion that leaves a lasting impression. By drawing on the knowledge we’ve acquired, we can offer fresh perspectives and unique insights, elevating our essay to a whole new level.

Demonstrating Authority and Expertise

Education nurtures us into becoming authorities in our chosen field. When we incorporate the knowledge gained through education into our conclusion, we showcase our expertise and command over the subject matter. This not only adds credibility to our writing but also establishes us as trusted sources of information.

Elevating the Impact of Your Words

A well-crafted conclusion should pack a punch, leaving readers ruminating on the ideas presented. Education helps us refine our writing skills, ensuring that our conclusion is both concise and impactful. By employing the literary tools we’ve learned, such as rhetorical devices and persuasive techniques, we can elevate the impact of our words and leave a lasting impression on our audience.

Inspiring Continuous Learning

Education is a lifelong journey that doesn’t end with a conclusion essay. By showcasing the importance of education in our conclusion, we inspire our readers to continue their own quest for knowledge. After all, learning is a never-ending adventure, and with every essay we write, we have the opportunity to kindle that same flame of curiosity within our readers.

So there you have it! Education not only enriches our conclusion essays but also boosts our credibility, enhances our writing skills, and inspires continuous learning . As we bid adieu to this subsection, let’s never forget the invaluable role education plays in crafting a remarkable conclusion. Cheers to the power of education!

FAQ: Why is Education Important in a Conclusion Essay

What is the meaning of social education.

Social education refers to the learning process that takes place within a social context. It involves acquiring knowledge and skills through interactions with others, such as teachers, classmates, and the larger community . This form of education goes beyond textbooks and classrooms and emphasizes the development of social skills, empathy, and a sense of belonging.

Why do we need language

Language is the cornerstone of human communication and interaction. It enables us to express our thoughts, ideas, and emotions. It helps us connect with others, share knowledge, and build relationships. Without language, our ability to learn and understand the world around us would be severely limited. In essence, language is the key that unlocks the door to education.

How is education a social process

Education is not just about acquiring information; it is a social process that involves interaction and engagement with others. When we learn, we do so in the company of teachers, classmates, and the wider community. Through collaborative learning, group discussions, and social activities, education becomes a dynamic experience that nurtures critical thinking , empathy, and teamwork.

Why is education important in a conclusion essay

In a conclusion essay, education plays a vital role in reinforcing and summarizing the main points of the argument. It allows us to draw upon our knowledge and understanding to provide a thoughtful analysis and final verdict. Education provides the foundation for well-informed opinions and ensures that our conclusions are based on evidence, validity, and credibility.

What is the function of language

Language serves several crucial functions. It enables us to communicate, express ourselves, and understand others. Language also allows for the transmission of knowledge and culture from one generation to the next. Moreover, it facilitates critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity. In essence, language empowers us to navigate through the complexities of education and engage with the world around us.

What is the government role in education

The government plays a significant role in education by ensuring access to quality education for all. It sets educational standards, regulates curriculum, and provides funding for schools. Additionally, the government establishes policies and frameworks to promote equitable opportunities in education, address educational disparities, and support the professional development of educators. The government’s role in education is essential for fostering a well-educated and empowered society.

Remember, education is not just about acquiring knowledge; it is a transformative journey that shapes individuals and societies. By understanding the meaning of social education, recognizing the significance of language, and appreciating education as a social process, we can fully grasp why education holds such importance in a conclusion essay. So, embrace the power of education, let your conclusions soar, and may your essays shine brightly!

Note: This blog post was written in 2023.

• conclusion essays
• continuous learning
• final section
• fundamental role
• larger community
• social process
• unlocking insights

Jackie Hobbs

Is terramycin ointment safe for humans in 2023, how much does a bag of lays potato chips cost in 2023, you may also like, how to write a timeline in an essay: a step-by-step guide.

• by Sandra Vargas

The Primacy of Speech in Linguistics: Unraveling the Mystery

• by Veronica Lopez
• October 18, 2023

What Are Red Dog Tags For? Unveiling the Mysteries Behind These Iconic Accessories

• by Adam Davis
• October 22, 2023

Does Recruiting Count as HR Experience?

• October 29, 2023

The Intriguing World of Cell Organelles: Exploring Their Functions and Significance

• by Erin Fuentes

What Does an Anemone Look Like When It Splits?

• by Matthew Morales
• October 11, 2023

• Current Students
• Faculty / Staff
• Paying for College
• Alumni Services
• Maine Transfer Guarantee
• Program Finder
• Affordable, Flexible, Accessible
• Distance Education
• All Online Courses & Degrees
• Bachelor’s Degrees Online
• Master’s Degrees Online
• Start Dates
• Admissions, Costs & Aid
• Partnerships
• Faculty and Contacts
• Academic and Career Support
• Student Testimonials
• Distance Education Advantage
• In-Person Education
• Sustainable Ventures
• Careers & Outcomes
• Strategic Plan
• Project Evolution
• Project Stratus
• About Unity
• Office of the President
• Our Evolution
• Sustainable Achievements & Initiatives
• Reinventing College
• Extended Reality (XR)
• Commencement
• Give to Unity Environmental University
• Institutional Communications
• Unity Environmental University News
• Unity Store

Frustrated with the 2024-2025 FAFSA ® Challenges? Unity Distance Education Is Here to Help and Support: Navigating the Issues and Finding Solutions

Frustrated with the 2024-2025 FAFSA ® Challenges?

Home  /  News  /  Why Is Education Important? The Power Of An Educated Society

Why Is Education Important? The Power Of An Educated Society

Looking for an answer to the question of why is education important? We address this query with a focus on how education can transform society through the way we interact with our environment. 

Whether you are a student, a parent, or someone who values educational attainment, you may be wondering how education can provide quality life to a society beyond the obvious answer of acquiring knowledge and economic growth. Continue reading as we discuss the importance of education not just for individuals but for society as a whole. 

Harness the power of education to build a more sustainable modern society with a degree from  Unity Environmental University .

How Education Is Power: The Importance Of Education In Society

Why is education so important? Nelson Mandela famously said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” An educated society is better equipped to tackle the challenges that face modern America, including:

• Climate change
• Social justice
• Economic inequality

Education is not just about learning to read and do math operations. Of course, gaining knowledge and practical skills is part of it, but education is also about values and critical thinking. It’s about finding our place in society in a meaningful way. 

Environmental Stewardship

A  study from 2022 found that people who belong to an environmental stewardship organization, such as the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, are likely to have a higher education level than those who do not. This suggests that quality education can foster a sense of responsibility towards the environment.

With the effects of climate change becoming increasingly alarming, this particular importance of education is vital to the health, safety, and longevity of our society. Higher learning institutions can further encourage environmental stewardship by adopting a  framework of sustainability science .

The Economic Benefits Of Education

Higher education can lead to better job opportunities and higher income. On average, a  person with a bachelor’s degree will make $765,000 more  in their lifetime than someone with no degree. Even with the rising costs of tuition, investment in higher education pays off in the long run. In 2020, the return on investment (ROI) for a college degree was estimated to be  13.5% to 35.9% . 

Green jobs  like environmental science technicians and solar panel installers  have high demand projections for the next decade. Therefore, degrees that will prepare you for one of these careers will likely yield a high ROI. And, many of these jobs only require an  associate’s degree or certificate , which means lower overall education costs. 

Unity  helps students maximize their ROI with real-world experience in the field as an integral part of every degree program. 

10 Reasons Why School Is Important

Education is not just an individual pursuit but also a societal one.  In compiling these reasons, we focused on the question, “How does education benefit society?” Overall, higher education has the power to transform:

• Individuals’ sense of self
• Interpersonal relationships
• Social communities
• Professional communities

Cognitive Development

Neuroscience research  has proven that the brain is a muscle that can retain its neuroplasticity throughout life. However, like other muscles, it must receive continual exercise to remain strong. Higher education allows people of any age to improve their higher-level cognitive abilities like problem-solving and decision-making. This can make many parts of life feel more manageable and help society run smoothly. 

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is key to workplace success.  Studies  show that people with emotional intelligence exhibit more:

• Self-awareness
• Willingness to try new things
• Innovative thinking
• Active listening
• Collaboration skills
• Problem-solving abilities

By attending higher education institutions that value these soft skills, students can improve their emotional intelligence as part of their career development in college.

Technological Literacy

Many careers in today’s job market use advanced technology. To prepare for these jobs, young people likely won’t have access to these technologies to practice on their own. That’s part of why so many STEM career paths require degrees. It’s essential to gain technical knowledge and skills through a certified program to safely use certain technologies. And, educated scientists are  more likely to make new technological discoveries .

Cultural Awareness

Education exposes individuals to different cultures and perspectives. Being around people who are different has the powerful ability to foster acceptance. Acceptance benefits society as a whole. It increases innovation and empathy. 

College also gives students an opportunity to practice feeling comfortable in situations where there are people of different races, genders, sexualities, and abilities. Students can gain an understanding of how to act respectfully among different types of people, which is an important skill for the workplace. This will only become more vital as our world continues to become more globalized.

Ethical and Moral Development

Another reason why school is important is that it promotes ethical and moral development. Many schools require students to take an ethics course in their general education curriculum. However, schools can also encourage character development throughout their programs by using effective pedagogical strategies including:

• Class debates and discussions
• Historical case studies
• Group projects

Unity’s distance learning programs  include an ethical decision-making class in our core curriculum. 

Ready To Learn More About Unity Environmental University?

Communication Skills

Effective written and verbal communication skills are key for personal and professional success. Higher education programs usually include at least one communication course in their general education requirements. Often the focus in these classes is on writing skills, but students can also use college as an opportunity to hone their presentation and public speaking skills. Courses such as  Multimedia Communication for Environmental Professionals  provide many opportunities for this. 

Civic Engagement

According to a  Gallup survey , people with higher education degrees are:

• More likely to participate in civic activities such as voting and volunteering
• Less likely to commit crimes
• More likely to get involved in their local communities

All these individual acts add up to make a big difference in society. An educated electorate is less likely to be swayed by unethical politicians and, instead, make choices that benefit themselves and their community. Because they are more involved, they are also more likely to hold elected officials accountable.

Financial Stability

The right degree can significantly expand your career opportunities and improve your long-term earning potential. Not all degrees provide the same level of financial stability, so it’s important to research expected salary offers after graduation and job demand outlook predictions for your desired field. Consider the return on investment for a degree from an affordable private school such as  Unity Environmental University .

Environmental Awareness

We have already discussed why education is important for environmental stewardship. Education can also lead to better environmental practices in the business world. By building empathy through character education and ethics courses, institutions can train future business leaders to emphasize human rights and sustainability over profits. All types and sizes of businesses can incorporate sustainable practices, but awareness of the issues and solutions is the first step.

Lifelong Learning

The reasons why education is important discussed so far focus on institutional education. However, education can happen anywhere. Attending a university that values all kinds of learning will set students up with the foundation to become lifelong learners.  Research  demonstrates that lifelong learners tend to be healthier and more fulfilled throughout their lives. When societies emphasize the importance of education, they can boost their overall prosperity.

The Role Of Unity Environmental University In Society

Environmentally conscious education is extremely valuable and should be accessible to all.   Unity Environmental University  offers tuition prices that are comparable to public universities, and financial aid is available to those who qualify. Courses last five weeks so that students can focus on only one class at a time. This ensures all learners are set up for academic success. 

Unity believes in supporting students holistically to maximize the power of education. This includes mental health services,  experiential learning opportunities , and  job placement assistance . Students in our  hybrid programs  can take classes at several field stations throughout Maine and enjoy the beautiful nature surrounding the campus for outdoor recreation.

Sustainable Initiatives

Some highlights from Unity Environmental University’s many sustainable initiatives:

• All programs include at least one sustainability learning outcome
• All research courses are focused on sustainability research
• Reduced building energy use by 25% across campus
• 100% of food waste is recycled into energy 
• Campus features a  net-zero LEED Platinum-certified classroom/office building

While many schools value sustainability, Unity stands out because  everything  we do is about sustainability. We also recognize our responsibility to model how a sustainable business can operate in a manner that’s fiscally viable and socially responsible.

Make An Impact At Unity Environmental University

While the phrase ‘education is power’ may sound cliche, it is also resoundingly true. Higher education has the power to transform individuals and societies. Unity Environmental University understands its power to make a positive impact on the world. That’s why we were the first university to divest from fossil fuels. 

This year, we celebrated our  largest incoming class ever , showing that students want an education system that aligns with their values. In addition to our commitment to sustainability, we offer flexibility to students with start dates all year round for our  online degree programs .

Start Your Journey

Looking for Answers

Get More Info

© Unity Environmental University 2024. “America’s Environmental University.™”

Privacy Overview

• Essay on Importance of Education

Importance of Education Essay

Education is one of the key components for an individual’s success. It has the ability to shape one’s life in the right direction. Education is a process of imparting or acquiring knowledge, and developing the powers of reasoning and judgement. It prepares growing children intellectually for a life with more mature understanding and sensitivity to issues surrounding them. It improves not only the personal life of the people but also their community. Thus, one cannot neglect the significance of Education in life and society. Here, we have provided an essay on the Importance of Education. Students can use this essay to prepare for their English exam or as a speech to participate in the school competition.

Importance of Education

The importance of education in life is immense. It facilitates quality learning for people throughout their life. It inculcates knowledge, belief, skill, values and moral habits. It improves the way of living and raises the social and economic status of individuals. Education makes life better and more peaceful. It transforms the personality of individuals and makes them feel confident.

Well said by Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world”. To elaborate, it is the foundation of the society which brings economic wealth, social prosperity and political stability. It gives power to people to put their views and showcase their real potential. It strengthens democracy by providing citizens with the tools to participate in the governance process. It acts as an integrative force to foster social cohesion and national identity.

In India, education is a constitutional right of every citizen. So, people of any age group, religion, caste, creed and region are free to receive education. An educated person is respected everywhere and well-treated in society. As a kid, every child dreams of being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, actor, sportsperson, etc. These dreams can come true through education. So, investment in education gives the best return. Well-educated people have more opportunities to get a better job which makes them feel satisfied.

In schools, education is divided into different levels, i.e., preschool, primary, secondary and senior secondary. School education comprises traditional learning which provides students with theoretical knowledge. However, now various efforts are being made to establish inbuilt application-based learning by adding numerous experiments, practicals and extracurricular activities to the school curriculum. Students learn to read, write and represent their viewpoints in front of others. Also, in this era of digital Education, anyone can easily access information online at their fingertips. They can learn new skills and enhance their knowledge.

Steps Taken By Government To Promote Education

Education is evidently an important aspect that no government can ignore in order to ensure the equitable development of a nation. Unfortunately, some children still do not have access to education. The Government has thereby taken initiatives to improve education quality and made it accessible to everyone, especially the poor people.

The Government passed the Right to Education Act 2009 (RTE Act 2009) on 4 August 2009. This Act came into effect on 1 April 2010, following which education has become the fundamental right of every child in India. It provides free and compulsory elementary education to children of the age group of 6-14 years in a neighbourhood school within 1 km, up to Class 8 in India. On similar lines, there are other schemes launched by the government, such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan , Mid-Day Meal , Adult Education and Skill Development Scheme, National Means cum Merit Scholarship Scheme, National Program for Education of Girls at Elementary Education, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, Scheme for Infrastructure Development in Minority Institutions, Beti Bachao , Beti Padhao, etc.

For our country’s growth, we require a well-educated population equipped with the relevant knowledge, attitude and skills. This can be achieved by spreading awareness about the importance of Education in rural areas. There is a famous saying that “If we feed one person, we will eliminate his hunger for only one time. But, if we educate a person, we will change his entire life”. Henceforth he will become capable of earning a livelihood by himself.

This essay on the Importance of Education must have helped students to improve their writing section for the English exam. They can also practice essays on other topics by visiting the CBSE Essay page. Keep learning and stay tuned with BYJU’S for the latest updates on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive Exams. Also, download the BYJU’S App for interactive study videos.

Frequently Asked Questions on Education Essay

How can the literacy rate in india be increased.

People in rural areas must be informed about the importance of providing education to their children. Also, with the COVID-19 situation, the government should take steps by providing laptops/phones for children to follow online classes.

Are girl children still denied their right to get educated?

Although awareness has now improved, there are still many villages in India where girl children are not provided with proper education or allowed to enrol themselves in schools. This mentality has to change for the betterment of the society.

Teaching subjects/academics alone is enough, or should students be introduced to other forms of educational activities too?

Extracurricular activities, moral value education, etc., are also as important as regular academic teachings.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your Mobile number and Email id will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Request OTP on Voice Call

Post My Comment

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Register with byju's & watch live videos.

How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition (2000)

Chapter: 10 conclusions, 10 conclusions.

