Commerce Education and Employability
COMMERCE EDUCATION AND EMPLOYABILITY
It is commonly agreed that education should aim at ‘holistic development’ of the individual. Further, such development should be in harmony with the society and the nature. To quote the great Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo, education should aim at “all round development of the personality, which includes education of the sense, body, mind, moral and spiritual education.”
The concepts of ‘all round development of personality’, or ‘holistic development’ include all the aspects of development-intellectual, spiritual, moral, economic, etc. However, some philosophers have defined the economic aims of education. Christopher Winch1; a British scholar says ‘education is broadly, although not exclusively concerned with preparation for life or for particular phase of life’. He gave three aspects to this concept of education, which are ‘fulfillment’, ‘civic participation’ and ‘vocation’ and specifies that the individual conception of education, as they can be found in particular societies at particular time, consists of distinct combination of these different aspects.
In order to define the objectives of commerce education, it may be important to go a little into its history. The origin of commerce education can be traced to the 19th century. It started with the teaching of skill based courses of ‘typing’ and ‘book keeping’, to meet the emerging manpower requirements in these areas. With an increase in commercial activities and expansion of banking, insurance, transportation and other related services, the nature and scope of commerce education changed. From a vocational bias in the initial years, the focus changed to providing liberal business education. Some experts even gave different objectives for different stages or levels of education. For example, Prof. Dasgupta (1959) used three different expressions to indicate ‘business education’, at three different levels. At the junior level (higher secondary stage), it was referred to
It is commonly agreed that education should aim at ‘holistic development’ of the individual. Further, such development should be in harmony with the society and the nature. To quote the great Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo, education should aim at “all round development of the personality, which includes education of the sense, body, mind, moral and spiritual education.”
The concepts of ‘all round development of personality’, or ‘holistic development’ include all the aspects of development-intellectual, spiritual, moral, economic, etc. However, some philosophers have defined the economic aims of education. Christopher Winch1; a British scholar says ‘education is broadly, although not exclusively concerned with preparation for life or for particular phase of life’. He gave three aspects to this concept of education, which are ‘fulfillment’, ‘civic participation’ and ‘vocation’ and specifies that the individual conception of education, as they can be found in particular societies at particular time, consists of distinct combination of these different aspects.
In order to define the objectives of commerce education, it may be important to go a little into its history. The origin of commerce education can be traced to the 19th century. It started with the teaching of skill based courses of ‘typing’ and ‘book keeping’, to meet the emerging manpower requirements in these areas. With an increase in commercial activities and expansion of banking, insurance, transportation and other related services, the nature and scope of commerce education changed. From a vocational bias in the initial years, the focus changed to providing liberal business education. Some experts even gave different objectives for different stages or levels of education. For example, Prof. Dasgupta (1959) used three different expressions to indicate ‘business education’, at three different levels. At the junior level (higher secondary stage), it was referred to