Education System & Social Change

Answer : Education plays an important role in maintaining the stratification system and justifying the unequal distribution of wealth. It is believed that society is based on an unequal distribution of advantages and is characterized by a conflict of interests between the advantaged and the disadvantaged children from lower class and castes (SCs, STs and OBCs) who are much less likely to attend the private schools that give better chances for a good career.

Yet education has also consistently been seen as a means of equalization. In democratic societies, education is meant to be a path to opportunity, and public education is meant to ensure society continues to strive for equality. Sociologists are not much concerned with inborn inequalities based on sex, age, bodily strength or quality of mind, but are concerned with inequalities in conditions of existence. This inequality can be filled in to some extent through the efforts of a society by providing equality of opportunity to all.

Though education does not guarantee high status and positions to all people, yet it plays an important role in equalizing opportunities in three ways:

1. By making it possible for all those who have the desire to be educated and the ability to benefit by that facility.
2. By developing a content of education which will promote the development of a scientific and objective outlook.
3. By creating a social environment of mutual tolerance based on religion, language, caste, class, etc., for providing equal opportunities of social mobility to all individuals in society, and for securing good education.

Although education is not the only channel to social mobility and class, cultural and family background, and parental and other support, etc., are also important variants but lack of education is bound to prove a great handicap in mobility. Education provides an opportunity for individuals to develop their abilities and aptitudes.

Answer : “Tradition” and “modernity” are widely used as polar opposites in a linear theory of social change. Tradition refers to the customs, beliefs and cultural practices that are passed down from one generation to the next generation. It has its origin in the past. Modernity refers to the contemporary behavior or way of doing things. It is fresh, new and modern.

Ananda Coomaraswamy held that tradition was the epoch anchored in values of collective life and qualitative achievement and this was true for East, West and the whole world. This epoch was disturbed by the Industrial Revolution whose influence became worldwide and made human beings materialistic. Tradition in this sense meant the moral values which were the basis of all humankind.

R Mukherjee and G.S. Ghurye looked at modernity as an instrument of adapting traditions to contemporary conditions. They viewed tradition and modernity as confronting each other and shaping each other.

D. P Mukherjee analyzed Indian society from the Marxian perspective of dialectical materialism. He argued that there is dialectical relation between India’s tradition and modernity, British colonialism and nationalism and individualism and collectivity, i.e., sangha. His concept of dialectics was anchored in liberal humanism. He argued all through his works that traditions are central to the understanding of Indian society.

The encounter between tradition and modernity ends up in two consequences – conflict and synthesis.Modernity and social change is a continuous process that is in progress all over the world. Many countries have transformed their culture into the contemporary which has been mostly impacted by the trade and commerce activities which brought about radical change in the societies both from previous versions of themselves and from other societies.

It is incorrect to view traditional societies as static, normatively consistent, or structurally homogeneous. The relations between the traditional and the modern do not necessarily involve displacement, conflict, or exclusiveness. Modernity does not necessarily weaken tradition.

Both tradition and modernity form the bases of ideologies and movements in which the polar opposites are converted into aspirations, but traditional forms may supply support for, as well as against, change. The past tradition can provide a bridge for the masses between the present and the future.