Educational Studies Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Hinayana is also known as Theravada.

After the Buddha's death Buddhism divided into schools. The older, conservative tradition, which keeps the Pali canon and holds that each person must work out his own liberation to become an arhat, was called Hinayana (the 'lesser vehicle') by its Mahayana critics. Its only surviving school is Theravada, the 'doctrine of the elders', followed today in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand, so the two names are used for the same tradition.

Vajrayana and Tantra name the esoteric, ritual form of Buddhism that developed out of Mahayana and is followed in Tibet; they are the opposite end of the tradition. 'Suktta' is not a name for any school of Buddhism.

Answer: C

The Education of Man was written by Froebel.

Friedrich Froebel, the German educator who founded the kindergarten, published Die Menschenerziehung (The Education of Man) in 1826. It sets out his view that education should allow the child's inborn nature to unfold through self-activity and play, guided by the teacher like a gardener tending a plant.

Rousseau's educational work is Emile (1762), and Plato's educational ideas are set out chiefly in the Republic and the Laws. Sartre was an existentialist philosopher whose work does not include a treatise of this title. So only Froebel fits.

Answer: B

According to Rousseau, it is the mother who provides the fencing around the child's soul.

In the opening pages of Emile (1762), Rousseau addresses the mother directly and urges her to plant early an enclosure round her child's soul, to protect the young plant from the crushing force of social convention. For Rousseau the natural goodness of the child is spoiled by society, so the mother's first task is to shield it.

Society is the very thing the fence protects the child from, so it cannot be the one that builds it. The father and the tutor appear later in Emile as educators, but the image of fencing the soul is addressed to the mother.

Answer: B

The key gives Spiritual and materialistic.

Samkhya is a dualist philosophy. It recognises two eternal realities: prakriti, matter, from which the body, the senses and the mind evolve, and purusha, pure consciousness or spirit. Liberation comes from discriminating knowledge of the difference between them. Educational writers draw from this a two-sided aim: education must develop the material side of the person (body, senses, intellect, practical life) and lead to the spiritual goal of realising the purusha.

Options pairing an emotional aim with one side, or pairing spiritual with 'indirect', do not reflect this matter-spirit dualism, which is the defining feature of Samkhya.

Answer: B

Ulum Aqliyya deals with philosophy and physical sciences.

Islamic scholarship divided learning into two branches. Ulum Naqliyya, the transmitted sciences, were based on revelation and tradition: the Quran, Hadith, Islamic law and theology. Ulum Aqliyya, the rational or intellectual sciences, were based on reason: philosophy, logic, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and the natural sciences. In medieval Indian madrasas both were taught.

Languages and fine arts, psychology and the social sciences are not what the term refers to. The distinction is between knowledge received through tradition and knowledge reached by reason, and philosophy and the physical sciences are the core of the second.

Answer: C

The Challenge to Care in Schools was written by Nel Noddings.

Published in 1992, the book applies Noddings's ethics of care to schooling. She argues that the main aim of education should be to produce caring, loving and lovable people, and proposes organising the curriculum around centres of care: for self, for intimate others, for strangers, for animals and plants, for the human-made world and for ideas.

Swami Dayananda founded the Arya Samaj, Sri Aurobindo developed integral education, and Mahatma Gandhi proposed basic education (Nai Talim). None of them wrote this book.

Answer: A

The belief described is that of liberalism.

Liberalism trusts in human reason. It holds that most people are capable of reasoning for themselves and of governing their own lives, so education should develop that capacity. Liberal educators therefore favour methods such as discussion, inquiry and problem solving that build students' ability to think rationally and use their intelligence, rather than methods that require acceptance of authority.

Conservatism stresses tradition and authority and is wary of relying on individual reason. Secularism concerns the separation of religion from the state. Individualism stresses the individual's independence but is not specifically a belief about reason and teaching method.

Answer: B

The author is Mary Wollstonecraft.

Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. She argued that women appear inferior only because they are denied education, and called for girls to be educated rationally alongside boys, which makes the book a founding text of feminist thought on education.

John Locke wrote Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Nel Noddings developed the ethics of care, and Paulo Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Answer: C

The Triratnas are Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha.

The three jewels of Buddhism are the Buddha (the enlightened teacher), the Dhamma (his teaching) and the Sangha (the community of monks). A Buddhist takes refuge in all three: 'Buddham saranam gacchami, Dhammam saranam gacchami, Sangham saranam gacchami'.

Option A lists (with a slip) the Tripitaka, the three baskets of scripture: Vinaya, Sutta and Abhidhamma Pitaka. The other options mix unrelated terms.

Answer: C

The social changes are (iii), (iv).

Sociologists such as MacIver and Page distinguish social change, change in social relationships and social structure, from cultural change, change in ideas, art and tastes. The rise of organised labour in capitalist society alters relations between workers and employers (iii), and acceptance of gender equality alters relations between men and women (iv), so both are social changes.

Changes in musical style and in the rules of writing poetry and drama (i and ii) are cultural changes, so options including them are wrong.