The pace at which science proceeds sometimes seems alarmingly slow, and impatience and hopes both run high when discussions turn to issues of learning and education. In the field of learning, the past quarter century has been a period of major research advances. Because of the many new developments, the studies that resulted in this volume were conducted to appraise the scientific knowledge base on human learning and its application to education. We evaluated the best and most current scientific data on learning, teaching, and learning environments. The objective of the analysis was to ascertain what is required for learners to reach deep understanding, to determine what leads to effective teaching, and to evaluate the conditions that lead to supportive environments for teaching and learning.

A scientific understanding of learning includes understanding about learning processes, learning environments, teaching, sociocultural processes, and the many other factors that contribute to learning. Research on all of these topics, both in the field and in laboratories, provides the fundamental knowledge base for understanding and implementing changes in education.

This volume discusses research in six areas that are relevant to a deeper understanding of students’ learning processes: the role of prior knowledge in learning, plasticity and related issues of early experience upon brain development, learning as an active process, learning for understanding, adaptive expertise, and learning as a time-consuming endeavor. It reviews research in five additional areas that are relevant to teaching and environments that support effective learning: the importance of social and cultural contexts, transfer and the conditions for wide application of learning, subject matter uniqueness, assessment to support learning, and the new educational technologies.

LEARNERS AND LEARNING

Development and learning competencies.

Children are born with certain biological capacities for learning. They can recognize human sounds; can distinguish animate from inanimate objects; and have an inherent sense of space, motion, number, and causality. These raw capacities of the human infant are actualized by the environment surrounding a newborn. The environment supplies information, and equally important, provides structure to the information, as when parents draw an infant’s attention to the sounds of her or his native language.

Thus, developmental processes involve interactions between children’s early competencies and their environmental and interpersonal supports. These supports serve to strengthen the capacities that are relevant to a child’s surroundings and to prune those that are not. Learning is promoted and regulated by the children’s biology and their environments. The brain of a developing child is a product, at the molecular level, of interactions between biological and ecological factors. Mind is created in this process.

The term “development” is critical to understanding the changes in children’s conceptual growth. Cognitive changes do not result from mere accretion of information, but are due to processes involved in conceptual reorganization. Research from many fields has supplied the key findings about how early cognitive abilities relate to learning. These include the following:

“Privileged domains:” Young children actively engage in making sense of their worlds. In some domains, most obviously language, but also for biological and physical causality and number, they seem predisposed to learn.

Children are ignorant but not stupid: Young children lack knowledge, but they do have abilities to reason with the knowledge they understand.

Children are problem solvers and, through curiosity, generate questions and problems: Children attempt to solve problems presented to them, and they also seek novel challenges. They persist because success and understanding are motivating in their own right.

Children develop knowledge of their own learning capacities— metacognition—very early. This metacognitive capacity gives them the ability to plan and monitor their success and to correct errors when necessary.

Children’ natural capabilities require assistance for learning: Children’s early capacities are dependent on catalysts and mediation. Adults play a critical role in promoting children’s curiosity and persistence by directing children’s attention, structuring their experiences, supporting their

learning attempts, and regulating the complexity and difficulty of levels of information for them.

Neurocognitive research has contributed evidence that both the developing and the mature brain are structurally altered during learning. For example, the weight and thickness of the cerebral cortex of rats is altered when they have direct contact with a stimulating physical environment and an interactive social group. The structure of the nerve cells themselves is correspondingly altered: under some conditions, both the cells that provide support to the neurons and the capillaries that supply blood to the nerve cells may be altered as well. Learning specific tasks appears to alter the specific regions of the brain appropriate to the task. In humans, for example, brain reorganization has been demonstrated in the language functions of deaf individuals, in rehabilitated stroke patients, and in the visual cortex of people who are blind from birth. These findings suggest that the brain is a dynamic organ, shaped to a great extent by experience and by what a living being does.

Transfer of Learning

A major goal of schooling is to prepare students for flexible adaptation to new problems and settings. Students’ abilities to transfer what they have learned to new situations provides an important index of adaptive, flexible learning; seeing how well they do this can help educators evaluate and improve their instruction. Many approaches to instruction look equivalent when the only measure of learning is memory for facts that were specifically presented. Instructional differences become more apparent when evaluated from the perspective of how well the learning transfers to new problems and settings. Transfer can be explored at a variety of levels, including transfer from one set of concepts to another, one school subject to another, one year of school to another, and across school and everyday, nonschool activities.

People’s abilitiy to transfer what they have learned depends upon a number of factors:

People must achieve a threshold of initial learning that is sufficient to support transfer. This obvious point is often overlooked and can lead to erroneous conclusions about the effectiveness of various instructional approaches. It takes time to learn complex subject matter, and assessments of transfer must take into account the degree to which original learning with understanding was accomplished.

Spending a lot of time (“time on task”) in and of itself is not sufficient to ensure effective learning. Practice and getting familiar with subject matter take time, but most important is how people use their time while

learning. Concepts such as “deliberate practice” emphasize the importance of helping students monitor their learning so that they seek feedback and actively evaluate their strategies and current levels of understanding. Such activities are very different from simply reading and rereading a text.

Learning with understanding is more likely to promote transfer than simply memorizing information from a text or a lecture. Many classroom activities stress the importance of memorization over learning with understanding. Many, as well, focus on facts and details rather than larger themes of causes and consequences of events. The shortfalls of these approaches are not apparent if the only test of learning involves tests of memory, but when the transfer of learning is measured, the advantages of learning with understanding are likely to be revealed.

Knowledge that is taught in a variety of contexts is more likely to support flexible transfer than knowledge that is taught in a single context. Information can become “context-bound” when taught with context-specific examples. When material is taught in multiple contexts, people are more likely to extract the relevant features of the concepts and develop a more flexible representation of knowledge that can be used more generally.

Students develop flexible understanding of when, where, why, and how to use their knowledge to solve new problems if they learn how to extract underlying themes and principles from their learning exercises. Understanding how and when to put knowledge to use—known as conditions of applicability—is an important characteristic of expertise. Learning in multiple contexts most likely affects this aspect of transfer.

Transfer of learning is an active process. Learning and transfer should not be evaluated by “one-shot” tests of transfer. An alternative assessment approach is to consider how learning affects subsequent learning, such as increased speed of learning in a new domain. Often, evidence for positive transfer does not appear until people have had a chance to learn about the new domain—and then transfer occurs and is evident in the learner’s ability to grasp the new information more quickly.

All learning involves transfer from previous experiences. Even initial learning involves transfer that is based on previous experiences and prior knowledge. Transfer is not simply something that may or may not appear after initial learning has occurred. For example, knowledge relevant to a particular task may not automatically be activated by learners and may not serve as a source of positive transfer for learning new information. Effective teachers attempt to support positive transfer by actively identifying the strengths that students bring to a learning situation and building on them, thereby building bridges between students’ knowledge and the learning objectives set out by the teacher.

Sometimes the knowledge that people bring to a new situation impedes subsequent learning because it guides thinking in wrong directions.

For example, young children’s knowledge of everyday counting-based arithmetic can make it difficult for them to deal with rational numbers (a larger number in the numerator of a fraction does not mean the same thing as a larger number in the denominator); assumptions based on everyday physical experiences can make it difficult for students to understand physics concepts (they think a rock falls faster than a leaf because everyday experiences include other variables, such as resistance, that are not present in the vacuum conditions that physicists study), and so forth. In these kinds of situations, teachers must help students change their original conceptions rather than simply use the misconceptions as a basis for further understanding or leaving new material unconnected to current understanding.

Competent and Expert Performance

Cognitive science research has helped us understand how learners develop a knowledge base as they learn. An individual moves from being a novice in a subject area toward developing competency in that area through a series of learning processes. An understanding of the structure of knowledge provides guidelines for ways to assist learners acquire a knowledge base effectively and efficiently. Eight factors affect the development of expertise and competent performance:

Relevant knowledge helps people organize information in ways that support their abilities to remember.

Learners do not always relate the knowledge they possess to new tasks, despite its potential relevance. This “disconnect” has important implications for understanding differences between usable knowledge (which is the kind of knowledge that experts have developed) and less-organized knowledge, which tends to remain “inert.”

Relevant knowledge helps people to go beyond the information given and to think in problem representations, to engage in the mental work of making inferences, and to relate various kinds of information for the purpose of drawing conclusions.

An important way that knowledge affects performances is through its influences on people’s representations of problems and situations. Different representations of the same problem can make it easy, difficult, or impossible to solve.

The sophisticated problem representations of experts are the result of well-organized knowledge structures. Experts know the conditions of applicability of their knowledge, and they are able to access the relevant knowledge with considerable ease.

Different domains of knowledge, such as science, mathematics, and history, have different organizing properties. It follows, therefore, that to

have an in-depth grasp of an area requires knowledge about both the content of the subject and the broader structural organization of the subject.

Competent learners and problem solvers monitor and regulate their own processing and change their strategies as necessary. They are able to make estimates and “educated guesses.”

The study of ordinary people under everyday cognition provides valuable information about competent cognitive performances in routine settings. Like the work of experts, everyday competencies are supported by sets of tools and social norms that allow people to perform tasks in specific contexts that they often cannot perform elsewhere.

Conclusions

Everyone has understanding, resources, and interests on which to build. Learning a topic does not begin from knowing nothing to learning that is based on entirely new information. Many kinds of learning require transforming existing understanding, especially when one’s understanding needs to be applied in new situations. Teachers have a critical role in assisting learners to engage their understanding, building on learners’ understandings, correcting misconceptions, and observing and engaging with learners during the processes of learning.

This view of the interactions of learners with one another and with teachers derives from generalizations about learning mechanisms and the conditions that promote understanding. It begins with the obvious: learning is embedded in many contexts. The most effective learning occurs when learners transport what they have learned to various and diverse new situations. This view of learning also includes the not so obvious: young learners arrive at school with prior knowledge that can facilitate or impede learning. The implications for schooling are many, not the least of which is that teachers must address the multiple levels of knowledge and perspectives of children’s prior knowledge, with all of its inaccuracies and misconceptions.

Effective comprehension and thinking require a coherent understanding of the organizing principles in any subject matter; understanding the essential features of the problems of various school subjects will lead to better reasoning and problem solving; early competencies are foundational to later complex learning; self-regulatory processes enable self-monitoring and control of learning processes by learners themselves.

Transfer and wide application of learning are most likely to occur when learners achieve an organized and coherent understanding of the material; when the situations for transfer share the structure of the original

learning; when the subject matter has been mastered and practiced; when subject domains overlap and share cognitive elements; when instruction includes specific attention to underlying principles; and when instruction explicitly and directly emphasizes transfer.

Learning and understanding can be facilitated in learners by emphasizing organized, coherent bodies of knowledge (in which specific facts and details are embedded), by helping learners learn how to transfer their learning, and by helping them use what they learn.

In-depth understanding requires detailed knowledge of the facts within a domain. The key attribute of expertise is a detailed and organized understanding of the important facts within a specific domain. Education needs to provide children with sufficient mastery of the details of particular subject matters so that they have a foundation for further exploration within those domains.

Expertise can be promoted in learners. The predominant indicator of expert status is the amount of time spent learning and working in a subject area to gain mastery of the content. Secondarily, the more one knows about a subject, the easier it is to learn additional knowledge.

TEACHERS AND TEACHING

The portrait we have sketched of human learning and cognition emphasizes learning for in-depth comprehension. The major ideas that have transformed understanding of learning also have implications for teaching.

Teaching for In-Depth Learning

Traditional education has tended to emphasize memorization and mastery of text. Research on the development of expertise, however, indicates that more than a set of general problem-solving skills or memory for an array of facts is necessary to achieve deep understanding. Expertise requires well-organized knowledge of concepts, principles, and procedures of inquiry. Various subject disciplines are organized differently and require an array of approaches to inquiry. We presented a discussion of the three subject areas of history, mathematics, and science learning to illustrate how the structure of the knowledge domain guides both learning and teaching.

Proponents of the new approaches to teaching engage students in a variety of different activities for constructing a knowledge base in the subject domain. Such approaches involve both a set of facts and clearly defined principles. The teacher’s goal is to develop students’ understanding of a given topic, as well as to help them develop into independent and thoughtful problem solvers. One way to do this is by showing students that they already have relevant knowledge. As students work through different prob-

lems that a teacher presents, they develop their understanding into principles that govern the topic.

In mathematics for younger (first- and second-grade) students, for example, cognitively guided instruction uses a variety of classroom activities to bring number and counting principles into students’ awareness, including snack-time sharing for fractions, lunch count for number, and attendance for part-whole relationships. Through these activities, a teacher has many opportunities to observe what students know and how they approach solutions to problems, to introduce common misconceptions to challenge students’ thinking, and to present more advanced discussions when the students are ready.

For older students, model-based reasoning in mathematics is an effective approach. Beginning with the building of physical models, this approach develops abstract symbol system-based models, such as algebraic equations or geometry-based solutions. Model-based approaches entail selecting and exploring the properties of a model and then applying the model to answer a question that interests the student. This important approach emphasizes understanding over routine memorization and provides students with a learning tool that enables them to figure out new solutions as old ones become obsolete.

These new approaches to mathematics operate from knowledge that learning involves extending understanding to new situations, a guiding principle of transfer ( Chapter 3 ); that young children come to school with early mathematics concepts ( Chapter 4 ); that learners cannot always identify and call up relevant knowledge (Chapters 2 , 3 , and 4 ); and that learning is promoted by encouraging children to try out the ideas and strategies they bring with them to school-based learning ( Chapter 6 ). Students in classes that use the new approaches do not begin learning mathematics by sitting at desks and only doing computational problems. Rather, they are encouraged to explore their own knowledge and to invent strategies for solving problems and to discuss with others why their strategies work or do not work.

A key aspect of the new ways of teaching science is to focus on helping students overcome deeply rooted misconceptions that interfere with learning. Especially in people’s knowledge of the physical, it is clear that prior knowledge, constructed out of personal experiences and observations— such as the conception that heavy objects fall faster than light objects—can conflict with new learning. Casual observations are useful for explaining why a rock falls faster than a leaf, but they can lead to misconceptions that are difficult to overcome. Misconceptions, however, are also the starting point for new approaches to teaching scientific thinking. By probing students’ beliefs and helping them develop ways to resolve conflicting views, teachers can guide students to construct coherent and broad understandings of scientific concepts. This and other new approaches are major break-

throughs in teaching science. Students can often answer fact-based questions on tests that imply understanding, but misconceptions will surface as the students are questioned about scientific concepts.

Chèche Konnen (“search for knowledge” in Haitian Creole) was presented as an example of new approaches to science learning for grade school children. The approach focuses upon students’ personal knowledge as the foundations of sense-making. Further, the approach emphasizes the role of the specialized functions of language, including the students’ own language for communication when it is other than English; the role of language in developing skills of how to “argue” the scientific “evidence” they arrive at; the role of dialogue in sharing information and learning from others; and finally, how the specialized, scientific language of the subject matter, including technical terms and definitions, promote deep understanding of the concepts.

Teaching history for depth of understanding has generated new approaches that recognize that students need to learn about the assumptions any historian makes for connecting events and schemes into a narrative. The process involves learning that any historical account is a history and not the history. A core concept guiding history learning is how to determine, from all of the events possible to enumerate, the ones to single out as significant. The “rules for determining historical significance” become a lightening rod for class discussions in one innovative approach to teaching history. Through this process, students learn to understand the interpretative nature of history and to understand history as an evidentiary form of knowledge. Such an approach runs counter to the image of history as clusters of fixed names and dates that students need to memorize. As with the Chèche Konnen example of science learning, mastering the concepts of historical analysis, developing an evidentiary base, and debating the evidence all become tools in the history toolbox that students carry with them to analyze and solve new problems.

Expert Teachers

Expert teachers know the structure of the knowledge in their disciplines. This knowledge provides them with cognitive roadmaps to guide the assignments they give students, the assessments they use to gauge student progress, and the questions they ask in the give-and-take of classroom life. Expert teachers are sensitive to the aspects of the subject matter that are especially difficult and easy for students to grasp: they know the conceptual barriers that are likely to hinder learning, so they watch for these tell-tale signs of students’ misconceptions. In this way, both students’ prior knowledge and teachers’ knowledge of subject content become critical components of learners’ growth.

Subject-matter expertise requires well-organized knowledge of concepts and inquiry procedures. Similarly, studies of teaching conclude that expertise consists of more than a set of general methods that can be applied across all subject matter. These two sets of research-based findings contradict the common misconception about what teachers need to know in order to design effective learning environments for students. Both subject-matter knowledge and pedagogical knowledge are important for expert teaching because knowledge domains have unique structures and methods of inquiry associated with them.

Accomplished teachers also assess their own effectiveness with their students. They reflect on what goes on in the classroom and modify their teaching plans accordingly. Thinking about teaching is not an abstract or esoteric activity. It is a disciplined, systematic approach to professional development. By reflecting on and evaluating one’s own practices, either alone or in the company of a critical colleague, teachers develop ways to change and improve their practices, like any other opportunity for learning with feedback.

