Explain Status of Education as a Discipline.

Different educationists have different views on the Status of Education as a discipline whether education is a distinct discipline or not.

1st view:

Education is multi-disciplinary in nature. It can be justified with the help of following arguments:

1. There is no specific educational technique or procedure with which we can handle the varied educational problems which are complex in nature.
2. The answer of many educational problems comes from varied disciplines. For example, we can’t avoid the knowledge of psychology when we talk of handling special children similarly the knowledge of philosophy can’t be avoided when we talk about aims and objectives of education.
3. Actually, education as a discipline is so closely associated with certain other disciplines that we have areas like Philosophy of Education, History of Education, Psychology of Education, Sociology of Education and Economics of Education etc.

2nd view:

There are some other educationists who consider education as a distinct discipline. Their arguments for this view, can be summarized as follows:

1. Education certainly is a distinct discipline as it has laws, principles, logical reasoning regarding the better and desirable modes of education.
2. Educational skill also is a bye-product of proper training and skill acquirement. Educational skill does not come via intuition but through training and experience. This training and art and art of teaching help to discipline the educator through continuous challenge to make use of one’s discretion and judgement and the power of tolerance.
3. Educational theories, laws and principles also exist which makes it to be discipline.

The arguments against this view are as follows:

• Educational skill and practice is a result of training and experience, but it does not prove that there must be a distinctive branch of science underlying the practice.
• Education does not have a specific methodology or procedures for which we can call it to be distinct discipline.

If we consider the realm of things that are involved in education, these are teachers, learners, curriculum, pedagogy, examination, evaluation, co-curricular activities, aims and objectives of education. In this sense, education is a distinct applied discipline as it does not have a separate body of systematic knowledge, but is making use of Psychology, Philosophy, History, Art, Economics and any more to create a newer discipline. It can even be called multidisciplinary in nature.