Date Posted: 1/6/2014 5:55:36 AM
Posted By: Wishstar Membership Level: Gold Total Points: 7507
Though some people may despise informal education in the modern society, it is still important and effective and should remain in the society through the following media and agencies: 1. The family The family is the most essential basic unit in the African society. It is through the family that the child receives basic ideas about the world of people and things informally. This informal learning encompasses such invaluable education as self discipline, honesty, value for hard work, self respect and morality. The family still plays a key role, therefore, in the stability and human progress for the future through its informal educational influence. Parents must not surrender this primary responsibility entirely to the school, as there is really no substitute for the family in the proper upbringing of children. What the school cannot teach, the home must do; but not vice versa. 2. The local environment Both the physical and social environment of the child's local community have an effective but informal educational influence. The games children play, the social activities in which both adults and children participate, all influence the development of the child informally and unconsciously. This type of education is an important aspect of education for life. The improvement of the local community, whether rural pr urban, with child development needs in mind, is an imperative of any modern society. The desire among developing societies to build more and more schools in local communities while very little is being done to create a learning atmosphere, especially in towns, betrays ignorance of what the bases of true education really are. 3. Religious organizations The church or the mosque are very influential agents through which the individual acquires a great deal of knowledge and wisdom. Unfortunately, a good number of parents these days have turned away from religion and do not see the need to expose their children to it. Some of these have had the bitter experience of seeing their children become failures in life even when such children have had the best education available in a particular society. What these parents have failed to realize is that their own success in life may be attributed to the keen interest their parents took in teaching them religion both by example and precepts. Is modern life any different? Man is still by nature a religious animal. His life is essentially a combination of spiritual contemplation and physical activities. His educational development should be therefore both intellectual and spiritual. To this end, every encouragement should be given to religious organizations to play a role in informal education. 4. Public libraries and museums In modern society, public libraries and museums are an essential source of knowledge and information at an informal level. Besides being sources of information for research, libraries are centers of learning for people of all ages, who, through proper education, enjoy and are disciplined enough to learn more on their own, informally. This is one area of informal education that should receive a lot of attention by many countries of the world, not simply by providing more funds toward public libraries, but by also making library facilities accessible to the public. If properly organized, public libraries can and should be a truly new dimension of informal education where children and adults can further their knowledge at their own individual pace and according to their individual tastes. Museums preserve many things from the past which are important teaching aids. A trip to the museum, if well planned, can be of great educational value. 5. Mass media Mass media basically stands for public means of communication such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Through such media, a lot of knowledge and information can be transmitted to large numbers of people daily and informally. Mass media can and are important sources of enlightenment, but they can be easily misused by their owners, or by the people who advertise through them. The beat way to combat such is through proper education that seeks to develop a high degree of intellectual maturity, which in turn enables the individual to make independent and rational choices from the available alternatives. 6. The internet We cannot talk of the modern society and fail to recognize the great influence that the internet has on us. The internet offers a wide variety of information that is easily accessible and updated regularly. If used correctly, the internet can be used to gain a lot and prove to of great educational value.
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