Teachers need expertise in both subject matter content and in teaching.

Teachers need to develop understanding of the theories of knowledge (epistemologies) that guide the subject-matter disciplines in which they work.

Teachers need to develop an understanding of pedagogy as an intellectual discipline that reflects theories of learning, including knowledge of how cultural beliefs and the personal characteristics of learners influence learning.

Teachers are learners and the principles of learning and transfer for student learners apply to teachers.

Teachers need opportunities to learn about children’s cognitive development and children’s development of thought (children’s epistemologies) in order to know how teaching practices build on learners’ prior knowledge.

Teachers need to develop models of their own professional development that are based on lifelong learning, rather than on an “updating” model of learning, in order to have frameworks to guide their career planning.

LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Tools of technology.

Technology has become an important instrument in education. Computer-based technologies hold great promise both for increasing access to knowledge and as a means of promoting learning. The public imagination has been captured by the capacity of information technologies to centralize and organize large bodies of knowledge; people are excited by the prospect of information networks, such as the Internet, for linking students around the globe into communities of learners.

There are five ways that technology can be used to help meet the challenges of establishing effective learning environments:

Bringing real-world problems into classrooms through the use of videos, demonstrations, simulations, and Internet connections to concrete data and working scientists.

Providing “scaffolding” support to augment what learners can do and reason about on their path to understanding. Scaffolding allows learners to participate in complex cognitive performances, such as scientific visualization and model-based learning, that is more difficult or impossible without technical support.

Increasing opportunities for learners to receive feedback from software tutors, teachers, and peers; to engage in reflection on their own learning processes; and to receive guidance toward progressive revisions that improve their learning and reasoning.

Building local and global communities of teachers, administrators, students, parents, and other interested learners.

Expanding opportunities for teachers’ learning.

An important function of some of the new technologies is their use as tools of representation. Representational thinking is central to in-depth understanding and problem representation is one of the skills that distinguish subject experts from novices. Many of the tools also have the potential to provide multiple contexts and opportunities for learning and transfer, for both student-learners and teacher-learners. Technologies can be used as learning and problem-solving tools to promote both independent learning and collaborative networks of learners and practitioners.

The use of new technologies in classrooms, or the use of any learning aid for that matter, is never solely a technical matter. The new electronic technologies, like any other educational resource, are used in a social environment and are, therefore, mediated by the dialogues that students have with each other and the teacher.

Educational software needs to be developed and implemented with a full understanding of the principles of learning and developmental psychology. Many new issues arise when one considers how to educate teachers to use new technologies effectively: What do they need to know about learning processes? What do they need to know about the technologies? What kinds of training are most effective for helping teachers use high-quality instructional programs? Understanding the issues that affect teachers who will be using new technologies is just as pressing as questions of the learning potential and developmental appropriateness of the technologies for children.

Assessment to Support Learning

Assessment and feedback are crucial for helping people learn. Assessment that is consistent with principles of learning and understanding should:

Mirror good instruction.

Happen continuously, but not intrusively, as a part of instruction.

Provide information (to teachers, students, and parents) about the levels of understanding that students are reaching.

Assessment should reflect the quality of students’ thinking, as well as what specific content they have learned. For this purpose, achievement measurement must consider cognitive theories of performance. Frameworks that integrate cognition and context in assessing achievement in science, for example, describe performance in terms of the content and process task demands of the subject matter and the nature and extent of cognitive activities likely to be observed in a particular assessment situation. The frameworks provide a basis for examining performance assessments that are designed to measure reasoning, understanding, and complex problem solving.

The nature and purposes of an assessment also influence the specific cognitive activities that are expressed by the student. Some assessment tasks emphasize a particular performance, such as explanation, but deemphasize others, such as self-monitoring. The kind and quality of cognitive activities observed in an assessment situation are functions of the content and process demands of the tasks involved. Similarly, the task demands for process skills can be conceived along a continuum from constrained to open. In open situations, explicit directions are minimized in order to see how students generate and carry out appropriate process skills as they solve problems. Characterizing assessments in terms of components of competence and the content and process demands of the subject matter brings specificity to assessment objectives, such as “higher level thinking” and “deep understanding.” This approach links specific content with the

underlying cognitive processes and the performance objectives that the teacher has in mind. With articulated objectives and an understanding of the correspondence between task features and cognitive activities, the content and process demands of tasks are brought into alignment with the performance objectives.

Effective teachers see assessment opportunities in ongoing classroom learning situations. They continually attempt to learn about students’ thinking and understanding and make it relevant to current learning tasks. They do a great deal of on-line monitoring of both group work and individual performances, and they attempt to link current activities to other parts of the curriculum and to students’ daily life experiences.

Students at all levels, but increasingly so as they progress through the grades, focus their learning attention and energies on the parts of the curriculum that are assessed. In fact, the art of being a good student, at least in the sense of getting good grades, is tied to being able to anticipate what will be tested. This means that the information to be tested has the greatest influence on guiding students’ learning. If teachers stress the importance of understanding but then test for memory of facts and procedures, it is the latter that students will focus on. Many assessments developed by teachers overemphasize memory for procedures and facts; expert teachers, by contrast, align their assessment practices with their instructional goals of depth-of-understanding.

Learning and Connections to Community

Outside of formal school settings, children participate in many institutions that foster their learning. For some of these institutions, promoting learning is part of their goals, including after-school programs, as in such organizations as Boy and Girl Scout Associations and 4–H Clubs, museums, and religious education. In other institutions or activities, learning is more incidental, but learning takes place nevertheless. These learning experiences are fundamental to children’s—and adults’ —lives since they are embedded in the culture and the social structures that organize their daily activities. None of the following points about the importance of out-of-school learning institutions, however, should be taken to deemphasize the central role of schools and the kinds of information that can be most efficiently and effectively taught there.

A key environment for learning is the family. In the United States, many families hold a learning agenda for their children and seek opportunities for their children to engage with the skills, ideas, and information in their communities. Even when family members do not focus consciously on instructional roles, they provide resources for children’s learning that are relevant to school and out-of-school ideas through family activities, the funds of

knowledge available within extended families and their communities, and the attitudes that family members display toward the skills and values of schooling.

The success of the family as a learning environment, especially in the early years, has provided inspiration and guidance for some of the changes recommended in schools. The rapid development of children from birth to ages 4 or 5 is generally supported by family interactions in which children learn by observing and interacting with others in shared endeavors. Conversations and other interactions that occur around events of interest with trusted and skilled adults and child companions are especially powerful environments for learning. Many of the recommendations for changes in schools can be seen as extensions of the learning activities that occur within families. In addition, recommendations to include families in classroom activities and educational planning hold promise of bringing together two powerful systems for supporting children’s learning.

Classroom environments are positively influenced by opportunities to interact with parents and community members who take interest in what they are doing. Teachers and students more easily develop a sense of community as they prepare to discuss their projects with people who come from outside the school and its routines. Outsiders can help students appreciate similarities and differences between classroom environments and everyday environments; such experiences promote transfer of learning by illustrating the many contexts for applying what they know.

Parents and business leaders represent examples of outside people who can have a major impact on student learning. Broad-scale participation in school-based learning rarely happens by accident. It requires clear goals and schedules and relevant curricula that permit and guide adults in ways to help children learn.

Designing effective learning environments includes considering the goals for learning and goals for students. This comparison highlights the fact that there are various means for approaching goals of learning, and furthermore, that goals for students change over time. As goals and objectives have changed, so has the research base on effective learning and the tools that students use. Student populations have also shifted over the years. Given these many changes in student populations, tools of technology, and society’s requirements, different curricula have emerged along with needs for new pedagogical approaches that are more child-centered and more culturally sensitive, all with the objectives of promoting effective learning and adaptation (transfer). The requirement for teachers to meet such a diversity of challenges also illustrates why assessment needs to be a tool to help teach-

ers determine if they have achieved their objectives. Assessment can guide teachers in tailoring their instruction to individual students’ learning needs and, collaterally, inform parents of their children’s progress.

Supportive learning environments, which are the social and organizational structures in which students and teachers operate, need to focus on the characteristics of classroom environments that affect learning; the environments as created by teachers for learning and feedback; and the range of learning environments in which students participate, both in and out of school.

Classroom environments can be positively influenced by opportunities to interact with others who affect learners, particularly families and community members, around school-based learning goals.

New tools of technology have the potential of enhancing learning in many ways. The tools of technology are creating new learning environments, which need to be assessed carefully, including how their use can facilitate learning, the types of assistance that teachers need in order to incorporate the tools into their classroom practices, the changes in classroom organization that are necessary for using technologies, and the cognitive, social, and learning consequences of using these new tools.

First released in the Spring of 1999, How People Learn has been expanded to show how the theories and insights from the original book can translate into actions and practice, now making a real connection between classroom activities and learning behavior. This edition includes far-reaching suggestions for research that could increase the impact that classroom teaching has on actual learning.

Like the original edition, this book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methods—to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb.

How People Learn examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn. The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system.

Topics include:

• How learning actually changes the physical structure of the brain.
• How existing knowledge affects what people notice and how they learn.
• What the thought processes of experts tell us about how to teach.
• The amazing learning potential of infants.
• The relationship of classroom learning and everyday settings of community and workplace.
• Learning needs and opportunities for teachers.
• A realistic look at the role of technology in education.

READ FREE ONLINE

Welcome to OpenBook!

You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

Show this book's table of contents , where you can jump to any chapter by name.

...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

Switch between the Original Pages , where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter .

Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

View our suggested citation for this chapter.

Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

Get Email Updates

Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free ? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released.

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Meet top uk universities from the comfort of your home, here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

• School Education /

Essay on Importance of Education

• Updated on  
• Jun 6, 2024

Education is very important for success in life. A well-educated person not only succeeds in life but also takes his society and country to new heights. Education develops essential skills like decision-making, problem-solving, and mental agility. Education helps a person to be self-aware and to solve problems in personal and professional life. In this article, we have provided an essay on the importance of education and points to note before writing the same. Moreover, you would find short essays and long essays that can be used to present in school.

Check out our 200+ Essay Topics for School Students in English .

Table of Contents

• 1 Points to Note While Writing an Essay on the Importance of Education
• 2 Reasons Behind the Importance of Education
• 3 10 Lines on the Importance of Education
• 4 Importance of Education Sample Essay (100 words)
• 5 Importance of Education Sample Essaneighbouringy (250 words)
• 6 Importance of Education Sample Essay (400 words)
• 7 10 Popular Quotes on Education
• 8 What Will Your Child Learn From This Essay on the Importance of Education?

Points to Note While Writing an Essay on the Importance of Education

Certain points must be included while writing an essay. It makes the essay more detailed and helps the reader to understand the topic in a better way. An essay on the importance of education must include the following.

• While writing a short essay make sure that it is to the point 
• A longer essay must contain an introduction, body, and conclusion.
• Facts about education and the personal perspective of the writer must be included
• Think about the importance of educated individuals in society and write about them
• You can also write about the job market and the role education plays in it.

Also Read: Essay on Democracy

Reasons Behind the Importance of Education

There are many reasons that make Education of utmost importance. Some of those reasons are mentioned below:

• Removing Poverty : When people are educated, it helps society to fight and eradicate poverty because a person who is educated can get a good job.
• Safety and Security against Crime : A well-educated person cannot easily fall prone to a crime or fraud hence, education becomes a safety net to protect against crime and fraud.
• Increases Productivity : Educated people develop a lot f skills and knowledge because which they become much more productive.
• Confidence : An educated person develops a lot of self-confidence by facing and overcoming difficult situations that life throws at them.
• Improved Standard of Life : When an individual becomes educated, the quality of life for him/her and their family changes for the better.
• Women Empowerment : Education helps women become self-sufficient and thus empowers them.
• Upliftment of the Economically Weaker Section : Illiterate people have to suffer hardships like discrimination, injustice, untouchability, etc. By educating them, we can uplift their lives, thus uplifting the society.
• Communication : Education helps improve communication and good communication is essential for success.
• Success : Education is the key to achieving success. With it, comes a positive mindset that helps the individual excel in life.

10 Lines on the Importance of Education

Education is important for several reasons. Here are 10 lines on the importance of education that can be added to the essay. Students can also describe these points to make the essay more descriptive and coherent.

• Education is a basic need for every individual to live in the modern world
• Education helps us to understand technological systems and services
• An educated person can easily take up a job based on interest 
• Without an education, a person will lose the opportunity to be successful in life
• Moreover, education protects an individual from being cheated and exploited by others
• Educated citizens are a valuable asset to the company
• It also helps society to adapt to change and discard old and unproductive ways of conduct and thinking 
• Thus, it enables all sections of society to prosper 
• Particularly, it enables poor sections of society to prosper and develop
• Education helps an individual to uplift the society and community
• Education is extremely important for the development of individuals. Hence, children from all sections of society must be educated.

Also, Read; Essay on My Aim in Life

Importance of Education Sample Essay (100 words)

Education is crucial for the importance of the nation and its citizens. Education is about gathering knowledge and training the mind to think. Moreover, it helps a person to apply the knowledge gained to solve problems.  Education is important in the modern world, as it helps a person to learn about the world and new technologies. It can also empower people and help them to gain employment opportunities . Educated individuals can impart their knowledge to the next generation and thus contribute to society.  They also contribute to the development of the nation and society in general. Thus, the importance of education can’t be denied.

Importance of Education Sample Essaneighbouringy (250 words)

Men and women have to be educated as it helps in the development of a healthy society.  Educated individuals help in the progress of society. It is the highly educated individuals who lay the basic foundation of a developed country. Moreover, education helps in the personal development and empowerment of individuals. It develops in a person the knowledge, and critical thinking skills required to be successful in life. These skills increase self-awareness and help individuals to make informed decisions. Thus, people gain a deeper understanding of the world around them and help them to follow their interests, passions, and talents.

Education helps in growth and innovation. A well-educated workforce is more skilled and productive. Thus, they are more competitive in the global marketplace. Research , technological advancements, and entrepreneurship skills can all be credited to educated individuals. It is the sword that can be used against misinformation and ignorance. A well-educated person is more likely to make a good decision and resist manipulation. Moreover, education promotes healthy lifestyles among individuals.  Educated people are more likely to follow a healthy lifestyle and preventive healthcare measures. 

In conclusion, we can say that education helps in societal advancement and economic, and personal development. It helps individuals to make informed decisions and pushes society for innovation and growth. Education helps to uproot illiteracy and inequality in society. It encourages individuals to take better care of themselves and the environment they live in. Moreover, it encourages people to understand their duties, rights , and responsibilities toward their country.

Importance of Education Sample Essay (400 words)

Education is important for the development of the individual, nation, and society. It empowers individuals to make better decisions for themselves and for the environment they live in. Education provides an individual with the knowledge and skills that are necessary to navigate the complexities of life. It is crucial for personal growth, societal development, and global progress.

Education empowers an individual to think critically and develop analytical skills. It ignites curiosity in humans and encourages them to explore, learn and adapt to changes. Moreover, it helps individuals to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and set meaningful goals. Thus, it helps in the holistic development of an individual. Thus, a well-educated individual can contribute to the progress of the society. It develops empathy, and tolerance, and contributes to a stable and prosperous community. It also helps in the reduction of social inequalities and discrimination and encourages people to actively participate in the democratic functioning of the government. When individuals have access to education it means that they can get employment opportunities as well. Thus, education can help in eradicating poverty and increase economic growth. Moreover, it helps in increasing the living standards of families.

Globally, education helps to drive innovation, develop international cooperation, and deal with global issues. Scientific breakthroughs, advancement of technology, and innovations are all a result of education. Moreover, it helps in cross-cultural understanding and exchange of values and ideas. Global challenges such as climate change, and medical issues can be easily dealt with due to education. Society becomes better equipped to provide sustainable solutions for the betterment of all.

 Education can break down gender inequalities. Therefore, it can empower women and marginalized sections of the community. When societies recognize the importance of education, it helps in promoting equitable access to opportunities. Educating the girl child can result in a reduction in child mortality rates. Thus, it helps in social progress.

The importance of education can’t be denied. It results in personal development, international collaboration, and the development of society. Education provides knowledge and skills that are necessary for navigating through the challenges of life. Moreover, it helps in progress of the society and dealing with global challenges like environmental crises. Thus, education helps in creating a prosperous, and just world.  Education can help an individual achieve his dreams and aspirations. Most of the successful people in the world are educated. In the future educated individual will be a person who knows and can apply it to solve problems.

10 Popular Quotes on Education

Here are 10 popular quotes on education. Feel free to add them to your essay on importance of education or similar academic topics.

‘Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.’ – Albert Einstein

‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’ – Dr APJ Abdul Kalam

‘Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.’ – Malcolm X

‘The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.’ – Martin Luther King Jr.

