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.
According to the passage, education must be respected in itself because.
The passage distinguishes between the functional, instrumental, and utilitarian dimensions of education and its deeper, intrinsic value. While employment and upward mobility are acknowledged as outcomes, the passage explicitly states that education, in its deepest sense, is "not instrumentalist" and "not to be justified outside of itself" by such external benefits. Instead, it asserts that education "must be respected in itself" because it constitutes "an inner process of moral-intellectual development," encompassing the widening of the mind, the creation of self-critical awareness, and the development of independent thought. This directly supports option (c).
Option (a): The passage identifies acquiring qualifications for employment as an instrumental or utilitarian purpose of education, not as the reason why education must be respected "in itself." The text clearly separates these two perspectives.
Option (b): Similar to employment, upward mobility and acquiring status are presented in the passage as instrumental benefits or outcomes of education. The passage argues that education's intrinsic value, for which it must be respected in itself, lies beyond these external justifications.
Option (d): Since options (a) and (b) represent instrumental benefits rather than the intrinsic reason for respecting education in itself, this option is incorrect. The passage specifically highlights the "inner process of moral-intellectual development" as the core justification for education's intrinsic worth.