The Education - Essay Example

Education has achieved a newer dimension and unwinding paradigm with the growth of technology and science. It has surpassed all orthodox and conventional modes and parameters and evolved as a weapon of mass “nourishment” and enlightenment. Education is not specified or limited within the narrow walls of age, and it is not marred by any geographical location. This has made it liberal, universal, and more accessible. The lucidity of the system and its de-institutionalization has made it readily available to people across the globe and in its true sense enabled the light of education to percolate into every strata of society. In recent decades, the two most potent aspects of education have been significant: receiving education at door step through the mode of e-learning, and the adult education sphere, which is developing fast in almost every nation across the globe. Also, the fact of advancement of the e-learning method of education is directly related to the growth of the popularity of adult education.

The article “Look Who’s Going to School Now!” by Harold Titus and the article “The Online Discussion Board” by S. Joseph Levine both focus on the education system and its growth in the modern era. But both articles put forward a very different realm of discussion, though quite complimentary to each other, as both are related to the education system in the modern era. The article “Look Who’s Going to School Now!” focuses on the growth and motives of adult education; the article “The Online Discussion Board”, on the other hand, focuses on certain alternate modes of education beyond the mundane and the orthodox mechanism of the age-old education system. It discusses the combination of bringing the classroom to one’s door step and, at the same time, relishing and retaining the charm and interactivity of education gained through the flavor of classroom teaching (Levine, 2007).

The article builds up an explicit panorama of the causes and effects of American adult education, as well as its growth. It states that when adult education was initiated in America, it started with a limited motive. Forming better citizens, spreading education, and helping people regain things that they missed in their lives were the prominent motto for adult education in America. But with the passage of time, the field of education began to see more liberal approaches and expanded to the field of vocational education, so that unanimously and simultaneously people from all strata of society could be benefited from adult education. At the same time, in the American adult education segment the breaking away from the orthodox techniques is also truly and properly manifested. According to Lyman Bryson, the chief of the American Association for Adult Education, “Adult education today is not remedial, it is, on the contrary, something new, produced by the industrial conditions of our time, and it is going to be a normal phase of civilized life” (Titus, 1946, p. 19).

On the other hand, the article “The Online Discussion Board” focuses on the mode of education through e-learning methods. During the first hour of its initiation, it was considered as a method that would collapse soon or that would not be able to compete with the age-old method where the tutor-student relationship and face-to-face communication are given optimum importance and space. But the generation of technology and prompt modifications and development in the e-learning methodology has not only made it accessible but also made it widely accepted. At the same time, the article explicitly discusses the ten best conditions for the proper comprehension and growth of education through the e-learning method (Levine, 2007).  

The article very meticulously summarizes the great impact of education through e-learning in the words of Weller: “The more didactic pedagogy of face-to-face lecturing does not translate well onto the Net, and so an approach that places less emphasis on the educator and more on the learner, and that positively encourages communication, seems to offer an alternative that makes the online course a distinct, and perhaps more attractive, offering” (Levine, 2007, p. 73). 

Undoubtedly both these articles, “Look Who’s Going to School Now!” and “The Online Discussion Board”, discuss the intricate details of the two different paradigms of education in the modern era, which has imparted a newer dimension and meaning to the education system, taking it to a different level altogether.