Discuss the main features of education from prehistory to the present and describe in some detail each of the features.

Due to the
nature of history itself, it is difficult to understand the history of prehistoric education, or
of education in early historical periods as it pertains to skills other than writing. It is
certain that there have long been systems for passing down knowledge to new generations, and
there is strong evidence that these systems of instruction were not limited to parents teaching
their own children. That said, language education is a core skill in known formal educational
systems from the very earliest known formalized school, during Egypt's Middle Kingdom, until
today. For large parts of history in many geographic regions, learning to read and write was the
core reason to attend school, and the knowledge that language-learning allowed access to was
often considered secondary.

Schools have also always been places for cultural
education. This is reflected in many ways: in addition to language, early schools on the Indian
subcontinent taught the Vedas, schools in China taught Confucian values, and schools in the
Islamic world taught philosophy and theology. This function of education continues today, and
there are significant discourses about the ways that knowledge, especially in history and the
humanitiesbut also, more insidiously, in science disciplinesis structured in ways that
communicate cultural beliefs rather than factual information.