A Critical Analysis Of Hamm's Definition Of Education

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In this essay I am going to talk about Hamm’s conception of education which is broken down into three general uses of education, the Sociological use (E1), Institutional use (E2) and the General enlightenment use (E3). I will also critically discuss the three uses of education providing a distinct and compatible argument and also bring it to the South African schooling system. The Sociological use (E1). “Socialization is defined as the process of assisting young people to become members of society by giving them social skills close to virtues. In other words, one can rightly define socialization as ‘grooming a child into being a member of society”. All this ideally ought to happen by persuasion and not by coercion; this tends to suggest that …show more content…

General enlightenment also states that education is not a tool to empower people financially but it is the knowledge they acquire to change the way they think by deepening their understanding. The two are also distinct because general enlightenment according to Hamm (1989) schools should not be educational institutions because people can acquire the any form of knowledge they seek. “If an educated person can be that one who has mastered a wide range of different types of knowledge, this characterization points beyond superficial acquaintance with things” ((Divala and Mathebula., 2013: p. 253). And the Institutional use limits a person to only a certain amount of information and sticks to a certain field until the highest stage which in simple terms mean if he wants another field he has to start from the …show more content…

Our schooling requires a learner to pass from grade 1 – 12 before our he can be labeled as educated however if a learner drops out before having reached the 12th grade he is considered uneducated, our society doesn’t distinct between a dropout and someone who has never attended school. This is proven when one seeks employment a matric certificate is required. If a learner has reached Matric and failed, he is considered as

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