The school is the only regular institution that society has officially adopted for education to maintain and develop itself, and to manage and advance its life in the present and future. The school is the agent of society for the care and development of the young and to develop them to their desired personal and behavioral specifications, and it meets many social/local needs.
The current topic clarifies the nature of the various functions performed by the school. The school cannot, of course, carry out its multiple social responsibilities except by providing the factors and processes that are procedurally qualified for that and make the basis of its educational and behavioral concept an institution that is actually called a school. The first main paragraph of the current topic, whatever it may be, is concerned with the human functions of the school, while the following paragraph deals with how to direct the school with its various factors and processes to raise its effectiveness in performing the proposed human functions.
Human functions of the school
The proposed functions of the school appear in fifteen as follows:
1- Preserving the young when they are away from the family due to work or other daily concerns.
The family, in order to survive, grow, and fulfill its obligations and daily life requirements, performs tasks and duties that usually take up half of its daily time. Hence, the school in general and kindergartens in particular are responsible for preserving and protecting the young members of the family from various psychological, behavioral, and material dangers that they may encounter while away from their family environments, while this embodies the administrative human function.
2- Refining the personalities of the young:
The current function of the school seems to complement what the family and the open social environment do in terms of raising the young and forming their individual personalities. Here, the school, with its various stages and types, starting from kindergartens and ending with university and university studies, takes the initiative to restore what it deems necessary in this area. That is, the school finishes or completes what the family and other social institutions have started and produces it in the desired behavioral forms personally and functionally from the family, the individual, and society.
3- Compensating the young for what they have missed during their family upbringing.
The local family struggles daily to provide the basic physiological needs necessary for the survival and continuation of its life.. and is sometimes deprived of its most basic human rights to security and safety and protection from threats and dangers, and is robbed of its sense of belonging to itself, its society and its country, or at least of the fair and equal opportunities through which it can achieve its self and meet its needs for living, education, and attaining a specific job, material or behavioral goal.. and the family that is broken in its human structure by losing one of its pillars, whether a father or mother or older siblings, whether completely or partially by death, detention/imprisonment, travel, work, divorce or other…
With all these circumstances that hinder its ambitions and principles of survival and progress, it lacks the ability to effectively develop its children.. This deficiency in family upbringing leads to a deficiency in meeting their needs for growth and progress, which in all cases results in a deficiency in their personalities in multiple behavioral, functional and social value aspects.
In such cases above, the school takes the initiative with a compensatory educational role through which it meets the emerging human needs, and thus helps them to overcome their general and specific circumstances and to overcome their personal shortcomings caused by those circumstances.
4- Developing the personalities of the young towards their integrated behavioral ends.
The integrated personality is the one that contains within it, in sufficient balanced forms, the ability to perceive, feel, move, and constructive social behavior. The school, with its curricula, schedules, and organized educational plans, and the length of time that young people spend daily in it (where it competes to a large extent with the family in this regard, considering that the day is relatively divided into three sectors: 8 hours of sleep + 8 hours of school + 8 hours of family environment = 24 hours), is the most capable official and popular open social institution to form this type of personality and verify its attainment in them.
Kindergartens and primary schools participate with the family in forming the first beginnings of the aspects of the integrated personality and inculcating and nurturing them in them, then overcoming their deficiency or difficulty whenever this is observed.
5- Preparing young people with appropriate functional roles and skills
Each individual has a role and a function that he or she is satisfied with and that society is satisfied with. The school, with its various academic and professional stages and types, and with its intended systematic education during the first third of the young person’s worldly life, that is, in the first twenty-five years approximately, is the most capable social institution to crystallize functional roles and tasks in their members and to achieve them behaviorally by them.
It is true that the family begins by forming these roles and functions in its children And her daughters as she wants in each of them, and prepares them with it in extreme cases of the absence of school or its scarcity in society, but the matter is at the present time where school education is spread in every corner or area of society, rural, desert or urban.
And where the family is busy most of its day with the children in work for its survival or with its personal neglect sometimes, the school thus bears decisive responsibilities in compensating for this educational family vacuum by analyzing the desires and capabilities of the young individuals and determining the appropriate roles and skills for each of them and then developing them in constructive formulas that aim for the present and the future.
6- Developing the self-thinking and academic achievement abilities of young people
By self-thinking and academic achievement abilities, we mean that young people possess self-learning skills, which these days embody a basic requirement that we hope to have in young people, young and old alike.
If the school can develop these important abilities in successive generations, it will in fact qualify them to confront and build life with its different situations, activities and requirements and to effectively address its various problems or difficulties.
How can the school develop these important abilities in young people in society? A big, multi-faceted question, the answer to which can be summarized as follows:
• Accustoming young people to decision-making and then bearing the responsibilities of implementing them to the end.. i.e. developing the independent personality in each of them.
• Developing the integrated personality cognitively, emotionally, motorically and socially in young people so that they can, in principle, think in all these areas and obtain what their lives and various daily situations require in terms of behaviors, responsibilities, or scientific and practical achievements.
