Educational Studies Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The one that is not a purpose of educational philosophy is to increase the teachers' love and control over the students.

Educational philosophy helps professionalise teaching, critically examines the assumptions behind educational practice, and clarifies the values and aims of education.

Increasing a teacher's control over students is not one of its purposes; if anything, philosophy of education questions authoritarian control.

Answer: A

Getting good marks and good grades is not one of the four pillars of education. The report of the Delors Commission to UNESCO (1996), Learning: the Treasure Within, names the four pillars as learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. So the option about marks is the odd one out. The Delors report names the pillars as learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be, and getting good marks is not one of them, since the report speaks of the full development of the person, not of grades.

Answer: C

Discipline is not punishment. Discipline means training in orderly conduct and self-control, so that a learner follows the school's rules willingly; punishment is only one means that has sometimes been used to enforce it, and modern educational thought treats it as separate.

The other options are all fair descriptions of discipline: a field of knowledge on which research is conducted (an academic discipline), behaviour that needs to be maintained in the school, and a mode of life in accordance with rules and regulation. Because the question asks what discipline is not, the answer is punishment.

Answer: B

Culture means a way of living. It is the whole pattern of ideas, customs, beliefs, language, arts and behaviour that a society passes from one generation to the next, which is why a short statement of it is a people's way of life.

A social group is a body of people, not their culture. The achievement of the objectives of society describes a goal or outcome. Social awareness is a person's understanding of social matters. Only the second option gives the meaning that the word has in education and the social sciences.

Answer: D

Paid education does not belong to a democratic education system. Democracy in education means that every child has an equal chance to learn, so schooling is meant to be open to all and not tied to a family's ability to pay.

Providing equal opportunities, universal education and child-centred education are all democratic aims: equal chances for every child, schooling for all, and teaching that respects the learner's needs and interests. Because the question asks what is not included, the answer is paid education, which would favour those who can afford it.

Answer: D

The answer is Eclecticism.

Eclecticism in education selects the useful and sound elements of different philosophies, such as idealism, naturalism and pragmatism, and combines them into a balanced approach instead of following a single school.

Humanism centres education on the dignity and potential of the individual. Progressivism, linked with John Dewey, stresses learning by experience and problem-solving. Pragmatism judges ideas by their practical results. Each is one philosophy, not a blend of several.

Answer: D

The factor that does not determine educational aims is Health factors.

Educational aims are shaped by the philosophy of life of a society, by views of human nature and its needs, and by cultural factors, along with political ideology and economic needs. Together these decide what a society wants education to achieve.

Health is a concern of education, but in the standard account it is not listed among the determinants of educational aims, so it is the odd one out.

Answer: D

Gandhiji's basic principles were Truth, non-violence.

Gandhi called his life 'the story of my experiments with truth' and held that Truth is God. Non-violence (ahimsa) was for him the means of reaching truth, and he said the two were so intertwined that they were like two sides of a coin. His educational thinking, Nai Talim or basic education, was built on the same foundation of truth and non-violence, with craft at the centre.

Truth alone or non-violence alone gives only half of the pair. Renunciation (aparigraha) was one of his vows, but it followed from truth and non-violence rather than being the basic principle.

Answer: A

The key gives Buddhism, and I could not confirm the source of the thought.

The statement presents religion and education as two forms of devotion, 'upasna' (upasana, devout practice or worship). The key relates it to Buddhism, whose education was carried on inside the religious life of the Sangha, so learning and practice were not separate. I searched for the quotation in philosophy-of-education sources and found no text that attributes it to any school, so this link rests on the key.

Spiritualism is the nearest rival, since it also joins education to religion, but no source found makes the quoted sentence its own. Jainism and Naturalism are weaker: Naturalism treats education as following nature and gives religion no such role. Treat the key as the examiner's reading, not a settled attribution.

Answer: B

'Knowledge is Virtue' is associated with Idealism.

The statement is Socrates' doctrine, developed by Plato, the founder of idealism. For the idealists, true knowledge is knowledge of eternal ideas such as the Good, and a person who truly knows the good will do it, so wrongdoing comes from ignorance. Education, in this view, aims at developing the mind and character through knowledge of these ideas.

Naturalism stresses nature and the child's own development, pragmatism judges ideas by their practical results, and spiritualism (in the Indian sense) aims at self-realisation. None of them makes knowledge itself the same as virtue.