Educational Studies Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The primary function of a teacher is that of a guide, helping children progress towards maximum growth.

Modern education treats the teacher as a facilitator who directs learners according to their own needs and abilities, so that each can grow as far as possible.

Seeing the teacher as a service station attendant who fills the mind is the old idea of teaching as pouring in knowledge. A guru for spiritual needs and a director who plans experiences for the class are narrower or more authoritarian roles than the one the key accepts.

Answer: C

Child-centred education means education geared to the child's needs and aspirations.

The child is the centre of the process: the curriculum, the methods and the pace are fitted to the interests, abilities and needs of the learner and not to the convenience of the school or the adult.

Education that is merely liked by children, or by children and teachers, confuses it with popularity. Education considered desirable by those concerned for the children's development is an adult-centred view.

Answer: D

Those whose educational philosophy is rooted in pragmatism claim that knowledge is tentative and truth is relative.

Pragmatists such as Dewey hold that ideas are tested by their consequences in experience, so truth is not final and knowledge is open to revision as new experience arrives.

They accept the scientific method of experimentation, so the option that rejects it is the reverse of the truth. They do not hold that complete objectivity is possible, and the stimulus-response theory of learning belongs to behaviourism and not to pragmatism.

Answer: B

The concept of pratityasamutpada, that nothing happens without a cause, is a central principle of Buddhism.

It is the doctrine of dependent origination: every event arises from conditions and passes away when they pass. The Buddha used it to explain suffering and its cessation.

Jainism rests on the doctrines of the soul, karma and anekantavada. Vedanta teaches the unity of Brahman and the self. Saṁkhya is a dualism of purusha and prakriti, so none of these puts pratityasamutpada at the centre.

Answer: D

The thinker who declared education a man-making process is Vivekananda.

He said that education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man, and that what India needs is education that builds character, strength of mind and self-reliance, 'man-making' education.

Aurobindo spoke of integral education, Krishnamurti of freedom from conditioning and Maulana Azad of national education and unity. The phrase belongs to Vivekananda.

Answer: B

The orthodox school silent on the existence of God as the ultimate reality is Saṁkhya.

Classical Saṁkhya explains the world by two realities, purusha and prakriti, and does not need a creator. It does not argue for God and for that reason is called atheistic or silent on the matter.

Vedanta takes Brahman as the ultimate reality. Nyaya gives proofs of the existence of God. Poorva Mimansa is ritualistic and denies a creator, which is why it is often described as atheistic rather than silent, and the key prefers Saṁkhya.

Answer: D

Kaṣaya in Jain axiology means both (B) and (C): negative dispositions of the mind that keep us tied to the mundane world, and bad dispositions that obstruct spiritual upliftment.

The four kaṣayas are anger, pride, deceit and greed. Jainism treats them as passions that bind the soul to karma, so they are dispositions that hold us in worldly life and block spiritual progress.

Option (A) describes dispositions that lead to higher aims, which is the opposite of what kaṣaya stands for, so it is wrong. Because (B) and (C) both state the meaning, option (D) is right.

Answer: B

The four values of Indian culture in ascending order are Artha, Kama, Dharma, Moksha.

In the scheme of Catuṣpuruṣartha the lower values are wealth (artha) and desire or pleasure (kama). Dharma, the moral order, regulates them and stands higher, and moksha, liberation, is the highest value.

The orders that put dharma first, or moksha at the bottom, reverse part of this hierarchy. The pairing of artha before dharma is the order that fits the idea of rising to the highest value.

Answer: B

Sociology of education was defined as 'a study of the relation between education and society' by Ottaway.

A. K. C. Ottaway wrote on education and society and described the field as the study of the relation between the two.

Brown, Good and Smith are not the authors credited with this definition in the standard source, so those options are wrong.

Answer: D

Religion acts as a barrier in social change because it is based on faith.

A system that rests on faith accepts beliefs and customs without questioning them, so people hold on to tradition and resist new ideas. That makes it slow to accept change.

Preaching values, depending on social gathering and expecting participation of all age groups do not by themselves oppose change, and they are as likely to support it. Only faith as the basis explains the resistance.