• Developing the individual personality to its maximum. Any development of the inherited powers (such as readiness or intelligence of special abilities) in each individual to the maximum extent possible, without forcing or coercing them to do so, as sometimes happens when the family or school pressures some students to achieve what they cannot, leading, as we notice, to their dropping out of school, or their failure or complete failure academically, socially, behaviorally or functionally.
In order for the school to succeed in performing this task, it must distinguish the abilities of the learners and differentiate between them, then nurture the most obvious and productive of each of them, without any traditional, outdated considerations that are destructive to the human personality and society at the same time.
Here, for example, if the individual’s special intelligence appears primarily as a skill in car mechanics, for example, the school and the social environment associated with it must not underestimate or look down on this ability, because it is in fact the natural path that the individual can take to achieve himself and be creative in bearing and performing his responsibilities. And to deprive the individual of this innate right that God has given him is, in our opinion, an injustice to his humanity and his society at the same time. Why? Because the individual is most likely to succeed and excel in what he always possesses of abilities, then the society that needs for its continuity and progress individuals specialized and productive in various academic sciences, medicine, engineering and education, is also more in need of carrying out other responsibilities in the fields of maintenance/cleaning, practical professions, writing, administration and many others. And that the family and school transform most or all of the workforce into engineers, doctors and academics embodies an unrealistic demand except in extreme cases of injustice by society towards itself and the many diverse groups that make it up.
7- Developing the reality of the youth regarding current policies, doctrines or ideologies
The school, while providing the youth with objective knowledge related to sciences and various life fields, and at the same time raising in them the love of family, culture and homeland and the conscious behavioral belonging to their ethics and ambitions.. It also deals with the study and analysis of current political or ideological doctrines inside and outside the homeland.. It directs these people in direct or indirect ways to benefit from them in the event that they are in harmony with their needs, cultures and the requirements of their society, or to exclude and deny them in thought and behavior when they contradict or destroy their social/civilizational structure. The youth’s understanding of these ideologies and their logical ability to discuss their shortcomings and strengths automatically qualifies them to carry out this constructive philosophical, social and cultural role.
8- Nurturing and developing the youth’s individual hobbies
Every individual has a tendency towards a behavior or profession that they desire and are strong in, in parallel with a personal hobby. The school, by discovering these hobbies among the youth and nurturing them through guidance and providing psychological and material conditions, automatically performs an important humanitarian function whose results appear in achieving self-creativity among many of its members and thus increasing their participation in building and advancing the family and society.
9- Developing the youth’s sense of belonging to their parents and country
The school youth learn the curricula that society approves of and usually contain all the knowledge, experiences and values that are personally and behaviorally useful to the individuals of this youth, and at the same time qualify them to manage and advance national life and adhere to its requirements, ethics and local customs.. leading them all to belong in thought and behavior to their society and country.
10- Providing society with the necessary functional cadres for its daily life
The school’s graduation of groups of learners in various administrative, social, educational, scientific, professional, practical and leadership professions and skills.. leads to meeting the economic needs of society. Meaning that school education, with its various types and academic and professional orientations, for young people and preparing them for the roles and functions that suit each of them, can in principle operate the daily life of society, no matter how diverse its fields and activities are, in a manner that is equivalent, as we have indicated, to economic needs.
11- Bridging the gap between generations
The school’s education of the history of society, the ways in which it grew, the difficulties it faced, and the successes achieved by fathers and grandfathers, as well as the young people’s acquisition of school curricula that society sets as a basis for achieving its various career ambitions, all lead young people to adapt to the pattern and requirements of local life, understand what is happening in it, and meet psychologically with their ancestors, fathers, grandfathers, and social leaders, all of which are equivalent to: bridging the gap between young and old generations.
12- Maintaining social balance and stability of local life
Class differences and their special values and behaviors dissolve in school and normal school life. The school also eliminates individual or social privileges enjoyed by some outside the school. Thus, school is a means of achieving equality and social justice and a fertile place for developing balanced and sound human relations among young people, which they become accustomed to and transfer to their practical life after school, all of which helps to balance the forces of society and stabilize its local life.
13- Providing effective national leadership
The school’s care for the elite or the cream of the crop of generations and developing their individual abilities to their maximum will automatically enable them to perform the roles that await each of them in social life inside and outside the country.
14- Maintaining and developing local culture
The young people that the school creates and qualifies to perform the responsibilities and tasks included in the previous school humanitarian functions from 1-13 will be qualified and able to maintain local culture from demolition and extinction, then develop it for the better in a way that benefits its civilizational position among the cultures of nations and the civilizations of other peoples.
15- Preparing the youth and society to participate in global civilization
The educated youth who are civilized in their thinking and behavior will eventually lead to the establishment of a civilized society. The healthy youth who are advanced in their identity and daily behavior, and the successful society they form will together ultimately be able to contribute constructively to the development of global civilization.