Role of Family in Education

The family is the most important primary group in society (C.N.Sharkar, 1990, p.392).. Everyone is a member of a family and has duties to make ourselves become a person who has responsibility and value. Also, the family has responsibility in teaching children as its contribution in building human resources for society. Members of the family have the right to get the body, prevent, take care, and human rights from their parents. Members of the family need meals, clothes, home, education, health prevention, and safety. To complete these needs, the parents try to do anything to raise and complete all needs (MoEYS, 2009, p.186). The family also has a function to provide formal and informal education to children or members of the family. So the function of the family is very important to educate children to become human resources in society.

The term ‘family’ has been derived from the Roman word ‘Famulus’ which means a servant. In Roman law the word refers to the group of producers and slaves and servants and members of common descent. Family is a small group which consists of father, mother and their children who are related with each other by kinship ties on the basis of marriage, blood or adoption. Family is a biological unit which consists of parents and children. But the meaning of family can be better understood from the following definitions.

According to Burgess and Locke, “Family is a group of persons united by the ties of marriage, blood or adoption consisting of a single household interacting and inter communicating with each other in their respective social roles of husband and wife, mother and father, son and daughter, brother and sister creating a common culture.”

According to Kingsley Davis, “Family is a group of persons whose relations to one another are based upon consanguinity and who are, therefore, kin to another.”

1. Family is a Universal group. It is found in some form or the other, in all types of societies whether primitive or modern.
2. A family is based on marriage, which results in a mating relationship between two adults of opposite sex.
3. Every family provides an individual with a name, and hence, it is a source of nomenclature.
4. Family is the group through which descent or ancestry can be traced.
5. Family is the most important group in any individual’s life.
6. Family is the most basic and important group in primary socialization of an individual.

Functions of Family:

As a social group and as an important social institution, family performs various func­tions that are as follows:

1. Family is a unit through which procreation takes place. Marriage sanctions sexual relationships, and it also establishes a family, which is further reinforced with the birth of children.
2. The process of reproduction is institutionalized, regulated and controlled in a family. The family legitimizes the act of reproduction.
3. Family helps in propagation of human species and perpetuation of the human race.
4. Family provides an individual with an identity.
5. It is through the family that every family name is carried on from one genera­tion to another.
6. Family is responsible for the production and upbringing of children.
7. Family also has a recreational function. Earlier, most recreation was family- based. Family gatherings during festivals, functions, family reunions, marriages, bring entire families together. Now-a-days, taking family members out on holidays or for movies, plays, dinners, or parties, etc., perform the same func­tion.

We shall look at some of the types of family in this section (Figure 1).

Limitations of Family:

1. Limited resources
2. Unlimited liability of Carta
3. Dominance of Carta
4. Limited managerial skills
5. Formation of bad habits
6. Inactive or Irrelevant education
7. Incommodious experience

The home must be a well-integrated happy home. This implies a harmonious relation between parents  and between parents and children. Worthy home membership should be one of the objectives of modern education. The home is still the only established agency for giving children educational care during their early childhood.

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