Education as an institution

History of Education Institution

Social institutions play a big part in the structure of human societies. There are 5 major social institutions, and they just happen to be family, education, religion, politics, and economics. I personally feel that education is the most important and interesting institution in todays world. Simply because an education can make or break a person. Having an education determines the direction of ones life. Having an education is an enlightening experience. Education means many different things and has many different definitions. A broad definition of education though is "The process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, esp at a school or university." Thank god for ancient greek and china teachers, such as plato, socrates, aristotle, kung fu-tzu. They are the people whom education originated from. On this paper i'm going to try to focus more on the United States though.. The United States was one of the first countries to set a goal for education. By the time 1850 came around more than half of the population ages 5-19 were enrolled in some type of school. Not to much longer on in 1918, all 51 states passed a law that required children to attend school to at least the age of 16. The mid 1960's was a huge mile stone in the U.S. education, for the first time in history a large majority of adults had high school diplomas. From there on out it only went up hill, in 2010, 87.7% of adults had high school diplomas and 29.9% of those adults had a four year college degree. Many people's interactions with education were significantly great and successful. People interacted with education in many ways. Socialization being the first. Socialization is the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge, language, social skills, and values it takes to live and learn in a community. You learn something from someone then later on you pass that knowledge onto someone else. Another way people interact is cultural innovation which is the invention and introduction into a culture of new ideas, objects, or methods of doing things. A third way people interact with education is social integration which is the movement of minority groups such as ethnic minorities, refugees, and underprivileged sections of society. All of these are ways people got involved with education. Like I said earlier there are 4 other social institutions. Without those 4 other institutions education would not be shaped the way it is. All the other institutions affect each other in both good and bad ways.