Here, we are talking or will be talking about and exploring educational administration and how this ‘thing’ can help education to be better, school to be more effective, and the overall quality of ‘education’ to be improved. So, let us look at these two terms – education, and administration.
What is education? What is administration? And most of all, what is educational administration?
Can education be defined? Some people are of the opinion that it cannot be defined. It cannot be defined in specific terms, but the common elements or characteristics can help us to see what it actually means. Let’s look at the definitions by taking a look at the important elements in their definitions. Firstly, education “has the growing quality of a living organism” (Lester Smith, 1976:7). It is constantly changing, adapting itself to new demands and new circumstances.
[As far as you can determine, has education changed or adapted to new demands and new circumstances in your country? Provide examples or instances of adaptations.]
Education not only can and should change with the years; it is sensitive to place as it is to time. In other words, education in China should carry different meaning from education in Malaysia, or in England, etc. Apart from that, education in rural areas should never be quite the same as education in urban or industrialized areas.
Education = f (time, place, …)
[Do you see the differences of education in England and the US, or education in Malaysia and in China? Do you see the differences of schools in the 1960s compared to schools in the 2000s in Malaysia? Or do you think that education in Japan is the same as education in Malaysia?]
Since education is sensitive to “time” and “place”, meaning that it is different at different time and in different place, and as educational administrator, one should be aware of this fact which carries the implication that, as stated by Dr. J.B. Conant (in Lester Smith, 1976:8), and wrote that, “I do not believe, that educational practices are an exportable commodity. I fear the contrary assumption has been implied to some extent in our dealings with Germany and Japan since World War II. At times in our own history, attempts to import a British or a European concept have done more harm than good.” But that doesn’t mean that we cannot learn much from those current in other countries other than our own. In fact we can learn much from each other, to improve our own education and schools.
Apart from that, there are wide variations of interpretation of the meaning of education, usually as a result of religious or political convictions or both, and different social economic status. According to John Stuart Mill,
“Education includes whatever we do for ourselves and whatever is done for us for the expressed purpose of bringing us nearer to the perfection of our nature; it does more: in its largest acceptation it comprehends even the indirect effects produced on character, and on human faculties, by things of which the direct purposes are quite different; by laws, by forms of government, by the industrial arts, by modes of social life, nay, even by physical facts not dependent on human will; by climate, soil, and local position.”
“the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be its successors, in order to qualify them for at least keeping up, and if possible for raising, the level of improvement which has been attained.”
The difficulty in defining or to search for a meaningful meaning for education can be seen from the disagreement on the subjects which the young should learn, on whether education should be properly directed rather to the cultivation of the intellect or the moral discipline. The question is complicated. If we agree on the subjects such as the promotion of virtue, then the problem will be on the means of attaining it.
Throughout the past few decades, education in this country has been on the march, and the impact of new ideas and new techniques has revolutionized the inner life of schools. New curriculum, new technology of education, new ideas on the management of school, new subjects, and etc introduced in respond to changing demands. The rate of change has accelerated in recent years and much that has been written about education is being made redundant and irrelevant to the present, especially in our conception of the meaning of schooling, and the tasks of teachers. However, our problem in Malaysia has remained the same for the last few decades – the emphasis or stress on students’ performance in public examinations. Thus, the rigid requirement of the traditional conception of schooling – focus on the practice of drilling young children on what they regarded as essential knowledge to pass examinations. Thus, for them at least, education is essentially passing examinations. The provision of tuition vouchers is a case in point. With so much emphasis and efforts placed on teaching to pass examinations, moral training and the development of character have taken a back seat. [What do you think would be the implication of this on educational administration?]
Aims/Purposes…
Aims, or purposes of school and education urge us to think constructively about the few vital questions: “What are we to teach? What kind of human being or students should we produce? At what should a school aim?” Whose job do you think it is to look for answers to these questions?
Many people would try to avoid discussing about the aims or purposes of education. It is one of the most difficult topics in education. While admitting variations, there is an underlying unity and we can not be very wrong if we remember the very purpose of schooling, the two top priorities: the formation of character and the development of intelligence; add to John Stuart Mill’s aim of transmitting and improving our cultural heritage; the notion of equipment to earn one’s living.
Here we have four important aims, some schools do not have regard to each of them, and some pursue the aims and achieve the aims more effectively than others. But whatever aims a school chose to pursue it does not function in isolation, it is linked to many elements within the frame of a society and thus is sensitive to extraneous influences. However, it must be cautioned that aims only have significance when applied; and in practice their application is usually related to actual situations in which real people are involved, children, parents, teachers, committee members, officials, community leaders, and all the various components of society the school has contact with. Within this society everything turns on the quality of the persons applying the aims, whatever these maybe; hence the personality of the teachers and the principals is all important. It is he/she, the principal, who interprets and apply the aims to the situations as they arise; and therefore such merit as they possess derives largely from his wisdom, convictions, standards, and values. He has to have regard not only to the problems as they arise within the school, but also to the social and intellectual and moral background. He is just “only pieces of a total situation”.
