Comparative Education

The history and development of comparative education  can be traced back for centuries, this makes the concept old. Humans are higher animals and they tend t interact with one another and by so doing the consciously or unconsciously compare one another.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, we see the deliberate, systematic attempt to compare educational practice in the countries around us. This is made possible because of travel and  means of documentation of deeds in countries around the world.

THE GENESIS OF COMPARATIVE EDUCATION

There seems no specific time- place in the world that the genesis of comparative education can be said to have originated , however the search has made many scholar to look back to the human society, in Germany Fredrick Schneider and franz Hilker sought the European precedents in education. William Brickmann works on comparative education dated back to Herodotus(484-425Bc). This is a long time and may take us back to history itself, but for the sake of understanding, we should take the genesis of comparative education in phase which may seems easy;

The phase of travelers:

The phase of concern for cultural context

The phase of social science perspective: This is the most important  phase, since it is the era in which we are in right  now or can be said to be the present  day.

Travelers phase

People travelers around the world for one reason or another, such reasons are commerce, conflict. As people tend to move from one to another, they tend to learn from the communities they encounter on their way from place to place. This travelers made various document about their encounter with other nations as they explore the world around them, the features behold, the type of military force of the nations they encounter.

This accounts may not be systematic and well presented, but they are actually the comparative of their experiences with this nations and the difference which warrant them to document their experiences of the type of education and way of life that this nations give to their citizens. Herodotus (484-425BC) commentaries on the Persian  wars, where he was making comparison of culture.

The Athenian, Xenophon (430-355BC) gave detailed citizenship education to youth in Persia. Comparing the aims and structure of education in Persia and Sparta, the Athenian wish Athens can copy Sparta.

Plato: The famous Greek philosopher in his two books “The Law” and “The Republic”, he also compare the education of Sparta and Athens. This type of education in Sparta is based as describe as a military education giving to the youth of Sparta. Plato went ahead and suggested that Athens should copy Sparta.

The Selective Education (1817-1900)

This phase can be said to be motivated by the following;

The effort in developing methodology in studying foreign systems of education

The second motivation was learning from foreign educational ideologies. This result in travels to foreign countries and learning their educational system unlike, when people travelers for their own curiosity and sight-seeing. In this case, the sole reason for travelling is to gain more knowledge and new ideologies to improve the educational system of one’s state. Some of the people are

Victor cousin (1792-1867) after the Napoleon wars, the need for reform in France was paramount, he visited Prussia with the hope of finding areas of relevance to reform France.

K.D Ushinsky (1824-1870). He hails from Russia, after reading the works of European reformers; he made an attempt to implement them in the schools he was associated with.

Cultural context (1900-1945)

This phase is best describe as the phase of cultural analysis. These phase bring about a change from descriptive to analytical studies of educational process of other countries. the analysis moved from just gathering information but also interpreting the information and findings to see if it is fit for one home country.