Objective of Education and Source of Knowledge

Objective of Education

Idealists, naturalists and realists all agree that education has always had objectives that are outside the education process. Education should produce men committed to the Islamic ideals of individual and collective life. Education should enable a man to earn an honest, just and reasonable living. Some derived objectives of education may be, Education for vocation. Education for knowledge. Education for culture, Education for character, Education for individual development.

          Education must prepare the child for some future profession or trade. Of course, education should be useful, whatever your aim in life. Vocational bias in education is very essential. Education is training for life for complete living. A synthesis of knowledge and culture will be a good aim of education. Formation of character, is the most important aim of education. The good of the society becomes the aim of the education. Education for social aim is ‘education for social service’ and education for citizenship.

          The ultimate objective of education is Islam is realization of individual’s complete harmonization with the will of Allah at personal, communal and human level. Education should objective at a balanced growth of personality through training of the spirit, intellect, rational self, feelings and bodily senses of man. Al-Ghazali had determined the objectives of education in accordance with Islamic way of life. According to him, the objective of education is utility.

          The major objective of education, in view of Ibn-e-Sina is action and to get benefit of knowledge in earning one’s livelihood. Ibn Khaldun considers education as a social institution. The soul can actualize itself only through education. The main objective of education according to Ikhwan is “to polish up the germs of the soul” and to correct its habits in order to enable it to live till eternity.

Dr. Allama Iqbal’s Educational Objectives

          Educational objectives are primarily a phase of values. They are conscious or unconscious value judgements. These judgements involve thinking in metaphysics and epistemology. Educational objectives take their root from philosophy. Iqbal’s philosophy is the philosophy of the self. He prizes and stresses self or individuality. Hence, in Iqbal’s view the highest or ultimate objectives of all educational effort as well as the social efforts is to develop and strengthen the individuality of all persons. In other words, the ultimate objective of man in his life as well as in education is the actualization and realization of the open, infinite possibilities within, without, and before him. The highest ideal, according to Iqbal, is a continued life with the highest quality of knowledge, power, perfection, goodness, vision, and creativity. But the ideal at this level is not a fixed one. As one acquires more of the qualities of the ideal, it shifts its place to a still higher level. It does not mean only the development of the inherent possibilities of man, but in a great measure the individual’s power to absorb into himself, for the reconstruction of his experience, power, personality, and the enrichment of his life, the influences of the universe external to him. Sense, reason, intellect, and intelligence are the evolved instruments for this purpose. Hence, according to Iqbal, the cultivation of any of the faculties like reason, intellect, and intelligence is not the aim in education; rather they are the means for the ideal of continuation and enrichment of life.

          To realize the board educational objectives and values as framed by Iqbal, the teacher will have to plan specific objectives for classroom activities. Of course, when these objectives and values are expanded to this length and detail, the specific objectives will not be one or many in a specific number but a multitude as framed by teachers and pupils. Iqbal would like these objectives to be based on democratic principles. They should not be enforced from outside. The pupil and teacher should be free to make, choose, and accept them. In other words, they should be meaningful to those who use them. Iqbal would disapprove of the determination of objectives of one individual or group by another individual or group, because he has great regard for the individually of each person and even urges him to make his purposes and ideals himself.

          Iqbal’s Philosophy subscribes to that kind of proximate educational objectives which are not fixed, static, and immutable, but which are not fixed, static, and immutable, but which should be flexible and subject to continual reconstruction. In a universe of change and evolution the educational objectives should be tentative and must shift with the rest of the scenery of changing individuals and their environments. They should be constantly made and remade, and be an outgrowth of practical changing situations. Hence, Iqbal’s educational objectives do not consist in maintaining a status quo because he preaches a life of ideals and purpose and ideals and purpose and ideals are not mere impulses because one’s acting on impulse does not become an activity with a purpose until one tries to see the means at one’s commend, the reasonableness of the objective, and probable outcome are not the same or identical in their meaning. 

SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE

What is the source of Knowledge? Thinkers have differed on this issue. Subjective idealist altogether deny the efficacy of our senses in giving us the knowledge of things. We only know the images. Berkeley insisted that the character of the world, as we experience it, depends upon the mind perceiving it. In his analysis of knowledge. Kant found that:

a)                pure sensation is a chaotic process in which all kinds of sensory stimulations are passively received by mind.

b)                the chaos of sensation is resolved into orderliness by the two categories of perception, space and time, which group sensory qualities into objects and events;

c)                the unity of a conceptual and ideational type is achieved by such rational categories of mind as the need for linking causes and effects.

Realists are divided into two groups on this issue, according to Butler’s statement. The Monists hold that objects of the external world are presented in the mind and not represented. There is some way in which the physical material, which makes up the objects and our consciousness, can converge upon or intersect each other at a give moment of time the time of experience. The Dualists consider that physical patterns which produce qualities in our consciouness have an identity different from those qualities and are probably quite different in their make-up from the counterparts which hey produce in our consciousness.

The third group, that of Pragmatists, consider our sense-experience as the main source of knowledge. According to them, “it is only as we are engaged in active experience with things that qualities come to light in such a way that we know them”.

Source of Knowledge in Islam: Knowledge is an intense and close communication between the knower and the known. We get all of our knowledge, whether it is about material things or non-material things, living beings or the non-living, human being or animals, from four main sources:

1.    Sensory Organs

2.    Intellect

3.    Intuition

4.    Inspiration or Revelation (i.e. Wahy)

Sensory Organs are one of main source of acquiring knowledge.

“Allah caused the day the night to take their turn verily in this is teaching for men of insight” xxiv. 44

Intellect is the logical knowledge which is obtained through the process of analysis and synthesis.

Intuition means power of knowing things without reason.

Inspiration or Revelation (Wahy) which can be divided into two main category -     the Mystic Experiences, technically called Ilham, and the Prophetic Experiences the Wahy