APA Format Essay Example

Here is an APA format essay example on the role of education in the modern world. The essay has been formatted according to APA format guidelines. To get a quality essay formatted in APA, contact a speech writing helper from Gudwriter and get professional help.

The Role of Education in the Modern World

Introduction      

Over the past millennia, education has remained the most valuable ingredient for societal growth and prosperity. Each passing generation has its success story deeply rooted in the foundational principles of education, which incorporates both informal and formal components of education. Ancient communities that had their main economic activity like hunting, for instance, passed this skill across generations through education. This way, the community was able to maintain its cultural beliefs and traditional practices. Ancient Islam communities had children taken to the mosques at an early age to learn the Islam way of life and to study the Quran.

The history of education traces way back to almost the origin of man with each community having its means of education, and it got highly valued among the communities as it gave learners an insight into the world. In ancient Greek for instance, Spartans began training their children for war at the age of seven years. In Athens, children attended classes to learn how to write and acquire knowledge in such other disciplines as reading, basic math, music, and physical training (Carr, 2015). Ancient Rome highly regarded education as well as young boys learned elementary arithmetic, how to read and write at an early age, as well as military physical training (Spartacus Educational, 2015). Girls had the education of cooking and cloth making from their mothers as well as how to get to the level of a decent woman in Rome.

Discussion

In the modern society, education has played a significant role in propelling society through the bounds it has grown. Education has influenced the current technological advancements that have made life simpler than it was in the past. Inventions such as the internet and the telephone have eased communication in the past few decades all thanks to education. Inventors such as Thomas Edison, who came up with the telephone idea, received formal education in schools, and this enabled him to align his intellectual curiosity with the necessary technical nous to invent the telephone. Advancements in technology have made everything in society simplified. Business transactions have gone multinational through globalization as information can easily get sent through the Internet and emails.

Transport has become one core segment of the success story of the twenty-first century. Noteworthy, all that has only been possible through education. The Wright brothers received formal education that sharpened their technical skills in addition to their creativity to enable them invent the airplane. Ancient ships consisted of slow vessels but due to advancements in technology, the modern ships have become faster and more luxurious. Modern segments such as agriculture have also developed due to the technological advancements during the agrarian revolution. Research in agriculture has enabled the evolution of some of the conventional agricultural tools to give way to modern tools with better productivity. Trade has also become revolutionized through technology, and early trade forms such as barter trade have paved way for modern means such as e-marketing. All these advancements in technology that have greatly changed the outlook of the twenty-first-century society are due to education.

Additionally, education helps to compose or form the social fabric of the modern day society and define social life. Both formal and informal education have a hand in this, with several people learning about ethics and humanity as well as morality. Several schools have ethics incorporated into their systems, and young learners get taught the distinction between law and morality and the essence of maintaining both in order to become a complete person in society. For example, learners get to realize that whereas it is not unlawful to watch a drowning man in a river without giving assistance to him, it is unethical to do so. The education of ethics helps to shape society and ensure that the principle of goodness and humanity does not get lost. In theology schools for instance, alongside religious studies, students get taught major principles of ethics that have propelled the human society from time immemorial. The students learn the importance of religious tolerance, peace, and treating all individuals in society as their compatriots irrespective of gender, race, or religious affiliations. All professions also have a code of ethics that students have to learn before becoming professionals. The engineering code of conduct, for instance, ensures engineers take proper safety measures as is reasonably necessary during the construction of equipment to avoid disasters. The lawyers’ code of ethics ensures that young lawyers learn the essence of seeking justice and not selfish monetary gains. The business code of ethics ensures that all businesses operate in an ethical manner that does not endanger or intentionally defraud consumers. It also sees to it that certain aspects such as the environment and product safety are maintained.

The other role of education in the modern day life is that it ensures financial stability and raises the living standards of people in society. Through formal education, an individual is able to pursue a career of their choice so that they may earn money through that. Education is self-empowerment (Turkkahraman, 2012), and creates some order in society about the appropriate means through which individuals should get their incomes. It cultivates the value of hard work and determination among society members as everyone gets to know the essence of knowledge in life. Right from elementary school to high school and university or college, students maintain their focus knowing that it is through education that they may be able to enjoy better life. Education creates some form of a graduated scale of life which ensures that individuals value hard work and do not use unscrupulous means to acquire wealth.

