HISTORY OF HIGHER EDUCATION

A basic character of education is that it informs a person and it enlightens her / him
about things she / he does not know and thus initiates her / him into asking all sorts
of questions about nature, about life, about society and its organizations. One is made
capable of thinking for herself and finding answers to the questions which one considers
important or significant for one's life. In this sense, education is said to be a 'liberating'
force. It makes the individual free and capable of ordering his I her life according to
one's own choice or playing a more active role in society either to preserve it or to
change it. This basic feature of education has led, througbut history, to education being
used as an instrument of struggle, for liberation or for suppression both by the
individual and by the society.

In the earliest human societies, what mattered most for the primitive man was survival.
. In such a situation, education was not a separate component of human activity and it
was a means of handing over racial experience from the older to the younger generation.
But as social production increased and activities became differentiated in the sense that
some people hunted, others engaged in production of crops and still others actively
fought tribal wars, etc., education became a distinct activity. This was the stage in
society when the most important question was whether to educate or not to educate
individuals, and if they were to be educated to what limited or broad purpose were
they to be educated. Those who came to rule over such societies were naturally afraid
that education would liberate the individual and he or she would be in a position to
challenge their authority. Societies are known to have had laws to deny education to
large sections of their population because education would cause disaffection. This is
the reason why for thousands of years, in recent human history, vast numbers were
kept illiterate and uneducated. The idea of universal education or education for all, is
part and parcel of recent socio-political ideas of recognizing that all men and women
are equal before the law or that every member of the society has .a vote and possesses
other basic human rights.
We thus see that education is on the one hand, a liberating force for'the individual but
on the other hand, for this very reason it has been used for suppressing the individual
in all societies; and for the same reason in the developing countries which have attained
Independence, it would be tremendous social force for economic, social and cultural
advancement.
With this general understanding, we can examine in some more detail how 'education
of the individual' has undergone changes, and how ideas about 'transmission of
knowledge' and 'education and progress of society' have evolved.