Educational Studies Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Tagore is not associated with Vande Matram.

'Vande Mataram' was written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and appears in his novel Anandamath (1882); it is India's national song.

Tagore is linked with all the others. He founded Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan, he wrote 'Jana Gana Mana', which became the national anthem, and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for Gitanjali, the first Asian to do so. He did set 'Vande Mataram' to music, but its authorship is Bankim's, which is the association the question tests.

Answer: B

One of the main truths of Buddhism is Freedom from Suffering.

The Buddha's teaching rests on the Four Noble Truths: there is suffering (dukkha); suffering has a cause, craving (tanha); suffering can cease (nirvana); and the way to its cessation is the Eightfold Path. The goal of the whole teaching is release from suffering.

Freedom from sin is a Christian idea rather than a Buddhist one. Karma and anger are discussed in Buddhism, but freedom from them is part of the path, not one of the main truths, which are framed around suffering.

Answer: B

The importance of the physical environment is stressed in Naturalism.

Naturalism holds that nature is the whole of reality and that education should follow nature. Rousseau, its best-known educational exponent, wanted the child Emile educated in the countryside, learning from things and from the natural consequences of his actions rather than from books. The physical environment is thus the child's chief teacher.

Realism also values the material world, but as an object of knowledge rather than as the setting of education. Idealism and spiritualism emphasise mind, ideas and the spirit over the physical surroundings.

Answer: A

The integration of spiritualism and science in education was propounded by Sri Aurobindo.

Sri Aurobindo's integral education aims at developing all parts of the human being: the physical, vital, mental, psychic and spiritual. He wanted modern scientific knowledge combined with India's spiritual heritage, and the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education at Puducherry was built on that integral approach.

Swami Vivekananda also spoke of combining Western science with Vedanta, and the paper takes Aurobindo as the thinker whose whole educational system was built on that integration. J. Krishnamurti stressed freedom from conditioning, and Gandhi's basic education centred on craft and work.

Answer: C

The answer is Existentialism.

'I think, therefore I am' (cogito ergo sum) is Rene Descartes' starting point: the one thing that cannot be doubted is the existence of the thinking self. The existentialists take the existing, conscious individual as their starting point in the same way; Sartre wrote that there can be no other truth to start from than the cogito. That shared emphasis on the self-aware individual is why the paper links the statement with existentialism.

Strictly, Descartes was a rationalist, which is not among the options. Realism starts from the external world, Marxism from material and economic conditions, and logical empiricism from sense experience and verification, so none of them begins with the thinking self.

Answer: C

Visva-Bharati was established by Rabindranath Tagore.

Tagore started a school at Santiniketan in 1901 and developed it into Visva-Bharati, founded in 1921 as a university where the cultures of East and West could meet. Its motto, 'where the world makes its home in a single nest', expresses that aim. It became a central university in 1951.

Gandhi founded the Sabarmati and Sevagram ashrams and proposed basic education. Vinoba Bhave led the Bhoodan movement, and Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission. None of them founded Visva-Bharati.

Answer: A

Pragmatism advocates Learning by doing.

For pragmatists such as John Dewey, knowledge grows out of experience and is tested by its results, so the child should learn through purposeful activity rather than by listening. 'Learning by doing' is the slogan that sums this up, and it underlies Dewey's laboratory school and Kilpatrick's project method.

The problem-solving method is also used in pragmatist teaching, but as one form of learning by doing; the paper takes the general principle. The lecture method is the passive teaching pragmatism rejects, and the inductive-deductive method is a general method of reasoning not specific to pragmatism.

Answer: C

Women's education was discouraged by Rousseau.

In Emile (1762) Rousseau devoted Book V to Sophie, Emile's future wife. He argued that a woman's education should be relative to men: to please them, be useful to them and make their lives agreeable. He did not want her educated in the same way or to the same level as Emile.

Plato, by contrast, proposed in the Republic that women of the guardian class receive the same education as men. Dewey supported equal, democratic education, and Erasmus favoured the education of women in learning and piety.

Answer: B

Socialization is the main aim of education at the pre-primary level.

Pre-school education receives the child from the family and gives the child its first experience of a group outside it. Through play, songs and routines the child learns to share, take turns, follow simple rules, express needs and get on with other children and adults. Formal academic learning is not yet the aim.

At the primary level the emphasis shifts to literacy and numeracy, at the secondary level to subject knowledge and preparation for life, and at the higher secondary level to specialisation for higher education and careers. Socialisation continues at every level, but it is the main aim only at the pre-primary stage.

Answer: B

The family educates the child informally.

The family has no syllabus, timetable, examinations or trained teachers. The child learns language, habits, values, manners and attitudes simply by living with parents and relatives, through imitation and daily interaction. That is why the family is the most important informal agency of education.

Formal education is the planned, structured education of schools and colleges. 'Deliberately' and 'regularly' describe features of formal teaching, whereas much of what the child learns at home is not deliberately taught at all.