Formal Agencies

[Kalyani Hingwe]

FORMAL EDUCATION

 

v   In this institution which impart definite and ready made titbits of knowledge in a specific time under a controlled and structured environment.

v   Here the teachers are definite and the objectives to be achieved are specific.

v   Such institution is established by society with the purpose of directly providing the accumulated knowledge in specific dozens under a pre-planned programmed.

v   To be clearer, education imparted by formal agencies is limited and specific.

v   This type of education has its own merits, because the experiences are structured and learning gained can be measured and evaluated.

 

Merits of formal agencies:

 

v   Every thing is definite and specific about the objectives, learning experiences, desired behavioral changes together with measuring and evaluation techniques.

 

“Without formal education, it is not possible to transmit all the recourses and achievements of a complex society. It also opens a way to a kind of experience which would not be accessible to the young, if they are left to pick up their training in informal association with others.

 

Demerits of formal agencies:

v   Education imparted by formal agencies is often merely bookish, theoretical and artificial devoid of realities of life and society.

v   It is planned under rigid conditions and strict discipline which makes the whole environment dead andlifeless.

v   It emphasis interpretation of words and phrases and often neglects the real spirit underlying the content.

 

John Dewey has remarked “Formal education easily becomes remote and dead, abstract and bookish. What accumulated knowledge exists in low grade societies is atlist put into practice.

But in advanced culture much which has to be learnt is stored in symbols .It is far from translation into familiar acts .There is the standing danger that the material of formal education will be merely the subject matter of schools isolated from the subject matter of life experience.”