Dynamics of Social Change Assignment

Education and Social Change

               Education plays a vital role in initiating the process of social change. Education
assists in altering the attitude of people in the right direction by which people can fight
superstitions, traditional beliefs, prejudices, etc. The educational development of a country is
vitally connected to all other aspects of development. The medium of education for effecting
social change is mind. Education helps the poor and unprivileged people to improve their
condition. Education does the job by providing the right knowledge, information, and skill to
the people through its formal, non-formal and informal agencies. Education assists in
molding the attitudes of people and in creating a desire for change by providing the right
knowledge and sharpening their thinking. It also helps in identifying the loopholes and to
achieve better progress in society. Evaluation of social change can be achieved through
education by sharpening the intellect. Education promotes the capacity of individuals to
accept and adopt change in a meaningful way. Through this evaluation, undesirable elements
of the society are discarded to form a society of desirable elements. Education helps people to
realize the necessities of overcoming resistance. Through this evaluation, undesirable
elements of the society are discarded to form a society of desirable elements. Education
strives to banish social evils and helps in the emergence of new social change. Education
promotes unity and integration among people by broadening the visions of people, helping in
shedding parochial attitude, stimulating cosmopolitan thinking and cultivating fellow-
felineness and nationalism in the minds of people. Unity binds all people in one rope and
education brings unity in them to fight for a common cause of making society advanced and
modernized. Education in India helps people in realizing the necessities of unity and
integration among people. Education prepares people for assuming leadership roles as social
reformers and nation builders. Education is considered as a creator of conditions to transform
society from old to modern and advanced. the explosion of knowledge has been an accepted
fact. The area and scope of knowledge have been widened due to the contribution of
researches and investigations undertaken by educated individuals. Research findings help in
increasing the spheres of knowledge. Knowledge contributes to the progress of society and as
such becomes the basis of social change. Knowledge is subject to change and any type of
addition in it facilitates change in society.
The planners and the policymakers fail to see that education is very much a part of
society and is subject to pressures from other parts. In the first place there is a universal
adoption of the principle of compulsory free elementary education, the second there is the
target of universal literacy, third the development of secondary and higher education is a
necessary consequence and the fourth there is the target for secondary and higher education.
The modern education initiated and promoted by the missionaries had two distinct features.
First apart from the occasional gifts of land and money from the rulers of Travancore; the
missionaries spent their funds for running schools. Secondly, they established schools not to
serve their community but to serve the people in general. education became more accessible
to people everywhere. Through the press, public meetings and debates, their members were
educated, and their grievances were publicized. English education had created severe
competition for better social and economic opportunities among different groups within the
middle class. The education imparted in ancient India helped the students to grow wise and
earn their livelihood. It was patronized by the kings of those days. But the British system of
education, on the other hand, destroyed the wisdom of many. Such people are unable to serve
in any of the movements that started for the well-being of society. The country still has vast
reserves of talent—eager students as well as teachers with imagination and commitment—left
almost untapped. It is time we explore why they get disenchanted with the university system.
Knowledge is sought to be stored in air-tight compartments, sealed against possible
contamination from other fields of learning. The meaningless disciplinary boundaries are
passionately defended. Many of us in India continue to work with dated conceptions of the
functions of the university. The situation is further aggravated because many of our better
university men have their sights fixed on high prestige foreign models; they try to keep pace
with peers abroad while failing to sort out critical areas of national development by
concentrating their energy on an analytical understanding of problems implicit in them.