WEEK 5 (Topic 4)

Western Perspectives on Education and Schooling

In this topic, I have learned about the western perspectives and the comparison between Islamic and Western's perspectives on education. Firstly, Karl Marx, the person who purported the conflict theory. Conflict theory means a theory that society is in a state of perpetual conflict because of competition for limited resources. It is based on the assumption that society is a complex system characterized inequality and conflicts that generate social change. Conflict theorists believe education plays a negative roles in society. Instead of reducing social inequality, conflict theorists believe education actually maintains social inequality as it forces students to accept their lower status in society. They also believe that lower social classes are not afforded the same privileges' and opportunities no matter how great their academic ability or desire to learn. Secondly, functionalist view. Functionalism is the doctrine that what makes something a thought, desire, pain (or any other type of mental state) depends not on its internal constitution, but solely on its function, or the role it plays, in the cognitive system of which it is a part. One of the functionalist view is Emile Durkheim. He believed that schools were one of the few institutions uniquely poised to assist with the transition from traditional society, based on mechanical (face to face) solidarity, to modern society, which was much larger in scale and based on organic (more abstract) solidarity. Through educational sociology, it would be possible to determine the purposes of education. He approached this by relating the functioning of any society in terms of mechanisms of integration (the will to live together) and mechanisms of regulation (submission to communal norms). Lastly, post-modernist view which is related with globalization of business and politics and influenced many cultural fields, including religion, literacy criticism, sociology, and more. There are six theme of postmodern education which are high level thinking, research involvement, cooperation learning, differentiation of instruction, service experiences and character education.

    Next, overview about the comparison between Islamic ad Western perspective on education. The westerns view on education is quite different with Islam. Islamic education focuses on both spiritualism and materialism aspects, while western education only focuses on the development of all human potentials except the spiritualism aspects.