‘The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited.”‘- Plutarch

‘Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.’ – John Dewey

‘Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.’ – Oprah Winfrey

‘The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn…and change.’ – Carl Rogers

Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.’ – Confucius

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.’ – Benjamin Franklin

What Will Your Child Learn From This Essay on the Importance of Education?

An essay on the importance of education will help a student to learn to express ideas and knowledge simply. It will also help them to express their ideas in a lengthy format. 

An essay on the importance of education will help a student understand the significance of education in the modern world. Moreover, it will make them realize the privilege of a good education later in life.

Also Read: Essay on My Brother in 200 Words

Ans. Education helps a person develop critical thinking and decision-making skills. It helps empower a person to deal with the personal and professional challenges of life. An educated person can make rational and informed decisions while dealing with challenges.

Ans. Education helps in the development of the mind, and the growth of society and the nation. An educated society is an empowered society. Individuals of such a society can make informed decisions and can work towards the social, economic, and political development of the nation.

Ans. The main aim of education is to acquire knowledge and skills. It helps a person adjust to the environment and achieve goals.

Check out our Popular Essay Topics for Students

This was all about essay on the importance of education. We hope the samples listed above will help students with their essay writing practice. For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu.

Blessy George

Blessy George is a Content Marketing Associate at Leverage Edu, boasting over a year of experience in the industry. Her expertise lies in crafting compelling content tailored to online courses, making her a go-to source for those navigating the vast landscape of digital learning. In addition to online classes, she writes content related to study abroad, English test preparation and visas. She has completed her MA degree in Political Science and has gained valuable experience as an intern.She is known for her extensive writing on various aspects of international education, garnering recognition for her insights and contributions. Apart from her professional pursuits, Blessy is passionate about creative writing, particularly poetry and songwriting.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

Connect With Us

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. take the first step today..

Resend OTP in

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

January 2024

September 2024

What is your budget to study abroad?

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

Have something on your mind?

Make your study abroad dream a reality in January 2022 with

India's Biggest Virtual University Fair

Essex Direct Admission Day

Why attend .

Don't Miss Out

Why is Education Important and What is the Purpose of Education

“If you can read this, thank a teacher.” It’s a cliche, but it’s true. If it weren’t for education at all levels, you wouldn’t be able to read, write, speak, think critically, make informed decisions, know right from wrong, effectively communicate, or understand how the world works.

Another famous quote that proclaims the importance of education comes from George Orwell, “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

It goes without saying that an educated population advances a society, but why, exactly, do different subsets of education matter? Does physical education really make a difference, and do we need to be spending precious dollars on arts education? Unequivocally, the answer is yes, but continue reading below to find out why.

Why is Early Childhood Education Important

Before we can understand the importance of early childhood education, we should be on the same page about what age early childhood education refers to. Typically, early childhood education encompasses any education a child receives up until the age of eight, or around third grade.

During these initial years of life, children’s brains are growing and learning at a rapid rate, and learning typically comes very easy to them. The purpose of education at this stage is to build a solid foundation for children to build upon for the rest of their lives.

When looking at pre-school, one of the earliest educational opportunities, a meta-analysis of studies on the benefits of early childhood education found that “7–8 of every 10 preschool children did better than the average child in a control or comparison group” when looking at standard measures of intelligence and academic achievement. This makes sense, given that education in those early years sets children up for success.

Another study followed a group of students who were given early high-quality education and compared them to a control group. Years later, the students who were given a high-quality education performed better than the other students in many areas, both academically and socially. These students:

• Scored higher on standardized testing
• Had higher attendance rates
• Had fewer discipline referrals
• Were rated higher by their teachers in terms of behaviors, social interactions, and emotional maturity.

The list of studies showing the importance of early childhood education goes on virtually forever. In addition to the educational advantages students with high-quality early education see, they also often find more pleasure in learning. When parents and teachers instill a love of learning early on, children are more likely to continue to love learning as they go through school.

The better foundation they have from an early age, the more likely students are to find success and not get frustrated. When students struggle due to poor early childhood education, the more likely they are to give up. A solid foundation is protective against falling behind, which is imperative, because once students begin to fall behind, it becomes very hard to catch back up.

In addition to the obvious benefits to each child, multiple studies have also shown that early childhood education programs provide an economic benefit to society as well.

In an article from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the authors Arthur J. Rolnick and Rob Grunewald write, “Investment in human capital breeds economic success not only for those being educated, but also for the overall economy.” Later, they add:

“The quality of life for a child and the contributions the child makes to society as an adult can be traced back to the first few years of life. From birth until about 5 years old a child undergoes tremendous growth and change. If this period of life includes support for growth in cognition, language, motor skills, adaptive skills and social-emotional functioning, the child is more likely to succeed in school and later contribute to society.” Arthur J. Rolnick and Rob Grunewald

Early education also teaches kids how to be students. While it’s true that students shouldn’t be stuck in a desk all day and that they do some of their best learning out in the real world, the reality is that much of our formal education takes place inside a classroom. Early childhood education teaches kids how to learn and how to conduct themselves in a classroom.

Why is Bilingual Education Important

Bilingual education is a necessity for some students who speak a language at home that is different from the language spoken at their school. Although it can be a challenge, it turns out these students are at an advantage compared to their peers, and voluntary bilingual education prepares students to enter a global workforce.

According to an article from NPR , people who are bilingual are better at switching from one task to another, potentially due to their learned ability to switch from one language to the other. It seems their brains become wired to be better at these types of tasks that make up executive function, or “the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully.” ( Harvard )

Understanding a second language often makes it easier to understand your first language as well. In the same NPR article, the author writes about students enrolled in a bilingual education program who showed better performance in reading English than students enrolled in an English-only program.

Jennifer Steele, who observed these students, said “Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, she suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general, aka ‘metalinguistic awareness.’”

I personally experienced this benefit when I was in school. Although I am by no means bilingual, I took a second language, French, in middle school and high school, and I often found that the words I knew in French helped me understand and decipher new words in English. I also better understood the complexities of English grammar and verb forms after learning about them in a second language.

Another obvious benefit of bilingual education is increased opportunities in the workforce. An article for the Chicago Tribune reports that there has been increasing demand for bilingual education starting at an early age, partially due to the demand for bilingual employees. Specifically, the article notes that the following industries look for people who speak more than one language: health care, education, customer service, government, finance, information technology, social services, and law enforcement.

Why is Physical Education Important

A good physical education program can set a child up for a lifetime of healthy habits. When I was in elementary school, I can remember asking what the point of gym class was. By the time I was in high school though, I realized that gym class was one of the most important classes I had ever taken.

In my senior year, I took a strength and conditioning class, and it set me up for a lifetime of treating my body well through exercise and proper nutrition. Without that class, I would have been lost the first time I stepped into a gym on my college campus.

Physical education isn’t just important for older children; even at the preschool level, it’s an essential part of the school day. Spend time around any young child, and you’ll realize that they can’t sit still for long. With so much energy and excitement for exploring the world, they need to keep their bodies moving. One study in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health found that physical education increased both total physical activity and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in preschool children.

An article for Livestrong.com also highlighted the importance of gym class because it increases the amount of physical exercise children get, it increases coordination and flexibility, it produces endorphins that elevate kids’ mood, and it provides important opportunities for kids to socialize with each other.

In addition to teaching kids lifelong skills about moving their bodies, gym class benefits the whole child; in a book titled Educating the Student Body , researchers found “a direct correlation between regular participation in physical activity and health in school-age children, suggesting that physical activity provides important benefits directly to the individual child.” Specifically, they found that physical education is associated with academic benefits, better social and emotional well-being, and that it might even be protective against heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Why is arts and music education important

In a world where education budgets are continually being slashed, arts and music education are tragically often the first to go. For many students, the arts are what gets them to school each day, and without these classes as a creative outlet to look forward to, school can be a major struggle. These classes are a refuge for many students, especially those who don’t excel in a traditional classroom environment.

In addition to being a safe and happy place for students to go during the day, the arts have many other benefits. A study called “SAT Scores of Students Who Study the Arts: What We Can and Cannot Conclude about the Association” for the Journal of Aesthetic Education found that students who take arts courses in high school (including music, theatre, etc.) tend to have higher SAT scores. While standardized test scores aren’t everything, this connection certainly does suggest the arts play an integral part in overall student success.

The Brookings Institution , a nonprofit public policy organization, also found connections between arts education and student success. They conducted a randomized controlled trial to investigate the effect of arts education on students, and found students with more education in the arts had better academic, social, and emotional outcomes than the students with less access to the arts.

In addition to measurable changes like a decrease in disciplinary infractions and an increase in writing scores, they also found that “students who received more arts education experiences are more interested in how other people feel and more likely to want to help people who are treated badly.” In elementary students specifically, they found “increases in arts learning positively and significantly affect students’ school engagement, college aspirations, and their inclinations to draw upon works of art as a means for empathizing with others.”

Why is STEM education important

If you’ve heard anything about education in the last ten years or so, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the push for STEM education, which stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. Schools everywhere seem to be offering more STEM courses, and for good reason.

In a study of pre-service and novice elementary school teachers, 100% agreed that STEM education is important, citing reasons such as:

• Providing a foundation for later academics
• Making connections to everyday life
• Preparing students for jobs
• Promoting higher order thinking

The U.S. Department of Education also offers compelling reasons why STEM education is important:

“In an ever-changing, increasingly complex world, it’s more important than ever that our nation’s youth are prepared to bring knowledge and skills to solve problems, make sense of information, and know how to gather and evaluate evidence to make decisions. These are the kinds of skills that students develop in science, technology, engineering and math—disciplines collectively known as STEM. If we want a nation where our future leaders, neighbors, and workers have the ability to understand and solve some of the complex challenges of today and tomorrow, and to meet the demands of the dynamic and evolving workforce, building students’ skills, content knowledge, and fluency in STEM fields is essential.”

If that weren’t enough to convince you, the Smithsonian Science Education Center echoes a similar sentiment,

We must all recognize that we live in an era of constant scientific discovery and technological change, which directly affects our lives and requires our input as citizens. And we must recognize that as our economy increasingly depends on these revolutionary new advances, many new jobs will be created in STEM fields. If we are to stay competitive as a nation, then we need to build a scientifically literate citizenry and a bank of highly skilled, STEM-literate employees.

Education students in STEM subjects gives them the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in our digital world that changes by the day. Students learn skills they’ll use to take on jobs that don’t even exist yet.

Why is College Education Important

The importance of college education is sometimes called into question for many reasons. According to CNBC , more than one in five college graduates work in jobs that don’t require a degree. Statistics like this make people wonder if it’s worth spending years of their lives going into debt only to land a job they could have gotten without a degree.

While there are of course cases where people don’t use their college degree, the research still suggests that overall, earning a college degree is beneficial. A paper titled “Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs?” revealed that the benefits do, in fact, outweigh the costs. The authors of the academic paper found the following:

“An analysis of the economic returns to college since the 1970s demonstrates that the benefits of both a bachelor’s degree and an associate’s degree still tend to outweigh the costs, with both degrees earning a return of about 15 percent over the past decade. The return has remained high in spite of rising tuition and falling earnings because the wages of those without a college degree have also been falling, keeping the college wage premium near an all-time high while reducing the opportunity cost of going to school.”

There is also no denying that a large majority of very important jobs require higher education. Everybody would agree they wouldn’t want their surgeon or their child’s teacher to walk onto the job straight out of high school.

The college experience shouldn’t be downplayed, either. Whether it’s to have that buffer zone between being a kid and an adult or to have time to study abroad and have shared experiences before entering the “real world,” many people who have gone to college say the college experience is one of the many things that makes college worthwhile.

A report titled “It’s Not Just the Money: The Benefits of College Education to Individuals and to Society” from the University of Maine echoes this sentiment, noting that the monetary benefit of college is often the most cited because it’s objective and easy to measure.

Subjective benefits like the college experience are hard to study because they can mean different things to different people. The report cites a multitude of benefits college graduates see, including higher likelihood of having health insurance, higher likelihood of having a retirement plan, higher likelihood of good health, lower likelihood of being in prison or jail, higher voting turnout, higher self-reportings of happiness, and higher community involvement.

Many of these statistics are the result of correlations, meaning there is a connection between college and the benefits, but that doesn’t mean that attending college causes these benefits. Nonetheless, there is no denying that college can and does have a positive impact on many people.

Suffice it to say that education matters. Studies have shown that those who are more educated are more likely to live longer , live healthier lives , and are even more likely to help strangers . Investing in various types of education from the time children are young ensures that they have a strong foundation and that the whole person is being educated. The more diverse and well-rounded we can make education for children, the better educated they’ll be.

Similar Posts:

• Discover Your Learning Style – Comprehensive Guide on Different Learning Styles
• 15 Learning Theories in Education (A Complete Summary)
• Preschool – Everything You Need to Know

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name and email in this browser for the next time I comment.

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction
• Principal historical figures
• The aims of education
• Clarification of educational concepts
• Rights, power, and authority
• Critical thinking
• Indoctrination
• The individual and society
• Moral education
• Teaching, learning, and curriculum
• Educational research
• Feminist, multiculturalist, and postmodern criticisms

• Why is Jean-Jacques Rousseau famous?
• What are John Locke’s most famous works?
• What contributions did John Locke make to epistemology?
• What contributions did John Locke make to political theory?
• How did John Locke influence the design of U.S. government?

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• StateUniversity.com - Education Encyclopedia - Philosophy of Education
• Kansas State University Libraries - Center for the Advancement of Digital Scholarship - Foundational Philosophies of Education
• Social Science LibreTexts - What are philosophies of education?
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Philosophy of Education
• Wrexham Glyndwr University - What is the philosophy of education?
• The Basics of Philosophy - Philosophy of Education
• Table Of Contents

The list of problems, issues, and tasks presented above is necessarily partial, and for most of them the proposed solutions have been few or not widely agreed upon. This is in part a function of the inherent openness of philosophical inquiry. Nevertheless, some proposed resolutions are better than others, and philosophical argumentation and analysis have helped to reveal that difference. This is true of philosophy in general and of philosophy of education in particular.

All educational activities, from classroom practice to curriculum decisions to the setting of policies at the school, district, state, and federal levels, inevitably rest upon philosophical assumptions, claims, and positions. Consequently, thoughtful and defensible educational practice depends upon philosophical awareness and understanding. To that extent, the philosophy of education is essential to the proper guidance of educational practice. Knowledge of philosophy of education would benefit not only teachers, administrators, and policy makers at all levels but also students, parents, and citizens generally. Societies that value education and desire that it be conducted in a thoughtful and informed way ignore the philosophy of education at their peril. Its relevance, reach, and potential impact make it perhaps the most fundamental and wide-ranging area of applied philosophy.

Home > Blog > Tips for Online Students > Top 10 Reasons Why Is Education Important

Getting Into College , Tips for Online Students , Tips for Students , Why Go to College

Top 10 Reasons Why Is Education Important

Updated: June 19, 2024

Published: April 15, 2020

Most of us have grown up being taught the importance of education. But why is education important? Through your frustrating school years, you may have thought that it was a waste of time, or was just something that you needed to do in order to get a job. Truth be told, however, education goes so much beyond just getting a job and making your parents happy. In fact, it’s one of the most powerful tools out there.

What Is Education?

Education means studying in order to obtain a deeper knowledge and understanding of a variety of subjects to be applied to daily life. Education is not limited to just knowledge from books, but can also be obtained through practical experiences outside of the classroom.

Top 10 Reasons: Why Is Education Important?

There are many different understandings and definitions of what education is, but one thing can be universally agreed upon, which is the importance of education — and here’s why.

1. Provides Stability

Education provides stability in life, and it’s something that no one can ever take away from you. By being well-educated and holding a college degree , you increase your chances for better career opportunities and open up new doors for yourself.

2. Provides Financial Security

On top of stability, education also provides financial security, especially in today’s society. A good education tends to lead to a higher paying job, as well as provide you with the skills needed to get there.

3. Needed For Equality

In order for the entire world to really become equal, it needs to start with education. If everyone was provided with the same opportunities to education , then there would be less gaps between social classes. Everyone would be able to have an equal chance at higher paying jobs — not just those that are already well-off.

4. Allows For Self-Dependency

The importance of education is evident when it comes to being self-dependent. If we are we educated, then it’s something that belongs to us, and only us, allowing us to rely on no one else other than ourselves. It can allow you to not only be financially independent, but also to make your own choices.

5. Make Your Dreams Come True

If you can dream it, you can achieve it. An education is the most powerful weapon you can possibly have, and with it, you can make all of your dreams come true. There are of course certain exceptions, depending on what you’re aiming for, but generally an education will take you as far as you’re willing to go.

6. A Safer World

Education is something that’s not only needed on a personal level, but also on a global level, as it’s something that keeps our world safe and makes it a more peaceful place. Education tends to teach people the difference between right and wrong, and can help people stay out of risky situations.

