Education is considered to be a staple of advanced civilization; it is thought to be so important that some countries make education a law. Humanity has an insatiable need for knowledge. Nowadays, people have come to believe that education is more esoteric than ubiquitous. However, education is not merely books and arithmetic. It is an understanding of the world and how it works, in all its areas. Education has changed throughout the years, ever since the stone age, and until our modern time. The history of education dates back all the way to the prehistoric age. Our very first teacher was nature, which taught humans how to adapt to their surrounding environment. That was all they needed at first, living as nomads. Accordingly, the definition of education in the prehistoric peoples was enculturation, where children participated in social processes of adult activities, resulting in their precociousness. As settlement became common, people developed more complex societies which required the invention …show more content…
As technology and science advanced, birth rates decreased, along with the drastic drop in populations that happened after both World Wars, more and more people could access education. Most people stayed in school until they were seventeen or eighteen years old, and many people had at least two years of university. Education itself became less attached to religion, as it was before, and focused mainly on the sciences and the humanities, as both saw incredible advances in their respective fields. Education helped change the mindsets of the able, and more and more attempts were made to eradicate illiteracy and build schools in every place possible. As education became more progressive, citizens in higher-income countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom demanded higher education, until the number of universities in such countries doubled and tripled over time. (Anweller