What is the “total situation”? It is this total situation that makes the administration and application of aims of education very difficult. And as a result, critics of school and education often find evidence of “lack of clear purpose”.
The famous 1945 Harvard Report about education in USA (General Education in a Free Society) summed up our dilemma and confusion beautifully,
“The unparalleled growth – one could almost say eruption – of our education system, taking place as it has while our way of life was itself undergoing still vaster changes, is like a mathematical problem in which new unknowns are being constantly introduced or like a house under construction for which the specifications are ever changing… The wonder is not that our schools and colleges have in some ways failed; on the contrary, it is that they have succeeded as they have.”
(General Education in a Free Society, Harvard
University Press, 1945, pp.5-6)
The complex problem of educating in this time of rapid and revolutionary change has been made more difficult by too close an adherence to theories of education conceived in less challenging days. Discuss.
Has education failed us or we have failed education? Discuss.
On Crisis…
During the 1960s through the 1980s, education has being conceived as the prime instrument of economic success, social progress, and in Malaysia, a tool for social reengineering - restructuring society and eradicating poverty (Malaysia, Second Malaysia Plan 1971-1975). However, education in general and educational institutions in particular began to be beset by doubts about their achievements. The school as an institution came under attack and some quarters claimed that it has reached a ‘crisis’ level. How do you interpret the term ‘crisis’ and what are the symptoms of a crisis in education?
Crisis can be viewed as institutional shortcomings, both internal ones and those that pertain to the relationships between formal education and other institutions in society, especially the world of work (Husen, 1979:10). Unhappiness are particularly strong about school education in general and secondary school education in particular and are reflected in the number of press reports, public and private inquiry in recent times into the operation of schools in relation to students’ indiscipline, student performance in public examinations, the adequacy of education in the present day society, and etc. Apart from that, the transition from tertiary education to work and graduate unemployment problems, over the last few years, become the focus of public and private debates. These are signs of loss of confidence in our education system. Husen (1979) provides a list of crisis symptoms based on his analysis which is still very much relevant today. They are:
a. Education and politics, which is related to the change in attitudes towards education. The leftists are convinced that the benefits of traditional schooling and the intrinsic good of schooling were gone. Some conservatives blamed the school for its low academic standards, its lack of discipline, and the neglect of talented students. Many were suspicious of the ability of education to bring about a better society. A by- product of the debate is the growing awareness that the schools operate within a given social and economic framework, whereas prior to the 1970s school problems were often conceived of as purely pedagogical ones and can be solved by the school itself as the problems emerged independent of social and economic factors (Husen, 1979). Now, there is an increasing realization that problems besetting the educational system are in the last analysis social economic problems which cannot be solved by taking action within the four walls of the school. Studies conducted in the 60s by Coleman in the US and Plowden in the UK show that socio-economic backgrounds and home conditions account for a larger portion of the between-student and between-school differences in cognitive outcomes than do school resources and teaching practices.
b. Education and equality, whereby education is depicted as the major instrument of social welfare and change, a booster of economic growth (Husen, 1979). However, what happened in the 70s through the 90s has proved otherwise, where the expansion of educational facilities and increased enrolment has not contributed to the equalization of educational opportunities to the extent expected. The disparities among social strata in participation prevailed by moving up the educational ladder (Husen, 1979).
c. Negativism in the classroom, there is a clear change whereby students are becoming more and more negative in attitude towards schooling through the grades which is shown by increasing incidence of truancy, dropouts and etc. A survey across student population between ages 10 – 16 show a trend of consistent deterioration of attitudes. Low-performing students and students with underprivileged homw backgrounds tended to show the most marked, progressively negative attitudes (Husen, 1979).
d. The diminishing priority of education and budgetary cuts.
“Crisis” – rhetoric or reality?
Generally, the term ‘crisis’ seemed more appropriate in describing the relationship between school and society than in describing the problems within the school. Crisis in society at large have repercussions on the school system. In the long term, societies may be viewed as being in a state of constant change between on paradigm and the next, from the industrial to the post industrial, and the crisis generated will affect the school system, thus the crisis in education.
In terms of the operation of the system as a whole, from policy formulation to decision making and implementation at the school level, there is a complicated web of relationships that has been described in various terms such as communication, structure, leadership, culture, climate, decision making, power and influence, organizational effectiveness, and etc. These have become major topics of discussion and research in educational management and administration. In fact, the educational system as a whole is envisaged to be beset by problems of accessibility, equity, efficiency, effectiveness and quality.