7. Confidence

Being self-confident is a major part of being successful in life. And what better way to gain that confidence than with an education? Your level of education is often considered a way to prove your knowledge, and it can give you the confidence to express your opinions and speak your mind.

8. A Part Of Society

In today’s society, having an education is considered a vital part of being accepted by those around you. Having an education is believed to make you a useful part of society, and can make you feel like a contributing member as well.

9. Economic Growth On A National Level

An educated society is crucial for economic growth. We need people to continue to learn and research in order to constantly stay innovative. Countries with higher literacy rates also tend to be in better economic situations. With a more educated population, more employment opportunities are opened.

10. Can Protect You

Education can protect you more than you know, not only on a financial level, but it can help prevent you from being taken advantage of by knowing how to read and write, such as knowing not to sign any bogus documents.

Photo by  Pixabay  from  Pexels

Education is important for children.

Children are the future of our world, making education crucial for them. Their knowledge is what’s going to keep our world alive and flourishing.

At Childhood

During the childhood development stages, the importance of education is stronger than ever. It’s a time for children to learn social and mental skills that will be crucial for their growth and success in the future. Education at childhood also offers a chance for self-discovery and to learn about their unique interests.

The importance of education in our lives goes far beyond what we can read in a textbook. Education also provides childhood with knowledge such as how to produce artwork and make music. Education allows us to analyze what’s in front of us, and even learn from our mistakes.

Goal Building

By learning from a young age, children are given the chance to start building goals for themselves. Education means having the logic to set your mind to something and achieve it.

Importance Of Education In Society

For a modern society, education is of utmost importance. There are so many influences coming from all directions, and education can help us decipher what we should take as true, and what we should take with a grain of salt. Education can mold people into functional members of society with the right kinds of values.

Productivity

Education is needed for a productive society. Our population only continues to increase, and in turn, so do our needs. We need a strong and efficient workforce of educated people to provide us with the services we need for everyday life.

The Impact Education Has On The World

With education, people can become better citizens, knowing right from wrong, allowing for a better society where laws are followed. An educated nation knows about the importance of voting, doing so with the knowledge not blindly, but also having an understanding of what their party truly stands for. Education can also help people get jobs, which is what a nation thrives on.

Inspiring Quotes On What Education Truly Is

Why is education important, and what is it exactly? While every person has a different understanding of its true meaning, here are some of the most inspiring quotes by some legendary people.

• “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” — Nelson Mandela
• “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” — Malcolm X
• “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” — Benjamin Franklin
• “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” — John Dewey

What Are Some Other Reasons Why Education Is Important?

There are endless reasons why education is so important, especially since it also has endless connotations and meanings.

Mind And Body

Our mind and bodies are connected more than we know. With a powerful, well-educated mind, so too are our bodies.

Education helps us understand how to best take care of ourselves, boosting our confidence and overall well-being. Studies have shown that each additional year of education can add up to 1.7 years to our lifespan at the age of 35.

The importance of education also extends to personal growth. By constantly learning, asking questions, and seeking knowledge, we can achieve things we never imagined before. Education helps us get to know ourselves better, whether through books, courses, or professional consultations.

Photo by  Burst  from  Pexels

Worldwide value.

Education is the best way to ensure a positive global perspective. Without proper education, it is difficult to understand what is considered appropriate and how to behave.

Education brings us closer to the goal of world peace by teaching us about our place in the world and our responsibilities to humanity. It instills values far beyond the classroom, encompassing lessons learned at home and through interactions with others. These teachings are essential aspects of what education entails, guiding our behavior and understanding of the world.

Sharpens Your Thinking

Education is essential for sharp and clear thinking. It keeps you informed about the world, making you aware of current events and the people around you. Education helps you understand your strengths and weaknesses, guiding you to focus on the right areas.

It enhances logical reasoning, enabling you to argue effectively with accurate facts and work through situations logically. Education keeps you focused and on track, knowing the right path for you.

It also promotes innovation and creativity, allowing your mind to reach its full potential. Education develops basic life skills and street smarts, teaching us how to best conduct ourselves daily.

Education can be the most freeing and empowering thing in the world. It enables you to live life to the fullest by gaining a vast amount of knowledge about the world. Education ensures continual learning from various sources, whether through people, newspapers, experiences, research, or traditional classes.

It breaks barriers, empowering people globally and offering equal opportunities for all socio-economic backgrounds. University of the People, a tuition-free, online university, exemplifies this by providing accessible higher education to everyone.

Education allows you to become the best version of yourself, discovering your interests, strengths, and place in the world, making you feel complete and self-aware.

Education In The Modern World

Education today is more important than ever before, and has reached new heights with new understandings of what it truly entails. Ask yourself “Why is education important?” and it will surely not be the same as anyone else’s answer.

While in modern society, holding a college degree is considered to be highly beneficial for a successful career and to be socially accepted, it is not the only means of education. Education is all around us in everything that we do, so use it wisely!

FAQ Section

What are the primary goals of education.

The primary goals of education are to impart knowledge, develop critical thinking, and foster personal and social growth. It aims to prepare individuals for the workforce, promote civic responsibility, and encourage lifelong learning.

How does education influence future opportunities?

Education enhances future opportunities by increasing employability, boosting earning potential, and providing a foundation for personal and professional growth. It opens doors to higher-paying jobs and further educational pursuits.

How does education vary across different countries?

Education varies globally in structure, quality, and accessibility due to differences in economic development, cultural values, and government policies. Some countries focus on standardized testing, while others emphasize holistic or experiential learning.

What is the role of technology in education?

Technology enhances education by providing access to online learning, digital resources, and interactive tools. It supports personalized learning, enables innovative teaching methods, and makes education more accessible and engaging.

How does education contribute to personal growth?

Education promotes personal growth by expanding knowledge, improving cognitive abilities, and fostering critical thinking. It helps develop self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and effective communication skills.

How does education address societal issues like discrimination?

Education combats discrimination by promoting inclusivity and awareness. It teaches about diversity, tolerance, and human rights, helping to break down prejudices and empower marginalized communities.

What are the economic benefits of investing in education?

Investing in education leads to higher productivity, increased innovation, and a more skilled workforce. It reduces poverty, boosts economic growth, and lowers reliance on social welfare programs.

Can education foster innovation and entrepreneurship?

Yes, education fosters innovation and entrepreneurship by encouraging creative thinking and problem-solving. It provides the skills and knowledge necessary for developing new ideas and launching successful businesses.

What role do educators play in shaping the educational experience?

Educators shape the educational experience by creating engaging learning environments, guiding students, and adapting teaching methods to meet diverse needs. They mentor and inspire students to achieve their full potential.

In this article

At UoPeople, our blog writers are thinkers, researchers, and experts dedicated to curating articles relevant to our mission: making higher education accessible to everyone. Read More

• SDG4 coordination
• Global Education Monitoring Report
• Global Coalition for Education
• UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN Networks
• Global network of technical and vocational education and training institutions
• Global network of learning cities
• Right to education
• Education in emergencies
• Inclusion in education
• Lifelong learning
• Early childhood care and education
• Literacy and adult learning
• Higher education
• Technical and vocational education and training
• Education and gender equality
• Girls’ and women’s education in science and technology
• Teacher education
• Education policies and strategies
• Education management, monitoring and evaluation
• Assessment for improved learning outcomes
• Curriculum development
• Global citizenship education
• Education about the Holocaust and genocide
• Countering hate speech
• Education for sustainable development
• Health and education
• Digital learning and transformation of education
• Futures of Education
• All UNESCO news on education
• Education stories
• Subscribe to the Education monthly newsletter
• Publications
• Databases and tools
• National education profiles

Transforming lives through education

Transforming education to change our world

UNESCO provides global and regional leadership on all aspects of education from pre-school to higher education and throughout life. It works through its Member States and brings together governments, the private sector and civil society to strengthen education systems worldwide in order to deliver quality education for all. As a thought leader it publishes landmark reports and data for policy-makers, implements programmes on the ground from teacher training to emergency responses and establishes and monitors norms and standards for all to guide educational developments.  

Right to education in a ruined world

Southern Italy, 1950. Three children are huddled around a makeshift desk made out of reclaimed wood, scribbling in their notebooks. The classroom has an earthen floor and roughly clad walls. The children’s clothes are ragged. They are wearing home-made slippers because shoes and the money to buy them are rare commodities in the war-ravaged south. 

Although World War II ended five years earlier, the scars of conflict are still visible in this black and white photo from a report commissioned by UNESCO from legendary photojournalist David Seymour. 

At the time when the photograph was taken, less than half of Italy’s population could read and write and just a third completed primary school. 70 years later, these children’s grandchildren enjoy an over 99% literacy rate. In the wake of the war, UNESCO led a major education campaign in Europe to respond to the education crisis, to rebuild links between people and to strengthen democracy and cultural identities after years of conflict. The emphasis then was on the fundamental learning skill of literacy.  

Immediately after World War two UNESCO led a major education campaign in Europe to respond to the education crisis, fix and rebuild links between people and strengthen cultural identities after years of conflict. David Seymour’s images show the extent of the fight against illiteracy led by the post-war Italian government and non-governmental organisations backed by UNESCO. 

Looking back at the deprived surroundings Seymour captured in his photo essay, one can see the extent of success. Seventy-one years later, those children’s grandchildren enjoy a 99.16 per cent literacy rate. 

Similar programmes were held across the globe, for instance in devastated Korea where UNESCO led a major education textbook production programme in the 1950s. Several decades after, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations and Korean citizen Ban Ki-Moon expressed the importance of such a programme for the country's development: 

The flowering of literacy

In a Korea devastated by war and where UNESCO led a major education textbook production programme in the 1950s, one student, Ban Ki-Moon, now Former Secretary-General of the United Nations, saw the world open up to him through the pages of a UNESCO textbook. Several decades after, he expressed the importance of such a programme for his country's development on the world stage.

Reaching the remote villages perched atop the Andes in Peru during the early 1960s wasn’t without its challenges for UNESCO’s technical assistance programme to bring literacy to disadvantaged communities. While Peru’s economy was experiencing a prolonged period of expansion, not all Peruvians were able to benefit from this growth which was limited to the industrialised coast. Instead, Andes communities were grappling with poverty, illiteracy and depopulation. 

Today, the number of non-literate youths and adults around the world has decreased dramatically, while the global literacy rate for young people aged 15-24 years has reached 92 %. These astonishing successes reflect improved access to schooling for younger generations.

Photojournalist Paul Almasy has left us the poignant image of a barefoot older man while he’s deciphering a newspaper thanks to his newfound literacy skills.

The classroom at the UNESCO mission in Chinchera, in the Andean highlands of Peru, had allowed the old man to discover the world beyond his tiny village.

However, there are still huge obstacles to overcome. Data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics shows that 617 million children and adolescents worldwide are not achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics. Since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 it is still the case that globally more than 450 million children - six out of 10 - have failed to gain basic literacy skills by the age of 10. And beyond literacy programmes, massive investments in skills for work and life, teacher training, and education policies are needed in a world that is changing ever faster. 

Global priorities

Africa, home to the world’s youngest population, is not on track to achieve the targets of SDG 4. Sub-Saharan Africa alone is expected to account for 25% of the school-age population by 2030, up from 12% in 1990, yet it remains the region with the highest out-of-school rates. Girls are more likely to be permanently excluded from education than boys. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequalities, with 89% of learners not having access to computers and 82% lacking internet access to benefit from distance learning. The lack of trained teachers further jeopardizes progress towards SDG4: pre-pandemic only 64% of whom were trained at the primary level and 58% at the lower secondary level.

As part of its Priority Africa Flagship 2022 – 2029 , UNESCO has launched Campus Africa: Reinforcing Higher Education in Africa with the objective to build integrated, inclusive, and quality tertiary education systems and institutions, for the development of inclusive and equitable societies on the continent.

Gender    

There are immense gender gaps when it comes to access, learning achievement and education, most often at the expense of girls and women. It is estimated that some 127 million girls are out of school around the world. For many girls and women around the world, the classroom remains an elusive, often forbidden space. UNESCO monitors the educational rights of girls and women around the world and shares information on the legal progress toward securing the right to education for women in all countries. Despite important progress in recent decades, the right to education is still far from being a reality for many girls and women. Discriminatory practices stand in the way of girls and women fully exercising their right to participate in, complete, and benefit from education. And while girls have difficulty with access, boys face increasing challenges, and particularly disengagement , from education at later stages. Globally only 88 men are enrolled in tertiary education for every 100 women. In 73 countries, fewer boys than girls are enrolled in upper-secondary education.

UNESCO's Her Atlas analyzes the legal frameworks of nearly 200 states to track which laws are enabling---or inhibiting---the right to education for girls and women. This interactive world map uses a color-coded scoring system to monitor 12 indicators of legal progress towards gender equality in the right to education.

Monitoring the right to education for girls and women

What makes me proud is that soon I will finish building a new house. I have already been able to buy a cow and I will soon be able to have another pond

Madagascar’s coastal Atsinanana region is known for its lush rainforests and fish breeding.

The country has a young population, but only one out of three children can complete primary education. Among those who are able to finish primary school, only 17% have minimum reading skills, while just a fifth of them have basic maths competencies. Once they leave school, children face a precarious labour market and unstable jobs, just like their parents.

Natacha Obienne is only 21 years old, but she is already in charge of a small fish farm, a career that is usually pursued by men. As one of the many out-of-school women in her area, she was able to set up her own business after vocational training taught her the basics of financial management and entrepreneurship, as well as the practicalities of breeding fish.

She understood that fish feeding depends on the temperature of the water. If it’s well managed, a higher number of fish is produced. ‘I immediately applied everything I learnt’ she says.

The classroom she attended changed the course of her life and she hopes other young people will follow in her footsteps.

I no longer depend on my parents and I am financially independent

She’s not alone. Around 3,000 youths in Madagascar have been trained since the start of the UNESCO-backed programme, some of whom have set up their own business and achieved financial independence. Education was the best way to ease people's emancipation.

Like Emma Claudia, 25, who after her vocational training started a restaurant with just a baking tray and a saucepan.

What does my family think? They are surprised and amazed by my evolution because I haven’t been able to complete my studies. I don’t have any school diplomas.

While Natacha and Emma Claudia have been able to transform their world through education, millions of children out of school around the world are still denied that dream.

Discrimination against girls remains widespread and nearly one billion adults, mostly women, are illiterate. The lack of qualified teachers and learning materials continues to be the reality in too many schools.

Challenging these obstacles is getting harder as the world grapples with the acceleration of climate change, the emergence of digitization and artificial intelligence, and the increasing exclusion and uncertainty brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.

We resumed school a while ago and it’s been stressful. We are trying to retrieve what we lost during quarantine, the worst thing about not being in school is the number of things you miss. Learning behind a screen and learning in person are incomparable.

Aicha is lucky to be able to continue her education. Her country has the highest rate of out-of-school children in the world – 10.5 million – and nearly two-thirds are women. To compound the problem, Nigeria’s northern states suffer from the violence that targets education.

In Russia, too, Alexander and his school friends had to cope with virtual learning and the lack of interactions.

All Russian students were moved to online studying. Needless to say, it was a rough year for all of us, several friends were struggling with depressive moods. They were missing their friends and teachers. So did I.

To protect their right to education during this unprecedented disruption and beyond, UNESCO has launched the Global Education Coalition , a platform for collaboration and exchange that brings together more than 175 countries from the UN family, civil society, academia and the private sector to ensure that learning never stops.

Building skills where they are most needed

Crouched over a pedal-powered sewing machine, Harikala Buda looks younger than her 30 years. Her slim fingers fold a cut of turquoise brocade before deftly pushing it under the needle mechanism.

Harikala lives in rural Nepal, where many villagers, particularly women, don’t have access to basic education. Women like Harikala rely on local community UNESCO-supported learning centres to receive literacy and tailoring skills. In a country where 32% of people over 15 are illiterate, particularly women and those living in rural areas, education is the only route to becoming self-reliant.

I have saved a small amount. My husband’s income goes towards running the house, mine is saved. We must save today to secure our children’s future

Having access to a classroom is the first step to creating a better world for the student, the student’s children and the student’s community. This is a lesson that matters a lot to

Kalasha Khadka Khatri, a 30-year-old Nepali mother. She grew up in a family of 21, with no option to go to school. Two of her children didn’t survive infancy because she was unable to pay for medical treatment. After acquiring sewing skills at her local community learning centre, Kalasha can now provide for her family.

Harikala and Kalasha were able to learn their skills through the support of the UNESCO’s Capacity Development for Education Programme (CapED), an initiative that operates in some 26 least-developed and fragile countries. 

Reimagining the future of education

As the world slowly recovers after the COVID-19 crisis, 244 million children and youth worldwide are still out of school. And a 2022 survey by UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank and OECD finds that one quarter of countries have yet to collect information on children who have and have not returned to school since the pandemic started.

