FOUNDATION OF EDUCATION :: ROLE OF EDUCATION IN MODERNIZATION.

Modernization is a process of change from traditional and quasi-traditional order to certain desired types of technology. This can take place in values, social structure and achievements of the individual. This process is a holistic one, it affects the thinking process, the beliefs, value of the people as a whole. 

Education and Modernization in India:

To the common man industrialization and automation symbolise modernisation. In machine he sees, on the one hand, increased production resulting in better comfort and higher standard of living and, on the other hand, science displacing superstition.

In education also, modernisation implies many things. To one educationist modernisation means to spread education, to produce educated and skilled citizens and train an adequate and competent intelligentsia. To another it implies more teaching aids to make teaching-learning effective. A comprehensive view of modernisation in education will mean a new approach not only to the aims and processes of education but also to the totality of its entire programmers to relate it to national development, national needs and national aspirations.

Contemporary education, which is an agent of modernization in various forms, is also of the Western origin. Traditionally, content of education was esoteric and metaphysical; its communication was limited to the upper classes or the ‘twice-born’ castes and the structure of its professional organi­zation was hereditary and closed.

The roles both teachers and the taught were qualitative-astrictive. Modern education has a fundamentally different orientation and organization. Its content is liberal and exoteric, and it is steeped in modern scientific world-view. Freedom, equality, humanism and denial of faith in dogmas are the themes which a modern education should contain. It has a professional structure which is not ascribed to any specific group or class but can be achieved by merit by any one in society. Some branches of modern education such as science, engineering and medicine directly focus on a world-view which embodies the core values of modernization, and imparts skill to realize the goal of a modern society. Traditional Indian education departed fundamentally from these normative and organizational prerequisites.

The foundation of modern education in India was established by the British. Its historical landmarks are: Macaulay’s policy of 1835 to promote European learning through English, Sir Charles wood’s dispatch of 1854 which for the first time recognized the need for mass education with the private and missionary help and gave up the policy of selective education known as the ‘filtration theory’, and finally the first Indian Education Commission of 1882 which recommended the initiative of private Indian agencies in the expansion of education.

Gradually, a broad structure of educational organization emerged in India which may be roughly classified into three groups: first, primary- vernacular education (except for the English missionary schools); secondly, high school and secondary school education and, thirdly, college and university education.

From the very beginning a contradiction between the primary and the college-university level of education emerged in India because of the medium and content of education. At the primary level the medium of instruction (except for missionary and public schools) was the regional language and at the college level it was English.

Teaching of science and European literature was done at the colleges and universities to which select few had access; but the mass education at the primary level remained isolated from this main current. This lag in the structure of education which started from the time of Macaulay has still not been fully bridged. Modernization through education thus right from the beginning in India has been confined to a sub-culture of college and university educated youth and elite and never did become a mass pheno­menon.

In the expansion of education, too, in early days there was more emphasis on the higher education than primary education. In the nineteenth century the rush was for higher education, specially, among the urban middle classes and the growth in higher education was also considerable.

Primary educa­tion was neglected till education became a provincial subject. For instance, “the number of scholars in all kinds of colleges in 1921 was 59,595. It rose to 144,904 in 1939, nearly 2.4 times as much. The number of pupils in schools of all kinds during the same period increased from 8.32 to 14.55 million, only 1.7 times as much. The difference in the pace of college and school education was accentuated in the decade following 1939. In 1949- 50, for example, the number of all kinds of college students rose to 380,837, is, 2.7 times as much in ten years. The corresponding figure for pupils in all kinds of schools rose from 14-55 23.66 million, an increase of only 1.6 times as much. Higher education was thus becoming increasingly top heavy, especially after British influence”. The school population now stands at about 50,000,000 and the literacy rate is nearing 25 per cent. This aspect of the expansion in education has contributed to many im­portant sociological problems in cultural change in India.

The significance of education in modernization could be analysed in three areas: first, the cultural content of this education, secondly, its organi­zational structure and thirdly, the rate of its growth. The content of new education was doubtlessly modernizing and liberal in nature.

This is true whether reference is made to the humanities or social science or natural and applied sciences. The literary content of the courses in the humani­ties and social sciences was drawn from the literature of the European Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment. Its themes were human­istic, secular and liberal. An important element in this education was em­phasis on contemporaneity and humanistic evaluation of social, political and historical issues. Its sociological result was disenchantment from traditional education, whose categories being embedded in the scriptural and mythological lore’s had an obsessive degree of orientation towards the past. The categorical structure of the new education was oriented to the present and the future. Disciplines like history, geography, political science and economics, etc., in the curricula had a subtle orientation to focus the attention of students on social and physical realities and on the world- view of contemporaneity and anthropocentrism. This it marked a major break from the traditional outlook and system of values.

In cultural modernization through education often more positive value is associated with learning of physical and biological sciences, medicine and engineering rather than the humanities and social sciences. The reason for this association is not only that science education has more modernizing effect than arts, but because this education creates manpower which is indispensable for economic and industrial growth.Nevertheless, if the crea­tion of a substantial profession in science and engineering contributes to modernization of society, education in the humanities and social sciences contributes to the modernization of man. Every individual is unique with respect to his or her tendencies and potentialities so, one must not be considered less significant than the other.

The idols of the Victorian gene­ration, which in India lived longer than they did in the West, continue to hold high places mainly because they continue to be ‘set books’ in secondary schools, and colleges. Apart from the emphasis on the works of Western thinkers and litterateurs a current of cultural introspection and new look on traditional literature was simultaneously going on in India. Its symbols were drawn from the pragmatism of the Vedas, the logical metaphysics of the Upanishads and the karma yoga or the philosophy of positive action as contained in the Gita.

Leaders like Vivekananda, Tilak, Gokhale, Gandhi, and Aurobindo established the foundation of this tradition. A militant nationalist culture flourished in Bengal, Punjab, