A great desire for change in social, economic and academic sector has been taken in India. After Independence, the Five Year Plans, Commission, Act and Movement for progress have been set afloat to achieve what we had hoped for. It has been pointed out by most of the thinkers, that education has much to do with social change and that will lead to other changes. We can find out that there is a strong relationship between Education and Social Change. It may be pointed as follows –
Education as a State of Social Change:
Without education, there can be no Social Change, is what this implies, and education therefore comes prior to social change. Many reforms are initiated within the social areas but since the people lack education, the reforms are ineffective in practice. Hence, education should bridge the gap.
The most important agent to alter is Education. It is expected to alter the attitudes and values among people and build in them a desire for progress. Education can help in increasing contemporary knowledge and within the dissemination of data on current facts, scientific ideas will be spread among people through education.
Education has enabled many children from the poorer state of a society to go ahead and to obtain a profession, followed by a job and then a better status than their father had in his life. The outlook of many people has changed also due to this opportunity for education.
Education as a Tool of Social Change:
Education provides knowledge, training and skills as well as inculcates new thoughts and attitudes among the young. Many of the old superstitious beliefs and absolute values which prevent progress, through Education can be changed in the favour of enlightened ideas. Backwardness and Poverty of the masses are mainly due to illiteracy and ignorance. Hence, education can be the instrument of rescuing them from their plight.
The basic scheme of education was designed as an instrument of social change. In its goals and methods, we discover all the necessary components of a dynamic plan to change society.
Earlier days, the reform movements such as Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Ramakrishna Mission and Christian Missionaries worked as the instruments to bring social change and indeed they proved most effective. The products of the schools and colleges have on the whole proved to change the mindset of people.
In the present times, many schools and colleges, established by Government and local bodies (as compared with those run by private bodies) often do not consider themselves to be instruments of social change consciously i.e. they often ignore their function of promoting social change consciously through their educational programmes and activities. The teachers too do not always realize their function of promoting social change by their teaching as well as by personal example. Children take over the ideas, opinions and values of their teacher. A degree of achievement, motivation, sensitivity, high standards of learning and performance, vocation and a desire to work for the country’s unity and progress, all these ideals can be inculcated in the classroom by teachers.
Every school needs to keep as its objective, not only knowledge through subjects, but also the needs of the country. The people and the teachers should endeavor to fulfill those needs through a vitalized educational programme. Unfortunately very few schools do more than the minimum that is required of them. Hence, the school can hardly be called an instrument of change in such cases.
Education as the Effect of Social Change:
If education is the outcome of social change it means that social change has produced an urge for education. If their effect is a great demand for education, then the nature of education should be connected with the type of social change that occurred. Education may, therefore, have certain objectives. Education for awareness, like, discussing, problem solving, debate, original thinking must be encouraged in the classroom from a very early age.
Industrialization, scientific inventions and technology have made life more comfortable by providing trains, cars, jet planes, factories for rapid production of standardized goods, antibiotics against disease and many other amenities. Pollution of air, land and water have resulted all over the planet, farms, fields and forests have been destroyed to make room for factories and mills. Noise and smoke have altered the climate, of cities. The greater the technological progress in a country, the greater the danger to life and the lesser the chances of survival from poisonous air, water, land, accidents, noise and other agents of destruction.
It can be concluded that effective dynamic education may sometimes bring words of wisdom from the young mind which may cause his teachers to wonder. Thus, the interrelationship between Education and Social Change can be proved through this.
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