Further, education in today’s society acts as a form of self-empowerment and has enabled discriminated groups of people such as women and minority groups to grow progressively and secure top jobs and government appointments. The early human society had a misled and misconstrued stereotype that women had lower rights to education as well as jobs as compared to men. However, this notion has changed over time due to education. Several women have acquired unrivaled expertise in certain fields such as engineering, computer science, and architecture that were previously reserved as male dominated fields. Also, the ancient society viewed blacks as petty criminals and thieves. This stereotype too has changed over time as more blacks now acquire top jobs and government appointments through education and proper academic qualifications. Society has attained some balance and enlightenment as some of the stereotypes that belonged to the dark ages have slowly disappeared. Individuals in the modern society mostly get judged not by the color of their skins, religious affiliations, or gender but by the content of their minds or their academic qualifications in job placements.

Finally, education has facilitated a good rapport between the modern society and nature. As noted by Pargaru et al. (2009), education has contributed to solution of certain problems in modern life such as health issues and environmental degradation. It has facilitated reduced incidences of health complications as man has used resources available in their immediate environments to make some of the most amazing inventions in medicine. Illnesses such as tuberculosis or malaria were a nuisance in the past and wiped out large numbers of people. Through proper education and research, society was able to invent various cures and preventions for illnesses that were once incurable or unpreventable. The advancements in medicine and health knowledge has in turn led to certain advantages such as increased life expectancy and reduced mortality rates among human populations. Health education incorporated in modern educational systems has further enabled society to reduce cases of health complications as awareness of the necessary measures to put in place has helped prevent some of the illnesses.

As already seen, education yields social returns and when it addresses the labor market needs, part of the returns include high economic benefits. It then follows that for these returns to be fully realizable, education should prepare individuals with the professional skills for meeting market needs (Llorent, 2012). It would be less burdensome for society to meet these needs than wait to react to them when they would have already transformed into problems. There is thus some level of basic training that everyone should have so they may contribute to making society proactive in its approach to the various issues it is grappling with. This calls for adequate knowledge management by education systems across the world. In teaching business plan development as part of the entrepreneurship process for instance, the focus of education should not be on actions but on ideas (Llorent, 2012). This is because actions largely target responding to already existing situations while ideas target addressing situations that may arise given the happenings in society. As such, the focus of models of education used across the world should be on helping students to develop management skills, learn from their mistakes, and learn to be risk tolerant. All these are skills that are necessary for handling circumstances characterized by risk and uncertainty.

Conclusion

Education can never end as it is not limited to formal education but also includes informal education learned out of classrooms and lecture halls. Over the past millennia, education has proved to be an essential feature of human life that has helped to restore order in society. A knowledge-based society has higher chances of progressing faster compared to an illiterate one. Education forms the basis of the moral fabric of the modern society and helps maintain proper professional and social ethics among individuals. Some of the cultural values and moral principles existing in society today have got passed through generations through education. Education has proved to be a means of self-empowerment, used by women and minority groups to get to the top in terms of appointments and well-paying jobs. Education has also acted as a factor of unity for different races, tribes, nationalities, and religions across the world. Schools and other learning institutions nowadays have Hindus, blacks, Muslims, Jews, and whites all in one lecture room or one class taught by the same teacher or lecturer. Education is therefore a tool to foster national and international peace as intellectuals appreciate one another despite their gender, race, religion or any other distinguishing features.

References

Carr, K (2012). “Ancient Greek school”. Quatr.us. Retrieved July 11, 2017 from https://quatr.us/greeks/schools-ancient-greece.htm

Llorent, V. J. (2012). Curricular innovations for a proactive education. Social development from an individual initiative. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 46, 3619-3623.

Pargaru, I., Gherghina, R., and Duca, I (2009). The role of education in the knowledge based society during the economic crisis. Annales Universitatis Apulensis Oeconomica, 11(2).

Spartacus Educational (2015). “Education in the Roman empire”. Spartacus Educational. Retrieved July 11, 2020 from http://spartacus-educational.com/ROMeducation.htm

Turkkahraman, (2012). The role of education in societal development. Journal of Educational and Instructional Studies in the World, 2(4), Article 04.

Writing an APA format essay is pretty simple. It requires you to adhere to APA style format guidelines.

Want to read more? Visit these guides for some inspiration.

• The Glass Menagerie summary and analysis
• Four-Step Process to Writing an Excellent Persuasive Essay
• Tips to Writing an Excellent Descriptive Essay
• Quick Steps to Writing a Compelling Critical Analysis Essay
• A Guide to Writing an Awesome Compare and Contrast Essay
• 2 Paragraph Essay Examples

Special offer! Get 20% discount on your first order. Promo code: SAVE20