Rebuilding how and where we learn requires policy advice, stronger education legislation, funds mobilisation, advocacy, targeted programme implementation based on sound analysis, statistics and global information sharing. Quality education also calls for the teaching of skills far beyond literacy and maths, including critical thinking against fake news in the digital era, living in harmony with nature and the ethics of artificial intelligence, to name a few of the critical skills needed in the 21st century. 

UNESCO  captured the debate around the futures of education in its landmark report from 2022 entitled Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education.

The Transformative Education Summit , that took place during the United Nations General Assembly in September 2022, as well as the Pre-Summit hosted by UNESCO to forge new approaches to education after the COVID-19 crisis, address the toughest bottlenecks to achieving SDG 4 and inspire young people to lead a global movement for education. World leaders committed to put education at the top of the political agenda. UNESCO has been mobilizing and consulting all stakeholders and partners to galvanize the transformation of every aspect of learning. UNESCO launched a number of key initiatives such as expanding public digital learning, making education responsive to the climate and environmental emergency, and improving access for crisis-affected children and youth.

The two children sitting at their makeshift desk in Italy in 1950 could not have imagined what a modern learning space might look like or how a modern curriculum or the tools and teacher training to deliver it might have been thought out and shaped to offer them the most from education. They could not have imagined the global drive to ensure that everyone was given a chance to learn throughout life. The only thing that has not changed since the photo was taken is the fact that education remains a fundamental and universal human right that can change the course of a life. To the millions still living in conditions of poverty, exclusion displacement and violence it opens a door to a better future.

Explore all the work and expertise of UNESCO in education

Related items.

Essay on The Importance of Education [Short & Long]

Essay On The Importance Of Education- Nelson Mandela has truly said that “ Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. ” We can witness the change that education has brought to the world and the process is not stopped yet.

Short Essay On The Importance of Education | 250-300 words

Introduction.

If we compare the present world with a thousand-year past world, What difference do you see? We have constantly developed ourselves and the world in this previous time. All these changes are the results of education.

Education does not mean the stuff provided in schools and colleges. It is a method of transferring the information and knowledge collected previously to make the best use of that knowledge.

How Education Has Changed the World

Education gives us the power to use the known information to live better and do better. Hence it is a way to understand things correctly and efficiently. It provides the best solutions to any problem in a systematic structure. Education has played a crucial role in finding the solutions to problems we used to face in the past.

Related – Essay On Computer

Technologies and advancements in every field made our life so easy and comfortable. All this was only possible because of education. With the help of education, We have developed various methods to provide the world with a better life.

Impacts of Education

Education provides you with knowledge and facts. It broadens your thought process and enables a man to analyze everything by himself instead of gathering notions. One can easily make decisions about his life using his intelligence. It also helps you to live a stable life and makes you mentally healthy.

Moreover, Education helps society to get rid of unreasonable beliefs, wrong rituals, and social issues. Educated people make an educated society and educated societies make an educated nation. Only an educated nation can take the world to new heights of possibilities.

To sum it up, Education is a vital part of life to get a progressive lifestyle. It has changed the world at a higher level. Education is a basic right for all humans on the planet. Uneducated people in society are shameful to all of us. The government should ensure education for each and all in the country.

500+ Words Essay On The Importance of Education

Education enables us to make the best use of previously collected knowledge and information. When we take birth, we hardly have any knowledge about the world. Our parents explain to us about good habits, how to eat, what to eat etc. That is why it is said that education begins at home.

Education improves a man’s knowledge & skills and helps him develop his personality and attitude. Sometimes education proves itself a life changer. Most importantly, Education creates a high possibility of getting a high-paying job in securing one’s future.

The Change Education Brought

There is no doubt that education brings change. It has drastically impacted the way live, communicate, behave etc. If we compare the contemporary world with the ancient world, we can see the difference. Today, we perform activities more accurately and efficiently than our ancestors used to.

Apart from this, education enabled us to use information for the betterment of the world. Science and technology have done the same by inventing many things that made our lives comfy and easy. No sphere in life is left unimpacted by education.

Related- Essay on Unemployment

Importance of Education in Life

Nelson Mandela has truly said that “ Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. ” This is True, education is the key to eradicating all problems. If you want to improve your life and be successful, It is necessary to be educated. Number one, It provides you with the ability to read and write.

Second, It gives you a sense of communication that refines one’s speech. Thirdly, It increases the chances of getting a high-paying job making you employed and achieving a secure life. Apart from all that, education gives you a sense of understanding of the value of discipline, time and ethnicity. It gives the capability to make a balance in life.

Importance of Education For society

(Role of education in society essay)

First of all, education eliminates inequality in society. There were various wrong rituals and beliefs in society that are now trashed out because of the spread of education. It has taught us the right way to live life. An educated society has a powerful bonding among its individuals because people from all sections, castes and creeds live together.

Today, the role of education in women’s empowerment is appreciated. The present condition of women and girls is very good than in the past times. Now, they take part in businesses, jobs, games and other things that they were earlier deprived of.

Moreover, a well-educated society can impact the functioning of governments and the economy because education gives us the capability to understand policies. In schools, we are taught the understanding of right and wrong, foul play and fair play which makes us aware of what is good for the country and society.

Importance Of Education For Country

Education is important for the development of a country. A solid educational system acts for the good of the country. A country largely is judged by its education system and economy. A more educated workforce is proportional to more progress for the country. They take part in the field of research and development to discover new technologies which help the country to stand out in the crowd.

Apart from that, educated people to understand which party to vote for to step up towards growth. Most noteworthy, due to the lack of education, people are left unemployed revealing the cheap level of the economic status of a country. The pathetic situation of a country prevents its growth and improvement. Thus, education is fundamental to increasing economic growth and enhancing income.

Final Words (Conclusion)

In conclusion, the importance of education is wholly known that’s why education as a national policy is always given priority. We can not deny the fact that education is a fundamental right for each human on the planet. Education has positively impacted our lives and the process is on. We are heading towards better living because of education.

How to write an essay on The Importance of Education?

You can write an essay on the importance of education very quickly in simple steps. 1. Create a List of headings. 2. Brainstorm and Outline. 3. Think about the structure of the essay. 4. Write it down carefully. 5. Use a positive tone. Write down in a structured way.

What is the purpose of education?

The purpose of education is to develop Critical thinking, interpersonal skills, creativity and a sense of social responsibility .

What is secondary Education?

Secondary education is  the stage of education following primary education . It is considered the second and final phase of basic education.

Which country has the best education system?

The United States has the number 1 rank in education and there is no change seen from 2020.

Latest Published

• Essay On 5G Technology In India
• Essay On Chandrayaan 3 For Students
• Essay on English Language [Short & Long]
• Essay On Summer Vacation In 150 Words
• Summer Season Essay for students
• Essay On Summer Vacation For Students
• Essay on Visit to a Zoo for Students
• Essay on Good Manners [Short & Long]
• Essay on Childhood Memories [With Headings]
• Essay On Mother [Short & Long]

Education Essay Samples: Choose Yours to Get A+

What is an essay on education?

It’s a paper that students write in school or college to tell why education is important (1). The rules of structuring and formatting it are standard:

•  Hook readers and introduce a thesis. 
•  Provide arguments and evidence in the body to support your statement. 
•  Write a conclusion restating the thesis and summarizing the body. 

In this article, you’ll find three samples of education essays. All are of different lengths. Choose one that fits your assignment best, and feel free to use it as an example for writing your paper like a boss.

Importance of Education: Essay (250 words)

When asked to write an essay about the importance of education, check this sample for inspiration.

College Essay on Importance of Education (300 words)

A 300-word paper has a more complex structure. You can divide it into three paragraphs. Or, create a five-paragraph story with three parts in a body. It all depends on how you craft a thesis and how many arguments you have.

Bonus: How to Write a 300 Words Essay

500 Word Essay on Why Education Is Important

“Why is education important” essay can be long, too. If you get an assignment to write a 500+ word paper on this topic, here you have a sample to check.

What is education essay?

It is a short academic paper students write in school or college to explain the importance of education to the audience. It has a corresponding thesis statement and requires arguments and evidence to prove its relevance.

What is the purpose of education essay?

The purpose (2) is to explain the role of education and persuade readers of this idea with arguments and evidence.

 When writing, a student can use facts, statistics, and examples to support the arguments. Topics are numerous, but all relate to the idea that education is crucial for young generations and society in general.

How long is an essay on why education is important?

The length varies from 150 to 750 words. It depends on the assignment or how in-depth you intend to go on the topic and structure your academic paper.

Thus, a 150-word paper will be one paragraph, which is prevalent for middle school students. For 500-word essays, the structure is as follows: education essay introduction, body, and conclusion.

The longer your essay, the more structured and in-depth it will be.

Ready to Write Your Essay on Education?

I hope the examples from this article have helped you learn how to write an essay on importance of education. Whatever the length, please structure it accordingly: Follow the rules of academic writing. Use arguments and provide evidence.

An essay on education isn’t that challenging to write. Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts on the topic. Even a controversial idea works if you know how to spark readers with it.

References:

• https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/10-reasons-why-is-education-important/
• https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/purpose-education
• Essay samples
• Essay writing
• Writing tips

Recent Posts

• Writing the “Why Should Abortion Be Made Legal” Essay: Sample and Tips
• 3 Examples of Enduring Issue Essays to Write Yours Like a Pro
• Writing Essay on Friendship: 3 Samples to Get Inspired
• How to Structure a Leadership Essay (Samples to Consider)
• What Is Nursing Essay, and How to Write It Like a Pro

• Our Mission

What Is Education For?

Read an excerpt from a new book by Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson, which calls for redesigning education for the future.

What is education for? As it happens, people differ sharply on this question. It is what is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also inflected by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. Still, not having an agreed-upon definition of education doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it or do anything about it.

We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school”—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning. Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. It is vital that we differentiate these terms: children love to learn, they do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions of compulsory education. One is that young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things that they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. Another assumption is that compulsory education is a preparation for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? Well, I believe that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global-economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four basic purposes.

Education should enable young people to engage with the world within them as well as the world around them. In Western cultures, there is a firm distinction between the two worlds, between thinking and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. This distinction is misguided. There is a deep correlation between our experience of the world around us and how we feel. As we explored in the previous chapters, all individuals have unique strengths and weaknesses, outlooks and personalities. Students do not come in standard physical shapes, nor do their abilities and personalities. They all have their own aptitudes and dispositions and different ways of understanding things. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people. Engaging them as individuals is at the heart of raising achievement.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Many of the deepest problems in current systems of education result from losing sight of this basic principle.

Schools should enable students to understand their own cultures and to respect the diversity of others. There are various definitions of culture, but in this context the most appropriate is “the values and forms of behavior that characterize different social groups.” To put it more bluntly, it is “the way we do things around here.” Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their values from one generation to the next. For some, education is a way of preserving a culture against outside influences. For others, it is a way of promoting cultural tolerance. As the world becomes more crowded and connected, it is becoming more complex culturally. Living respectfully with diversity is not just an ethical choice, it is a practical imperative.

There should be three cultural priorities for schools: to help students understand their own cultures, to understand other cultures, and to promote a sense of cultural tolerance and coexistence. The lives of all communities can be hugely enriched by celebrating their own cultures and the practices and traditions of other cultures.

Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. This is one of the reasons governments take such a keen interest in education: they know that an educated workforce is essential to creating economic prosperity. Leaders of the Industrial Revolution knew that education was critical to creating the types of workforce they required, too. But the world of work has changed so profoundly since then, and continues to do so at an ever-quickening pace. We know that many of the jobs of previous decades are disappearing and being rapidly replaced by contemporary counterparts. It is almost impossible to predict the direction of advancing technologies, and where they will take us.

How can schools prepare students to navigate this ever-changing economic landscape? They must connect students with their unique talents and interests, dissolve the division between academic and vocational programs, and foster practical partnerships between schools and the world of work, so that young people can experience working environments as part of their education, not simply when it is time for them to enter the labor market.

Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. We live in densely woven social systems. The benefits we derive from them depend on our working together to sustain them. The empowerment of individuals has to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life, and of democracy in particular. Our freedoms in democratic societies are not automatic. They come from centuries of struggle against tyranny and autocracy and those who foment sectarianism, hatred, and fear. Those struggles are far from over. As John Dewey observed, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

For a democratic society to function, it depends upon the majority of its people to be active within the democratic process. In many democracies, this is increasingly not the case. Schools should engage students in becoming active, and proactive, democratic participants. An academic civics course will scratch the surface, but to nurture a deeply rooted respect for democracy, it is essential to give young people real-life democratic experiences long before they come of age to vote.

Eight Core Competencies

The conventional curriculum is based on a collection of separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence we discussed in the previous chapter, as well as what is deemed to be important later in life. The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands completely separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, and methods as well as propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, and languages, and of all other subjects. It is therefore much more useful to focus on the concept of disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—it is rare that activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. A journalist writing an article, for example, must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition, as well as the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum, which is to ask what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. The four purposes above suggest eight core competencies that, if properly integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face in their lives. These competencies are curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven from the beginning of a student’s educational journey and nurtured throughout.

From Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by the Estate of Sir Kenneth Robinson and Kate Robinson.

Value of Education Essay

500 words essay on value of education.

Education is a weapon for the people by which they can live a high-quality life. Furthermore, education makes people easy to govern but at the same time it makes them impossible to be enslaved. Let us take a look at the incredible importance of education with this value of education essay.

                                                                                                                        Value Of Education Essay

Importance of Education

Education makes people independent. Furthermore, it increases knowledge, strengthens the mind, and forms character. Moreover, education enables people to put their potentials to optimum use.

Education is also a type of reform for the human mind. Without education, the training of the human mind would always remain incomplete.

Education makes a person an efficient decision-maker and a right thinker. Moreover, this is possible only with the help of education. This is because education acquaints an individual with knowledge of the world around him and beyond, besides teaching the individual to be a better judge of the present.

A person that receives education shall have more avenues for the life of his choice. Moreover, an educated person will be able to make decisions in the best possible manner. This is why there is such a high demand for educated people over uneducated people for the purpose of employment .

Negative Impact of Lack of Education

Without education, a person would feel trapped. One can understand this by the example of a man who is confined to a closed room, completely shut from the outside world, with no way to exit it. Most noteworthy, an uneducated person can be compared to this confined man.

Education enables a person to access the open world. Furthermore, a person without education is unable to read and write. Consequently, a person without education would remain closed to all the knowledge and wisdom an educated person can gain from books and other mediums.

The literacy rate of India stands at around 60% in comparison to more than 80% literacy rate of the rest of the world. Moreover, the female literacy rate is 54.16% in accordance with the 2001 population census. These figures certainly highlight the massive problem of lack of education in India.

To promote education, the government of India takes it as a national policy. The intention of the government is to target the very cause of illiteracy. As such, the government endeavours to eradicate illiteracy, which in turn would lead to the eradication of poverty .

The government is running various literacy programmes like the free-education programme, weekend and part-time study programme, continuing education programme, mid-day meal programme, adult literacy programme, etc. With the consistent success rate of these programmes, hopefully, things will better.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of Value of Education Essay

Education is one of the most effective ways to make people better and more productive. It is a tool that can make people easy to lead but at the same time difficult to drive. Education removes naivety and ignorance from the people, leaving them aware, informed, and enlightened.

FAQs For Value of Education Essay

Question 1: What is the importance of education in our lives?

Answer 1: Having an education in a particular area helps people think, feel, and behave in a way that contributes to their success, and improves not only their personal satisfaction but also enhances their community. In addition, education develops the human personality and prepares people for life experiences.

Question 2: Explain the meaning of true education?

Answer 2: True education means going beyond earning degrees and bookish knowledge when it comes to learning. Furthermore, true education means inculcating a helping attitude, optimistic thinking, and moral values in students with the aim of bringing positive changes in society.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Home — Essay Samples — Education — Importance of Education — Importance of Education in Life

Importance of Education in Life and for Our Future

• Categories: Importance of Education Knowledge

About this sample

Words: 624 |

Published: Dec 18, 2018

Words: 624 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Outline of importance of education, importance of education essay example, introduction.

• Education as a gateway to the future
• The value of education
• Importance of discussing education in life

Education's Role in Society

• Contribution to societal development
• Utilization of technology in education
• Technology's impact on personal empowerment

Challenges in Third-World Education

• Obstacles to accessing education
• Cost of schooling
• The example of education in Ghana

The Ultimate Apparatus for Personal Empowerment

• Education as a tool for progression
• Appreciating the opportunities provided
• The importance of taking action on knowledge

Works Cited

• Bernstein, M. (2020). Global survey shows 48% of students using desktop computers in the classroom. eSchool News. [Online]. Available: https://www.eschoolnews.com/2020/06/02/global-survey-shows-48-of-students-using-desktop-computers-in-the-classroom/
• Yuthas, K. (2020). The state of education in Ghana: Assessing the challenges and opportunities. World Education Blog. [Online]. Available: https://gemreportunesco.wordpress.com/2020/10/12/the-state-of-education-in-ghana-assessing-the-challenges-and-opportunities/

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Education Life

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 545 words

1 pages / 582 words

2 pages / 802 words

1 pages / 540 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Educational systems set principles, and if understudies disrupt these guidelines they are liable to teach. These beliefs possibly characterize the normal models of garments, timekeeping, social lead, and hardworking attitude. [...]