What is education? What is administration? And most of all, what is educational administration?
Can education be defined? Some people are of the opinion that it cannot be defined. It cannot be defined in specific terms, but the common elements or characteristics can help us to see what it actually means. Let’s look at the definitions by taking a look at the important elements in their definitions. Firstly, education “has the growing quality of a living organism” (Lester Smith, 1976:7). It is constantly changing, adapting itself to new demands and new circumstances.
[As far as you can determine, has education changed or adapted to new demands and new circumstances in your country? Provide examples or instances of adaptations.]
Education not only can and should change with the years; it is sensitive to place as it is to time. In other words, education in China should carry different meaning from education in Malaysia, or in England, etc. Apart from that, education in rural areas should never be quite the same as education in urban or industrialized areas.
Education = f (time, place, …)
[Do you see the differences of education in England and the US, or education in Malaysia and in China? Do you see the differences of schools in the 1960s compared to schools in the 2000s in Malaysia? Or do you think that education in Japan is the same as education in Malaysia?]
Since education is sensitive to “time” and “place”, meaning that it is different at different time and in different place, and as educational administrator, one should be aware of this fact which carries the implication that, as stated by Dr. J.B. Conant (in Lester Smith, 1976:8), and wrote that, “I do not believe, that educational practices are an exportable commodity. I fear the contrary assumption has been implied to some extent in our dealings with Germany and Japan since World War II. At times in our own history, attempts to import a British or a European concept have done more harm than good.” But that doesn’t mean that we cannot learn much from those current in other countries other than our own. In fact we can learn much from each other, to improve our own education and schools.
Apart from that, there are wide variations of interpretation of the meaning of education, usually as a result of religious or political convictions or both, and different social economic status. According to John Stuart Mill,
“Education includes whatever we do for ourselves and whatever is done for us for the expressed purpose of bringing us nearer to the perfection of our nature; it does more: in its largest acceptation it comprehends even the indirect effects produced on character, and on human faculties, by things of which the direct purposes are quite different; by laws, by forms of government, by the industrial arts, by modes of social life, nay, even by physical facts not dependent on human will; by climate, soil, and local position.”
“the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be its successors, in order to qualify them for at least keeping up, and if possible for raising, the level of improvement which has been attained.”
The difficulty in defining or to search for a meaningful meaning for education can be seen from the disagreement on the subjects which the young should learn, on whether education should be properly directed rather to the cultivation of the intellect or the moral discipline. The question is complicated. If we agree on the subjects such as the promotion of virtue, then the problem will be on the means of attaining it.
Throughout the past few decades, education in this country has been on the march, and the impact of new ideas and new techniques has revolutionized the inner life of schools. New curriculum, new technology of education, new ideas on the management of school, new subjects, and etc introduced in respond to changing demands. The rate of change has accelerated in recent years and much that has been written about education is being made redundant and irrelevant to the present, especially in our conception of the meaning of schooling, and the tasks of teachers. However, our problem in Malaysia has remained the same for the last few decades – the emphasis or stress on students’ performance in public examinations. Thus, the rigid requirement of the traditional conception of schooling – focus on the practice of drilling young children on what they regarded as essential knowledge to pass examinations. Thus, for them at least, education is essentially passing examinations. The provision of tuition vouchers is a case in point. With so much emphasis and efforts placed on teaching to pass examinations, moral training and the development of character have taken a back seat. [What do you think would be the implication of this on educational administration?]
Aims/Purposes…
Aims, or purposes of school and education urge us to think constructively about the few vital questions: “What are we to teach? What kind of human being or students should we produce? At what should a school aim?” Whose job do you think it is to look for answers to these questions?
Many people would try to avoid discussing about the aims or purposes of education. It is one of the most difficult topics in education. While admitting variations, there is an underlying unity and we can not be very wrong if we remember the very purpose of schooling, the two top priorities: the formation of character and the development of intelligence; add to John Stuart Mill’s aim of transmitting and improving our cultural heritage; the notion of equipment to earn one’s living.
Here we have four important aims, some schools do not have regard to each of them, and some pursue the aims and achieve the aims more effectively than others. But whatever aims a school chose to pursue it does not function in isolation, it is linked to many elements within the frame of a society and thus is sensitive to extraneous influences. However, it must be cautioned that aims only have significance when applied; and in practice their application is usually related to actual situations in which real people are involved, children, parents, teachers, committee members, officials, community leaders, and all the various components of society the school has contact with. Within this society everything turns on the quality of the persons applying the aims, whatever these maybe; hence the personality of the teachers and the principals is all important. It is he/she, the principal, who interprets and apply the aims to the situations as they arise; and therefore such merit as they possess derives largely from his wisdom, convictions, standards, and values. He has to have regard not only to the problems as they arise within the school, but also to the social and intellectual and moral background. He is just “only pieces of a total situation”.
