Formal education

From Studyplace

Categories  Concepts Subjects People Essays Reviews Commons Courses Help	Pathways Concepts Subjects People Essays Reviews Commons Courses Help
Key tabs
article tab edit tab move tab	study tab history tab watch tab

From A Cyclopedia of Education, edited by Paul Monroe, Ph.D. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911, vol. II, pp. 647-8).

A term applied to any training or education which is given in a direct, conscious, and systematic manner, as opposed to the kind of development which is incidental to life. In this sense what one learns outside of school represents a child's informal or incidental education; what he gains through tutoring or at school is his formal education. Thus the end of school life is spoken of as the close of the period of formal education. The same fundamental distinction is also applied in the classification of the influences of school life itself. What the pupil gains through the direct and systematic instruction of the classroom, that is, through the study of the subjects of the curriculum, is his formal instruction, as opposed to the incidental influences of school life, which are exerted through the social life, the playground activities, the government and the discipline of the school.

Formal instruction or education, however valuable, needs to be supplemented by many and varied experiences outside the classroom. An individual's complete education is gained through the contacts of his whole life under whatever institutional influences these may be gained. School education is only partial; it fails to provide a complete series of experiences. While it gives much in a thoroughly accurate and systematic form, it frequently fails to give a practical organization to knowledge so that the facts and principles gained are closely associated with actual problems and ordered so as to provide a properly controlled conduct with reference to them. The formal education of schools in particular tends to restrict itself to the intellectual level of consciousness; the sensibilities which evaluate situations and the skilled actions which modify them are too often underemphasized by classroom instruction. Modern educational theory recognizes this truth when it suggests that the complete curriculum of the school consists of all the school activities, whether they occur on playground or in recitation; and modern practice, in line with this belief, encourages supervised play, self-government, and various forms of organized sociability among children. In a similar manner, the influences of home, neighborhood, religious and other modes of institutional life are regarded as distinctly necessary supplements to the school.

H. S.

See Course of study, theory of; Education; Education and instruction; End in education; Environment; Family education; Formal discipline.