School is like a computer, where students are the internals inside the computer and teachers are the keyboard. The students are confined inside for a period of time while the teachers peck on the keyboard, feeding them with [...]

In any society, education serves as the “instrument of livelihood” for its members. The primary role of education is to equip all individuals with the essential tools to become productive members of society. Education should [...]

The importance of continuing education cannot be understated in today's rapidly evolving world. As new technologies emerge, industries transform, and knowledge expands, individuals must actively engage in lifelong learning to [...]

I’ve never enjoyed any type of writing, whether it is narrative, expository, descriptive or persuasive. Being a student who easily manipulates numbers, I was eager to have this english course of Foundation 1013 over and done [...]

The topic of sex education in schools has been a hotly debated subject since as early as the 1960s. It has, however, become an increasingly relevant and important matter within the United States as the years’ progress. As each [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Conclusions and Implications

• Open Access
• First Online: 15 September 2021

Cite this chapter

You have full access to this open access chapter

• Fernando M. Reimers 2  

32k Accesses

2 Citations

This chapter concludes the book, drawing on the preceding chapters to identify overarching themes that summarize the nature of the educational impact of COVID-19. It describes the educational loss that was created by the pandemic, particularly for disadvantaged students and more so in countries with lower levels of per capita income. Those losses were the result of impacts of the pandemic on poverty and household conditions, as well as the result of insufficient capacity of remote instruction to adequately sustain opportunity to learn. The efforts to maintain educational opportunity and to close equity gaps during the pandemic in some countries are also discussed, in the context of the role of educational inequality before the pandemic and of initial conditions to support remote instruction. The chapter examines also some of the silver linings resulting from the pandemic in the education sector, such as the greater recognition of the importance of schools, and of in person schooling, and the necessity to support the emotional and social development of students, in addition to their cognitive development. The chapter concludes discussing the challenges ahead created by the pandemic and underscores the urgency of maintaining the priority of education and remediating those learning losses during the remaining period of the pandemic and in the immediate aftermath, to mitigate the likely increase in poverty and social inequality that would result from the educational losses during COVID-19.

You have full access to this open access chapter,  Download chapter PDF

Similar content being viewed by others

The COVID-19 Teaching Experience: The University of Petra as a Case Study

Understanding Potential Causes of Learning Loss: Teachers’ Perceptions Regarding Educational Challenges During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mexico

Covid-19 and education: a study with undergraduate students

17.1 the educational consequences of covid-19 differed by country and class.

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented challenge for educators and education systems around the world. The impact of the pandemic on the conditions in which students live, the risks to their health, and the impact of the economic recession on their families increased the challenges for students in finding the time, space, and focus to study. In addition, the adoption of social distancing measures and alternative ways to educate remotely when in-person instruction was interrupted reduced opportunities to learn and caused many students not only to struggle to learn what was expected in the curriculum, but to lose skills and knowledge they had previously gained and to disengage with learning.

At the same time, for some students, the experience of learning in different ways during the pandemic provided the opportunity to gain new knowledge and develop new skills. It provided an opportunity to gain more autonomy in learning, to spend more time with their families, and to learn together with their families. Parents gained knowledge from this increased engagement in the education of their children and time spent together focusing on the work they did in school and their own children’s learning experience. Similarly, teachers gained greater knowledge about the home circumstances of their students because of the necessary collaboration with their parents. As shown in Chap. 15, studies in France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland reveal that parents spent more time assisting their children with schoolwork during the pandemic than before, but only about half of them felt adequately prepared to do so. For teachers, the strategies of remote learning likely increased their Digi-pedagogies, while increasing students’ knowledge of how to learn remotely, although for many the approach was ‘sink or swim’, with limited support, hardly adequate to develop optimal proficiency or confidence.

These effects differed greatly among children in different socioeconomic circumstances, among different types of schools, and among different countries. For individual students, the educational effects of the pandemic were mediated by other conditions, mainly the education and resources of their parents. Some of these conditions were in turn aggravated by the pandemic—as poverty and social inequality increased, and as children in large families who shared limited space and connectivity resources at home had less space, time, and peace of mind to study as they were confined to their homes, where they had to study.

The differences of success in managing the spread of the virus across countries resulting from differences in the quality of political and public health leadership, differences in health infrastructure, risks, and financial and institutional resources resulted in considerable variation across countries in the duration of the period when in-person instruction was replaced with remote options. Furthermore, differences in technological infrastructure, access to connectivity, and previous experience and knowledge of Digi-pedagogies resulted in differences across countries, and among students within the same countries, in the amount of engaged learning time experienced by different students. While there are very few reliable estimates of how much learning took place during the pandemic, or of how much learning was lost, the available evidence shows considerable learning loss and greater loss for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, accentuated in countries with greater percentage of disadvantaged students as Brazil, Chile, Mexico, or South Africa. Even in Finland, where schools were closed for a relatively short period of time, and where students and teachers had adequate supports to learn remotely, there is evidence of reduced student engagement during remote instruction. In Norway, another country with robust technological infrastructure, there was a drop in writing proficiency of first grade students who were taught during the pandemic, relative to their peers in previous years. A learning loss in the first-grade equivalent to one and a half semesters because of a two-month period of school closures underscores the limitations of remote instruction. In the United States students with the lowest levels of engagement during the period of remote instruction were disproportionately low income and racial minority children.

No cross-national estimates of learning loss during the pandemic are available yet, but the obvious differences across countries in the duration of the period of remote learning and in the percentage of students who were reached with the remote strategies that were implemented suggest that there have been unequal effects across countries in the extent of learning loss experienced by students, in the inequality of learning loss for students from different backgrounds within countries, and in the ensuing disengagement and dropout for those students who learned the least and for whom the alternative arrangements created during the pandemic were least effective.

The pandemic created a context in which students in least developed countries experienced the brunt of six mutually reinforcing challenges: the longest school closures, the lowest levels of resources and institutional capacity to mitigate learning loss, lower levels of access to vaccines, the greatest increases in poverty, lower effectiveness of alternative modalities to education, and the greatest levels of social and educational inequality. For these varied reasons, it is likely that the two most important mediators of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on educational opportunity were nationality and social class.

17.2 Educational Opportunity Before the Pandemic, During the Pandemic, and Beyond

The attempts to educate during the pandemic revealed very large differences in the social circumstances in which different children access and engage in learning and made visible the extent to which those differences matter to how much students can learn. The role played by those circumstances is not unique to the period during which students were forced to learn from home. The fact that some children live in homes where they experience food insecurity, or other effects of poverty, including the stress of living in vulnerable conditions, or the fact that some children have parents who have less education, time, or resources with which to support them in their studies was a fact that had influenced opportunity to learn before the pandemic, it just became more visible during the pandemic. Social class will likely continue to influence educational opportunity in the aftermath of the pandemic, perhaps its importance augmented by the increase in poverty and inequality that the pandemic will produce.

Schools were created, in part, to provide all students opportunities to learn, and aspirations about their role in equalizing opportunity for all students are about creating a space to mitigate the differences that those social factors play. The efforts to teach during the pandemic made more visible how very challenging it is to level the playing field for students given their different social circumstances and how much harder it is to do that when the work of schools is so directly mediated by circumstances at home as it was during remote learning.

The evidence examined in this book suggests that, by comparison, in-person instruction is more effective at leveling the playing field than the arrangements that education authorities were able to put in place during the pandemic to educate remotely. This observation needs to be moderated by the fact that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact in the social circumstances of the poor, making them more vulnerable to infection or death, or reducing their income, so there would have likely been increases in inequality of opportunity to learn even if schools had remained opened the entirety of the pandemic. It should also be acknowledged that the arrangements to educate remotely were put in place quickly, with limited resources and support, and so it may be unfair to think of the arrangements of remote learning that were improvised during the pandemic as the optimal form of remote learning, although these arrangements represent the largest global experiment in remote learning at scale since the creation of public schools with the mandate to educate all children.

Those caveats notwithstanding, one of the lessons surfaced by the pandemic is that educational opportunity can only be leveled off with actions that effectively meet the very different needs of children from various circumstances, particularly the many needs and vulnerabilities caused by poverty, but also other needs including special learning needs. Those vulnerabilities are considerable and require a clear focus in supporting students experiencing them, with adequate resources, knowledge, and the capacity to provide educational and non-educational supports that create an adequate environment for students to learn. This, of course, is not to say that there was equal educational opportunity before the pandemic, but it appears that in-person instruction is more effective at equalizing opportunity than remote instruction. Low-income students, those in earlier grades, and special needs students were the least adequately supported to learn remotely.

There were some countries in which attention and resources were disproportionately targeted to support the education of disadvantaged students, although no information is available on the extent to which these were able to prevent an increase in inequality in opportunity to learn. In Singapore, where students and teachers had developed skills for online learning prior to the pandemic, and where the use of Digi-pedagogies intensified in preparation for school closures, the government distributed computers and provided connectivity to the students who lacked them as part of the remote learning strategy. Singapore’s modest interruption of schooling was largely a result of the effective containment of the health crisis and of coordination between education and health authorities.

In Portugal, policy pronouncements emphasized the priority of maintaining educational opportunity during remote learning, and partnerships between organizations of civil society and government agencies made efforts to reach out to disadvantaged students. In Japan, the government distributed devices to disadvantaged students during the phase of remote learning.

In Norway, despite the adequate access to infrastructure and high levels of teacher quality, the engagement of low achieving students during remote instruction diminished more than the engagement of their high achieving peers. Furthermore this country where equality of educational opportunity is normally a policy priority, did not implement strategies to equalize opportunity during the remote learning phase.

The vast differences among students in different schools in their capacity to learn from alternative arrangements also underscores the urgency of democratizing the opportunity to learn autonomously, a likely precondition for lifelong learning. Unless schools provide greater access to connectivity and devices, and the skills to learn remotely for all students and teachers, they will be denying some students essential skills to learn independently throughout their lives and arguably denying them the opportunity to participate fully in society, as such participation is increasingly mediated by technological means.

One of the challenges of the multimodal strategies of remote learning deployed by several countries during the pandemic is that the most advantaged children had access to the most interactive modalities, such as internet-based options which provided opportunities for interaction, whereas those least advantaged had to rely on radio or printed materials or on digital options that were only used to transmit content, with limited opportunities for interaction and feedback. In South Africa, for instance, a considerable number of low-income black children had no access to internet or devices to support learning remotely. A similar lack of access to online remote instruction was observed, to varying degrees, among low-income students in most countries, although higher income countries were able to remediate these needs by providing devices and connectivity, as was the case in Finland, Japan, or Singapore, and only the best prepared and supported teachers were able to create opportunities for interaction with their students.

At the same time, the deficiencies shown by the digitally-based solutions enacted during the pandemic, even in contexts in which students and teachers had considerable access to devices, connectivity, and benefited from prior experience in Digi-pedagogies, such as in Finland, or in countries which made efforts to provide such access during the pandemic, underscore the social and multidimensional nature of learning, and the unique value of in-person interaction to derive the full benefits of the school. We learn with others, in interaction with them and by collaborating with them, and those social interactions are essential to the integration of thoughts and emotions which sustain learning. It is collaboration with others and this interaction that sustains our motivation and helps us learn, as our brains are wired for social interaction—not just with teachers, but with peers, and not just in activities led by teachers in the context of the formal curriculum, but in activities led by students. This is true both for the intended and explicit curriculum and for the implicit and tacit curriculum—what we learn from interacting with others. In-person instruction also facilitates multiple ways of learning with and from others, not just while students work at their desks in the classroom, but when they engage in sports or the arts, or simply in spontaneous and informal conversation with peers. In Russia, for instance, educators and students agree that the quality of remote instruction was lower than in-person instruction, especially for subjects which required student participation, such as physical education, arts, music, or, paradoxically, technology. Less than half of the parents in Russia indicated that remote instruction provided opportunities for interaction with teachers. Chap. 15, examining remote instruction in five OECD countries, shows that most remote instruction consisted primarily of delivering lessons and content, with very limited opportunities for interaction. In the United States, the utilization of online instruction increased with the level of education and of income of the parents, whereas children of low-income parents were more likely to rely on printed materials. The same study shows that parents were concerned about the quality of remote education, and about the limited opportunities for social development it provided. Chap. 5 shows that in Japan there was an increase in student depression during the period of remote instruction. Even while acknowledging the hasty nature of the alternative arrangements put in place during the pandemic resulted in a sub-optimal way to organize remote instruction, and to support collaboration and social interaction with peers, the deficiencies of such arrangements suggest that there are unique benefits to in-person instruction and suggest that digital instruction is a deficient replacement for in person schooling.

The heterogeneous results of learning remotely during the pandemic are not just a function of the different ways in which the pandemic impacted students and their families, but of the fact that, in the rapid and fluid context in which alternative delivery systems were developed, there were no standards and no consistency. As a result, on top of the already considerable inequality of education conditions experienced by students in school systems which segregate disadvantaged students to schools of low quality the lack of standards and inconsistency in approaches diminished opportunities to learn under remote learning. Such lack of standards was most problematic in highly decentralized systems such as the United States, which left school districts to define what remote instruction would mean, resulting in vast inequalities in approaches as shown in Chaps. 14 and 15. Also in Chile, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa vast preexisting inequalities, high decentralization, and deficient guidance and support exacerbated inequalities in remote learning opportunities.

This heterogeneity, resulting from a lack of clear standards and insufficient compensatory efforts to close equity gaps, extended even to whether the goals of the strategy for remote instruction were to maintain students’ engagement with education, actually support learning, provide guidance for the amount of learning time, or define what was meant by remote instruction. As shown in Chap. 15, in France, and in the United States remote instruction prioritized maintaining student engagement over learning new content. The same finding is reported in Chap. 13, focusing on remote instruction during the pandemic in the United States.

17.3 The Role of Initial Conditions Mediating the Educational Impact of the Pandemic

Education systems were in varying stages of readiness to sustain educational opportunity in the face of the disruptions caused by the pandemic. Those differences included access to connectivity at home and skills to learn and teach online, as well as level of resources, capacities, and institutional structures to meet gaps during the emergency. Whereas Finland, Japan, Norway, and Singapore had high levels of connectivity, and resources to provide equipment and connectivity to students during the interruption of in person instruction, levels of connectivity and resources were lower in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and South Africa. Russia had high levels of connectivity but low bandwidth. It should be noted, however, that even countries with high per-capita income and high levels of connectivity, such as Finland, Japan, and Singapore, found that vulnerable groups of children lacked access to digital devices at home. However, these countries were able to provide devices to students once it became clear that they needed them. Similarly, in Australia, France, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, a sizable number of children, predominantly from low-income and minority backgrounds, had challenges with access to connectivity and devices. Other countries, such as Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and South Africa, facing even greater levels of exclusion from connectivity and devices, found it more challenging to meet these needs during the emergency.

Similar gaps were observed in teacher capacity. Whereas Finland, Japan, Norway, and Singapore had made greater investments in Digi-pedagogies prior to the pandemic compared to other countries, which eased their transition to remote instruction, countries such as Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and South Africa had not made such investments and consequently found it more challenging to adopt remote instructional strategies. In Finland, the switch to distance learning during the period of school closure was relatively seamless. Nevertheless, even in that context there was less learning during remote instruction as revealed by the lower percentage of students who experienced optimal learning moments in STEM during remote instruction than during in person instruction. In Mexico, the national strategy relied on platforms to transmit content, such as radio and television, acknowledging that the deep gaps in teachers’ capacity in Digi-pedagogies in many public schools would considerably limit the reach of a strategy based in online learning.

Institutional fragmentation and school segregation contributed to augmenting inequality, as was the case in Chile, South Africa, Spain, and the United States. In Chile, as shown in Chap. 3, the already-large inequalities in educational opportunity, produced by a highly stratified education system, were augmented with remote instruction, because of differential capacities of schools to provide adequate supports to the varying needs of children. South Africa’s two-tiered system for students from different socioeconomic groups saw the greatest reductions in opportunities to learn in high poverty schools. In Spain, extreme discontinuities in education policy over the years and high institutional fragmentation undermined the effects of national guidance and support to teach remotely, as those were mediated by decisions made in the autonomous regions of the country. In the United States, decentralization of governance and finance resulted in vastly unequal levels of engagement with remote education among students of different socio-economic and ethnic background.