What is the “total situation”? It is this total situation that makes the administration and application of aims of education very difficult. And as a result, critics of school and education often find evidence of “lack of clear purpose”.
The famous 1945 Harvard Report about education in USA (General Education in a Free Society) summed up our dilemma and confusion beautifully,
“The unparalleled growth – one could almost say eruption – of our education system, taking place as it has while our way of life was itself undergoing still vaster changes, is like a mathematical problem in which new unknowns are being constantly introduced or like a house under construction for which the specifications are ever changing… The wonder is not that our schools and colleges have in some ways failed; on the contrary, it is that they have succeeded as they have.”
(General Education in a Free Society, Harvard
University Press, 1945, pp.5-6)
The complex problem of educating in this time of rapid and revolutionary change has been made more difficult by too close an adherence to theories of education conceived in less challenging days. Discuss.
Has education failed us or we have failed education? Discuss.
On Crisis…
During the 1960s through the 1980s, education has being conceived as the prime instrument of economic success, social progress, and in Malaysia, a tool for social reengineering - restructuring society and eradicating poverty (Malaysia, Second Malaysia Plan 1971-1975). However, education in general and educational institutions in particular began to be beset by doubts about their achievements. The school as an institution came under attack and some quarters claimed that it has reached a ‘crisis’ level. How do you interpret the term ‘crisis’ and what are the symptoms of a crisis in education?
Crisis can be viewed as institutional shortcomings, both internal ones and those that pertain to the relationships between formal education and other institutions in society, especially the world of work (Husen, 1979:10). Unhappiness are particularly strong about school education in general and secondary school education in particular and are reflected in the number of press reports, public and private inquiry in recent times into the operation of schools in relation to students’ indiscipline, student performance in public examinations, the adequacy of education in the present day society, and etc. Apart from that, the transition from tertiary education to work and graduate unemployment problems, over the last few years, become the focus of public and private debates. These are signs of loss of confidence in our education system. Husen (1979) provides a list of crisis symptoms based on his analysis which is still very much relevant today. They are:
a. Education and politics, which is related to the change in attitudes towards education. The leftists are convinced that the benefits of traditional schooling and the intrinsic good of schooling were gone. Some conservatives blamed the school for its low academic standards, its lack of discipline, and the neglect of talented students. Many were suspicious of the ability of education to bring about a better society. A by- product of the debate is the growing awareness that the schools operate within a given social and economic framework, whereas prior to the 1970s school problems were often conceived of as purely pedagogical ones and can be solved by the school itself as the problems emerged independent of social and economic factors (Husen, 1979). Now, there is an increasing realization that problems besetting the educational system are in the last analysis social economic problems which cannot be solved by taking action within the four walls of the school. Studies conducted in the 60s by Coleman in the US and Plowden in the UK show that socio-economic backgrounds and home conditions account for a larger portion of the between-student and between-school differences in cognitive outcomes than do school resources and teaching practices.
b. Education and equality, whereby education is depicted as the major instrument of social welfare and change, a booster of economic growth (Husen, 1979). However, what happened in the 70s through the 90s has proved otherwise, where the expansion of educational facilities and increased enrolment has not contributed to the equalization of educational opportunities to the extent expected. The disparities among social strata in participation prevailed by moving up the educational ladder (Husen, 1979).
c. Negativism in the classroom, there is a clear change whereby students are becoming more and more negative in attitude towards schooling through the grades which is shown by increasing incidence of truancy, dropouts and etc. A survey across student population between ages 10 – 16 show a trend of consistent deterioration of attitudes. Low-performing students and students with underprivileged homw backgrounds tended to show the most marked, progressively negative attitudes (Husen, 1979).
d. The diminishing priority of education and budgetary cuts.
“Crisis” – rhetoric or reality?
Generally, the term ‘crisis’ seemed more appropriate in describing the relationship between school and society than in describing the problems within the school. Crisis in society at large have repercussions on the school system. In the long term, societies may be viewed as being in a state of constant change between on paradigm and the next, from the industrial to the post industrial, and the crisis generated will affect the school system, thus the crisis in education.
In terms of the operation of the system as a whole, from policy formulation to decision making and implementation at the school level, there is a complicated web of relationships that has been described in various terms such as communication, structure, leadership, culture, climate, decision making, power and influence, organizational effectiveness, and etc. These have become major topics of discussion and research in educational management and administration. In fact, the educational system as a whole is envisaged to be beset by problems of accessibility, equity, efficiency, effectiveness and quality.
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