Education facilitates the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, morals, habits, and other personal qualities. While education originally aimed to impart cultural knowledge, today the objectives of education encompass a range of other objectives, including the development of critical thinking, empathy, and complex vocational skills. The AGO framework is a useful structure for analyzing education and can reflect the dynamic from theory to practice. The AGO framework is a useful starting point for discussion, but educators often neglect this thought-provoking paradigm.
Globally, education has become an essential investment. Education can reduce inequality, promote peace, and lead to better health. Education is a powerful force in development, delivering enormous returns in terms of income. While it is important to ensure equal opportunities, education is also the primary factor in ensuring equality of opportunity. It promotes economic growth and job creation, while reducing poverty and contributing to social cohesion. Even in low-income countries, a growing proportion of children cannot read a simple story. In order to address this, governments must invest in education.
Early civilizations began their education systems as a natural response to the needs of their people. Adults trained the young to acquire new skills. This practice of transmitting knowledge has been instrumental in the evolution of culture. In pre-literate societies, knowledge was passed down through oral transmission and imitation, until it eventually became written symbols and letters. By the early 20th century, a broad range of cultures have adopted formal education. With this change, literacy and numeracy levels have improved dramatically.
