Read the following passage and answer the items that follow. Your answer to these items should be based on the passage only.
Education, without a doubt, has an important functional Instrumental and utilitarian dimension. This is revealed when one ask question such as what is the purpose of education? The answers, too often, are to acquire qualifications for employment/upward mobility, wider/higher (in terms of income opportunities), and to meet the needs for trained human power diverse fields for national development. But in its deepest sense education is not instrumentalist. That is to say, it is not to be justified outside of itself because it leads to the acquisition of formal skills or of certain desired psychological social attributes Ii must he respected in itself. Education is thus not a commodity lo be acquired or possessed and then used, but a process of inestimable importance to individuals and society, although it can and dose have enormous use value. Education then, is a process at expansion and conversion, not in the sense of converting or turning students into doctors or engineers, but the widening and turning out of the mind—the creation, Kustenaneo and development of self-critical awareness independence of thought. It is an inner process of moral- intellectual development.
What do you understand by the instrumentalist view of education)?
The passage explicitly states that education possesses an "important functional Instrumental and utilitarian dimension." This dimension is further elaborated by linking it to purposes such as acquiring qualifications for employment, achieving upward mobility, securing higher income opportunities, and meeting the national demand for trained human power across various sectors. Therefore, the instrumentalist view of education, as presented in the passage, is fundamentally about its functional and utilitarian applications.
Option (B) is incorrect because while education does fulfill human needs, the passage defines the instrumentalist view more specifically. It connects instrumentalism to particular needs like employment, income generation, and national development, rather than a broad interpretation of "human needs."
Option (C) is incorrect. The passage does not define the instrumentalist view as the training of the human intellect. Instead, it describes instrumentalism through its external outcomes and practical utility, such as job acquisition and national development. The training of intellect is more aligned with the "inner process of moral-intellectual development" which the passage contrasts with the instrumentalist perspective.
Option (D) is incorrect. The passage clearly distinguishes moral development from the instrumentalist view. It states that education in its "deepest sense" is an "inner process of moral-intellectual development" and explicitly mentions that in this sense, education "is not instrumentalist." Moral development is presented as an intrinsic value of education, not an instrumental one.