The mechanisms to compensate for social disparities, providing more focus and resources to disadvantaged students, were weaker for remote learning than for in-person instruction. Portugal stands out as a country in which policy guidance prioritized maintaining equality of educational opportunity and Singapore was able to rapidly compensate the lower levels of connectivity of children from disadvantaged homes. Even Norway, with a long-standing commitment to equal educational opportunity, lacked specific programs to provide differentiated support to disadvantaged students learning remotely. In contexts of greater institutional fragility, such as Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain, and South Africa, compensatory efforts during remote learning were even more elusive.

17.4 The Silver Linings

Fully acknowledging the shortcomings of the rapidly designed and implemented arrangements that were created to educate during the pandemic, and in particular their limitations to close the pre-existing equity gaps that were in many cases augmented by the different ways the pandemic affected the circumstances of children from different social classes, there is no question that teachers, education authorities, civil society organizations, and parents made considerable efforts to maintain education during the pandemic, creating numerous innovations to do so.

Furthermore, such efforts to maintain education were made in a context of imperfect and evolving knowledge about how the virus spread and with uncertainty regarding when a vaccine would be available and when the pandemic would be brought under control, which created uncertainty about whether schools were likely environments to spread the virus.

It is remarkable that education remained a priority for governments during a time when the public health emergency—and its economic consequences—placed considerable burdens on government resources and capacity. This speaks to the institutionalization of the idea that education is indeed not just a human right, but a basic need, an essential activity for children and that it had to be protected and continued. In the cases in which the national government did not prioritize supporting the continuity of education during the pandemic, as in Brazil, this was mostly over contention about jurisdiction and, in that case, state and municipal governments stepped up to prioritize education. In the United States also, the federal government failed to lead in maintaining a priority for education, but this is consistent with the fact that education is primarily a state and local responsibility. In Mexico, where the national government developed a national strategy for remote education based on television, perceived by many as insufficient, state governments supplemented it with other delivery channels including radio, online instruction, and printed materials. In other countries in which regional or local authorities have primary responsibility for education, such as Finland, Japan, Russia and Spain, the national government took a more proactive role during the pandemic providing guidance and support to prioritize the continuity of education.

It is not always the case that education is prioritized in other contexts of emergency, such as those created by a civil conflict or natural disaster. In contrast, the efforts to generate and fund alternative approaches to educate during the pandemic were significant. By comparison to the relatively low priority that the education of refugee children, for example, receives from governments and from international development organizations, the response of governments and international agencies to the education needs of children whose education was challenged by the pandemic was of a considerably greater order of magnitude. If the same commitment and priority to educate displaced and refugee children were extended to reverting the educational disruptions caused by their displacement, their educational opportunities would be considerably greater than they are at present.

Just as admirable as governments’ and societal commitment to maintaining education during the pandemic was the velocity at which alternative arrangements to educate were established, particularly during the early phase of the pandemic, the phase of immediate lock down of schools. In a matter of days and weeks alternative ways to sustain engagement with education were established, often the result of partnerships between governments and organizations of civil society and the private sector. The reliance on these novel delivery systems developed the Digi-pedagogies of students and teachers, or novel forms of co-teaching, as was the case in Finland, Norway, and Singapore. These rapidly developed efforts were, in hindsight, deficient, and the reason for the learning loss and increase in inequalities discussed earlier. But the sheer speed at which they were launched, often repurposing existing infrastructure and assets, is worthy of recognition. For example, the TV and radio-based programming deployed as a strategy for education continuity in Mexico repurposed existing digital assets from the Mexican television industry. When national initiatives to sustain education were deemed ineffective, or insufficient, subnational governments and other organizations of civil society stepped up to enhance or replace those efforts, as was the case in Brazil and Mexico. In Chile, there was an increase in social participation, through the use of online platforms, in defining what constituted quality education in the context of the pandemic, and as a result of such social dialogue, more emphasis was given to providing emotional support to students. In the United States, surveys of teachers and principals reported the greatest needs for support to be in the areas of socioemotional development and mental health, as described in Chap. 13.

These efforts in collective leadership to mitigate the education losses caused by the pandemic are also noteworthy and indicative of the shared recognition of the importance of education, and of schools, to society.

Perhaps the most remarkable expression of this institutionalization of the idea that education is not just a right, but an essential human right, is that it was not just national or subnational governments, organizations of civil society, or international organizations that stepped up to innovate in order to sustain education—teachers and parents did as well. The pandemic created a context for true empowerment of parents, communities, and teachers in devising approaches to educate children remotely. The significance of that empowerment should not be lost even though the results of such a massive global effort in service of educating children were insufficient to preserve the right to education for all children, or to maintain the opportunity to learn that children would have had in the absence of the pandemic. The real counterfactual against which to assess these efforts should not be an idealized scenario in which a pandemic had not taken place (although one could imagine scenarios in which the public health crisis had been better managed than it was in many jurisdictions), but one without these efforts to sustain education, one in which parents, teachers, civil society, and governments had given up in trying to educate children during this most difficult and challenging moment for humanity, and had decided to put the right of education on hold until further notice. It is to be celebrated that this was not the response of most societies and governments, even if, unfortunately, for some children, it was the result they experienced in practice because what was done was insufficient to mitigate the many other ways in which the combination of poverty and the pandemic challenged them and their families. As already mentioned, the percentage of students facing that complete shut-down from education varied greatly across countries because of the different extent of poverty across countries and of differences in access to education resources and effective programs.

The urgency of addressing the many needs involved in sustaining education in the challenging context created by the pandemic also made visible the shortcomings in the institutional capacity of schools and education systems and stimulated the creation of networks and partnerships as a way to address those shortcomings and augment that capacity. The efforts to sustain education against the odds led to much collaboration within schools, across schools, between schools and other institutions, and across different government entities. These collaborations, intra-education and between education and other sectors, such as health, led to innovations and emphasized that such collaborations are essential to finding ways to address the many and multidimensional needs of students. The urgency to augment teacher capacity in Digi-pedagogies led many schools to support collaboration so that teachers could share what they were learning about teaching remotely, and often these collaborations extended across schools. In Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa, for instance, civil society organizations and universities stepped up to play a critical role supporting schools and teachers during remote learning.

The awareness that complex education challenges require a considerable level of institutional capacity and that the level of the school may be inadequate, too small, to provide appropriate responses, in addition to the realization of how capacity can be augmented by relying on school networks integrated with other institutions, such as universities or non-governmental organizations, has great value to continue to address the various education challenges that will persist during the pandemic and its aftermath.

The very visible ways in which the pandemic affected the wellbeing of all created a context to prioritize the wellbeing of students. This surfaced ideas about the need of educating the whole child, attending to their emotional well-being as well as to their nutrition, physical activity, and cognitive development. In Chile, for example, interest in socio-emotional development of children augmented during the pandemic, as it did in other countries examined in this book such as Japan or Mexico. In turn, the recognition of the limitations of the alternative means to deliver education and in the circumstances under which students were studying stimulated a reprioritization of the curriculum, and with it, to focusing on the intended learning outcomes for students rather than on the content that was initially planned to be transmitted during a regular school year.

This focus on competencies over content, the obvious shortcomings of the extended time students were spending at home, and the evident struggles of some students to learn independently surfaced the need to think expansively about the competencies that will help students develop into autonomous adults were some of the significant silver linings of the pandemic, which might carry over into the future.

Perhaps the greatest educational silver lining of the pandemic was the awareness it created about how much schools matter, not just to deliver education, but to the functioning of society. The question of how much schools matter is a recurrent one in the fields of the sociology and the economics of education. It is a very difficult question to answer in societies in which most students attend school, for there is no relevant comparison group, reducing most comparisons to those between students who have accessed different levels or grades or education, or who have been educated in different types of schools. Most of those comparisons suffer from methodological limitations in the ability to properly account for unobserved differences between the groups with different levels of education. Learning remotely during part of the duration of the pandemic provided, unfortunately, a way to experience what it is like to try to learn with schools functioning in very limited ways, and more importantly, of what it is like for society to try to function when schools are closed. That natural experiment will help estimate how much schools matter. The evidence examined in this book makes clear that education in school is more effective in supporting learning for all children than the alternatives that were put in place for remote instruction, a view shared by educators and parents in Russia, for example. This awareness of the importance of education, coupled with the augmented visibility of the unequal conditions in which students learned, increased the salience of initiatives to advance equal opportunity. In Russia, for instance, where inequality had been a relatively absent topic on the policy agenda, the pandemic brought increased attention to this topic.

17.5 The Challenges Ahead

The educational challenges created by the pandemic are not over and may not be over even when the pandemic is under control. To bring it under control, communities and nations will need to achieve herd immunity, which requires somewhere between 60 and 80% of the world population to be vaccinated. Reaching this level of immunization requires the availability of vaccines, a willingness of at least that percentage of the population to be vaccinated, and that no new strands of the virus, more contagious and resistant to the available vaccines, develop. Based only on the estimated supply of vaccine doses, it is unlikely that this level of immunity will be reached, for most of the world, until well into 2022. Reluctance to be vaccinated and new strands of the virus could complicate the odds of achieving herd immunity. The reality that the pandemic will linger for some time, perhaps well into 2022, means that there are three kinds of education challenges: those involved in adapting to learning and teaching during the context created by the pandemic, in some cases involving remote distancing; of teachers and students, those involved in mitigating learning loss and ensuring that students learn what they need to learn; and those involved in reverting learning loss and building back better.

Beyond the need to mitigate learning loss and to continue to educate while the pandemic is still a risk, the education impact of the pandemic on the conditions children experience at home will continue during the pandemic’s aftermath, in particular for those children whose families experience the brunt of the increase in poverty, food insecurity, and other shocks and vulnerabilities resulting from low income and marginalization.

This will require addressing the mental health challenges triggered by the pandemic, and the learning gaps caused by the pandemic, while also developing the skills necessary to address the new challenges, some of them caused by or compounded by the pandemic, such as social fragmentation and violence, growing poverty and inequality, diminished employment prospects, diminished trust in government, and climate change. Education systems face the triple challenge of recovering what was lost during the pandemic, addressing education challenges predating the pandemic, and aligning their response to prepare students for new societal and economic challenges and to build a better future.

Furthermore, given a likely economic recession and the burden of the costs of addressing the pandemic, it is conceivable that these challenges will need to be addressed in a context of financial austerity, for governments as well as individuals. The pandemic itself and its impact on other challenges is also likely to stretch government capacity, and with it the capacity to focus on education.

The constraints on financial resources will increase burdens on existing staff, already exhausted from the extraordinary efforts expended in sustaining education during the pandemic, having had to learn to teach in new ways, in a short time and with limited support, and learning to face new needs among their students created by the pandemic. Even in Finland, which had made investments in supporting teachers’ capacities in Digi-pedagogies prior to the pandemic, there is evidence of teacher stress and burnout. There is similar evidence of burnout in the United States, as seen in Chaps. 13 and 14, where teachers are working more under remote instruction and enjoying teaching less. In Arizona, as discussed in Chap. 14, an already acute challenge of teacher shortages could be complicated by the new stresses on teaching caused by the pandemic.

Given the considerable learning loss experienced by many students during the pandemic, learning recovery programs will be essential. To identify what needs to be remedied, assessment of students will be necessary as well as differentiated responses by schools and for different students. Targeted and personalized programs might include accelerated programs, extended learning time, dropout prevention programs, and increasing the capacity to learn and teach online, not just as a preventative measure against possible further interruptions of schooling but to enable extended learning time and to prepare students for lifelong learning. As explained in Chap. 13, information on what students are learning will be a critical resource to support effective efforts of remediation and recovery. Beyond programs of cognitive support, the emotional trauma caused by the prolonged stress experienced by students and teachers during the pandemic, and by the losses directly experienced by some of them, will need to be addressed through appropriate interventions. For the children experiencing the effects of poverty, those experiencing food insecurity for instance, programs to attend to their nutrition and health will be essential.

One of the main challenges during remote learning and in the pandemic aftermath will be maintaining high goals and expectations for students and schools. It is evident that, during remote learning, a view of educational opportunity as learning was displaced by a view of opportunity as access to education and engagement. This represents a setback in the understanding of educational opportunity, which had slowly transitioned over many decades from understanding opportunity as access, to understanding opportunity as learning, to opportunity as learning for all, to opportunity as learning what is needed and relevant. Maintaining the focus on high level goals for education systems in a context of diminished capacity and obvious setbacks will require leadership, resources, innovation, and systems that allow continuous improvement.

Another challenge in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic will be that in response to the stress and trauma created by the frustrations experienced learning and teaching during the pandemic, there might be a rejection of assimilating the possible silver linings and opportunities; for example, refusing to integrate Digi-pedagogies in the curriculum or denying the severity of learning loss and refusing to implement programs to remedy it. The pandemic may have blurred the memories of the many preexisting deficiencies of schools, and this, coupled with the likely austerity, may displace the urgency to ‘build back better’ and impede learning any of the potentially valuable lessons resulting from the innovations put in place to educate during the pandemic. For example, in Finland there is some evidence that remote learning may have worked differently for students in different grades, for different subjects or for different students. Also, in Norway the engagement of low-achieving students declined more than for high-achieving students. Discerning under what circumstances distance learning can be most effective would be of great value to expand the capacity of the school. Similarly, the forms of teacher collaboration, with peers within and across schools, to provide just-in-time professional development to augment their capacity to teach remotely provide an opportunity to advance what we know about augmenting institutional capacity. There may be valuable lessons in those collaborations to help deepen the capacity of schools to become learning organizations. Schools as learning organizations are characterized by seven features, which appear to have characterized the practices in which several schools engaged to generate and sustain remote education:

developing and sharing a vision centered on the learning of all students;

creating and supporting continuous learning opportunities for all staff;

promoting team learning and collaboration among staff;

establishing a culture of inquiry, innovation, and exploration;

establishing embedded systems for collecting and exchanging knowledge and learning;

learning with and from the external environment and larger learning system; and

modelling and growing learning leadership (Kools & Stoll 2016 , p.3).

One of the lessons learned during the pandemic concerns the role of good central governance and support in ensuring consistent standards and closing equity gaps. Singapore and Brazil provide two extremes in a continuum from good to poor governance. Whereas Singapore adopted a whole of government approach, with appropriate coordination between the education and the health sectors, and with the education sector providing clear and consistent guidance and support to all schools, in Brazil the national government education response was mostly absent, while the public health response was ineffective. In that context, States and local authorities, teachers and parents were left to their own devices to figure out what to do, and state governments and civil society organizations stepped up to make up for the absence and ineffectual governmental response. Finland and Japan provide also examples of effective national government response, coordinating a national education strategy of education continuity, while Mexico and Spain provide examples of a national strategy of remote learning, judged ineffective by States and local jurisdictions, who stepped up to make up for the absence of an effective national strategy. In countries where the central state had limited jurisdiction over schools and did not assume an effective compensatory role, such as Chile, Spain, Russia, and the United States, there were greater inequalities in the education strategies adopted across regions and schools.

To conclude, the COVID-19 pandemic created an education crisis which robbed many students of the opportunities to learn what they were expected to and caused them to lose skills they had already gained. These losses were unequally distributed among different students and education systems and, as a result, if they are not reversed, the outcome of the pandemic will be increased educational inequality, from which economic and social inequality will follow. These will further complicate other social challenges, which predated the pandemic but were exacerbated by it: the challenge of increasing productivity, reducing poverty and inequality, increasing civic cohesion and trust in institutions and democratic governance, and addressing issues such as climate change or intra and interstate violence. This impact of the pandemic will most certainly extend beyond the period studied in this book, corresponding to the first year since the pandemic was declared in March of 2020. The pandemic is not under control yet and some of the ways in which it is impacting education, for instance through a new financial austerity for individuals and for education systems, will continue in the immediate aftermath.

Despite these obvious challenges, it is not a foregone conclusion that we should accept these terrible education losses and their dire outcomes as destiny. It is likely that programs can be developed and implemented to mitigate and revert the education losses, and perhaps even to address preexisting education challenges as we seek to ‘build back better’ as part of the response to the pandemic. To do this, governments could rely on the unprecedented social mobilization around education and on the innovation dividend that was generated to sustain education during the pandemic, on the extraordinary efforts and collaborations among parents, teachers, education administrators, as well as across the public and private sectors, levels of government, and nations. If there was ever a time when collective leadership was necessary, indeed essential, in education, this is it. We conclude this book in the hope that it contributes to that process of leading together, from all corners of the world, so we can build back better and restore opportunities for children and youth to gain the skills to build a more inclusive and sustainable world.

Kools, M., & Stoll, L. (2016). What makes a school a learning organization? Paris: OECD (Education Working Paper No. 137).

Google Scholar  

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

Fernando M. Reimers

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fernando M. Reimers .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Rights and permissions

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Reimers, F.M. (2022). Conclusions and Implications. In: Reimers, F.M. (eds) Primary and Secondary Education During Covid-19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81500-4_17

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81500-4_17

Published : 15 September 2021

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-81499-1

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-81500-4

eBook Packages : Education Education (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research