Cultural transmission of knowledge: Formal education

No society leaves entirely to chance how its members come to acquire their cultural heritage. The tuition on offer may amount to little more than putting the novice to work alongside those with more experience, but as a society grows dependent on the technological skills of its citizens, more formal programmes of teaching become unavoidable. In which case, the novitiate may be faced with a schedule of specialised instruction for anything up to 10 or 15 years before being accepted as a fully qualified member of society. Our immediate concern is to see how the principles of knowledge representation and updating pieced together from individual and collective levels of analysis can inform our understanding of formal modes of instruction and study.