10 D. Education and social change
The term 'education' is derived from the Latin word, educare, which means 'to bring up', 'to lead out', and 'to develop'. In the simplest sense, therefore, education refers to the process of bringing up, leading out, and developing individuals as mature, adult members of society. Education is nothing but the acquisition of knowledge that has been accumulated by society. For long, education has been identified with progress and prosperity. In fact, the spread of education is treated as an effective solution to the problems of economic decline, hunger, and human poverty.
Durkheim said that education is crucial in terms of preserving a certain degree of homogeneity, and ingraining the essential elements of collective life. He had rejected the idea that education can be the force to transform society. He argued that education is only the image and reflection of society. It imitates and reproduces the latter; it does not create it. Education can be reformed only if society itself is reformed.
Mannheim argued that no teaching was sound unless it trained people to be conscious of the social situation in which they find themselves, and to be able, after careful deliberation, to make their choices and take decisions. Education must therefore be for mobility, for flexibility of thought and action, for producing individuals with a high general level of culture so that they adapt to changing economic and social conditions.
According to Gramsci, the possibility of social change largely depends on the education of the working class. Political revolutions are always preceded by the creation of a new cultural climate, so he was always insistent on the need to educate workers.
remarked that education is a process that brings about changes in the behavior of a society, while regarded education as a means of social progress.
Parsons sees schools as a miniature society where a child learns universalistic values which are necessary for social integration. Feminists like McRobbie and Sue Lee criticize the schooling system for reproducing feminine roles in girls, thus perpetuating gender stereotypes.
Education can be planned to produce social change. We know that literacy does stimulate economic and social development. Educational innovation is more likely to produce a desired change if innovation in education is coordinated with changing other parts of the social structure.
Education often contributes to igniting, accelerating, and sustaining the process of change by disseminating and cultivating knowledge, information, skills, and values appropriate to the changing socio-economic and political structure.
According to Kamat, there are four positions regarding education and social change:
Francis J. Brown
Lester F. Ward
Kamat conceptualized the relationship between education and social change in India in three stages:
In the first stage, he talks about the early British period to the end of the 19th century. In this period, the colonial socio-economic and political structure was established in India. However, it also played a kind of liberating role in breaking down traditional norms and values, which were in consonance with the older feudal socio-economic politic and were a hindrance to itself. It also sowed the seeds of new norms and values - of a bourgeoisie society and modern nationalism. This liberating influence was internalized and worked in two directions:
In the period between the two world wars, education assumed a mass character. Occupational and social mobility occurred among segments of the population that were hitherto unnoticed. So far, education had spread mainly to the upper caste and urban upper strata in society. Now it began to percolate to sections lower in the social hierarchy, the middle castes and middle strata. This carried the process of nationalism and social awakening still further, to the working class in the towns and to the peasantry in the countryside. The process considerably strengthened the movement for national liberation as well as the movement for social change. Meanwhile, the growth of the colonial system of education was developing serious contradictions within itself and also vis-à-vis the colonial socio-economic structure. This provided added edge to the principle contradiction between British imperialism and the Indian people. This contradiction was reflected in large-scale unemployment among the educated on the one hand and the liberating influence in the strength and militancy of the powerful student and youth movement on the other.
In the third stage, from the post-Independence period up to the mid-sixties, the process of social and political awakening took further strides. Its two aspects, conformity and liberation, were also operating. At the same time, the contradiction within the education system, in relation to the development socio-economic structure has also sharpened.
According to Olive Banks, the precise relationship of the education system to social and economic change is extremely complex and it is almost impossible to draw conclusions that are not misleading. The concept of education as producing or impeding social change is enormously complicated by the fact that the education system is a part of society, which is itself changing. Consequently, the real issue is that of the inter-relationship between educational institutions and other aspects of society. Moreover, it is this inter-relationship which makes it so difficult to use the educational system to produce conscious or planned social change. The education system cannot be seen in isolation from its social context. Thus, educational reform is not a universal panacea; however, that does not minimize its importance.