History of Education is studied for the following reasons:
Improving the quality of education
The study of the past educational experience has many lessons that can be used to improve present educational theory and practice. The problems and challenges we face in our education today are not unique; others have faced the same problems and attempted solutions with varying degrees of success or failure. We can adopt their successes and avoid their mistakes in attempting to improve our education. History of education is rich in both failures and breakthroughs for us to run away from or copy, respectively.
Strengthening the professional competence of the teacher
A proper study of the history of education affects the way in which teachers or student teachers conduct their personal and professional activities. The subject contributes to strengthening both by encouraging the teacher to examine, evaluate, accept or modify the cultural heritage; and to become an educational critic and agent for intelligent cultural transmission and change, rather than blindly accept the educational status quo, ideas, practices and unchallenged claims. In other words, an examination of educational theories and practices in their historical context encourages teachers to adopt a critical attitude towards present theories and practices.
Understanding our own educational systems
The past illuminates the present. History not only teaches what education is, but also where it came from, why it came to be, and what it is bound to become in the future. History of education is a narrative of the origins, growth and development of educational institutions, methods, concepts, aims, curricular, theory and practice without which they would appear new, unexplored, and untried to us in the present world. History of education thus helps us to appreciate the road travelled by education to reach where it is today.
Making comparisons within a historical perspective
History of education helps one to draw comparisons of the origins and development of several different ideas, practices and theories of education in different societies. In that way it can help one to formulate better ideas, patterns and principles and provide a larger perspective. It may also enable one to draw from and act imaginatively using a broader range of humanity than that represented by a single cultural experience. Apart from drawing a comparison in the evolution of educational ideas, one is also able to show the development of a particular theory and practice in historical context, and demonstrate the particular conditions out of which such a theory or practice arose and the specific purpose it was intended to serve.
Making comparisons within a historical perspective enables one to use the power of contextual study to introduce innovation by formulating new and better questions, generating fruitful hypotheses and initiating unexplored lines of inquiry.
Satisfying intellectual curiosity
History of education is like other areas of knowledge, with its own body of knowledge and conventional methods of acquiring this knowledge. Human beings, and no less teachers and teachers-to-be are possessed with the inherent desire or curiosity to explore and know what education is, where it came from, and where it is going. Studying history of education satisfies this inmate desire. One need not go beyond this reason to justify the study of history of education.
Developing powers of
The fruitful study of history of education compels us to train and exercise all our aspects of intellectual activity, excites curiosity and the spirit of inquiry, disciplines the faculty of reason, and cultivates the arts of self-expression and communication. Historical study is also basic to cultivating the attitudes of the mind that characterize the educated person, the habits of scepticism and criticism; of thinking with broad perspective and objectivity; of distinguishing between the good and the bad in human experience. The historical study of education gives one the discerning eye to give shape, form, organization, sequence and interrelationship and relative importance of ideas.
