Solved Exercise for Precis writing with Title “Aims of Education” Precis for Class 9, 10, 11, 12 and Higher classes.

Passages with Solved Precis

1. Here then is the first answer to the question, what is the aim of education? Its aim is to know first rate in every subject that we study with a view to achieving it as nearly as our powers allow. If we fix it firmly in our mind we should not stumble through a variety of lessons, lectures and books like a drunk man, only partially aware where we are or what we are doing. We should cease to think that we go to school or college to pass examinations or to secure degrees or diplomas or to satisfy our teachers, though these may be, and are incidental and limited objectives. We should have brought order into our education by realizing its true aim and we should have deepened into our minds, through practice, the sense that a worthy purpose in life is the desire for excellence, the pursuit of the first-rate.
2. So far, so good. But a very important question remains unanswered. We should desire excellence, pursue the first rate. But in what fields? The difficulty with education, as with life, is that, it has so many fields. One would like to know the lit si-rate in all of them, but that is impossible for the limited mind and energy of man. Which, then, are the most important fields-or, narrowing the problem further, which are those in which every human being ought to know the first-rate?
3. The most obvious field is our job in life, our vocation in the usual sense of the world. Clearly, Whatever it is, we ought to know the first-rate, the best methods to employ. In this field of vocational education, the modern world does well. we have a conscience about it, at any late, a sense of importance; our provision of vocational education is good, and in engineering or medicine, commerce or technology, nursing or hotel keeping, or any other of these activities which make up material civilisation, we believe in quality, in the first-rate; we have a clear idea of what it means and we often achieve it.
4. An educated man should know what is first-rate in those activities which spring from the creative and intellectual faculties of human nature, such as literature, architecture and music. Architecture surrounds him in every city, literature meets him in every bookstall, music assails his ears on his radio set and from every juke box, and art in its protean aspects of form and a colour is a part of daily life. The architecture may often be bad, the art often underserving of the name; but that is all the more reason why we should be able, in all of them, to distinguish good from bad.
5. I have argued that no one has a right to feel himself educated if he does not know what is first-rate in his daily occupation (so far as this is possible) in those fields where the creative and intellectual powers of man are revealed. But there is another job much more difficult than teaching or nursing or business or medicine, in which we are all concerned the job of living; and there surely, as much as in any other pursuit, we need to know what is first rate
6. We need clearer standards: or, to put it more simply, we need to have a clearer idea about the distinction between the first-rate and second rate, between good and bad in conduct and in life. Ignorance on this vital subject is written in all our modem civilization. Our age contains a great deal of good-as much perhaps as any other age. But I doubt if there has ever been an age H which good and had were so mixed together, did the public as a whole no necking in standards by which to distinguish them… ……
7. But where does one learn what is first-rate the only way to team it is to meet. A medical student will learn something from seeing a great surgeon in the operation theatre or great doctor in the hospital wards, which all the textbooks in the world cannot tell him. If anyone wishes to know how to teach, let him go and see a great teacher in the classroom. If we wish to know what the good life is, we must make the acquaintance and, if possible keep the company of those who have known its meaning; and better still, of those who have lived it. But who are they? And where shall we meet them?
8. It is in order that we meet them that what we call the humanities comes into the curriculum. They are subjects which deal with man.

Precis

Aims of Education

The aim of education is to achieve the first-rate and the method to get at it is to study humanities. There is no use going through the lessons without keeping this aim in view. Passing the examinations and satisfying the teachers may be incidental objectives. There are many fields of education and man may desire to achieve the excellence in all the fields but man’s energies are limited. So it is not possible to achieve excellence in all the departments. Still the departments in which it is to be achieved are many. In professional education people often achieve the first rate because, in that branch, one has a clear idea of it. Apart from it, sense of significance and belief in quality in vocational education help them to achieve it. But an educated person must know about it in creative and intellectual activities. These activities are important and can often become bad, so it is necessary to know the excellent. But one job with which every one of us is concerned and which is more difficult is life itself. !n modem civilisation good and bad are mixed up and there are no standards. So distinguishing good from bad needs the knowledge of excellence. Two methods to know the first rate are suggested. First is to meet the person who has achieved the greatest in a particular domain. Such persons may not be available, so to meet them, we must study humanities, which study man.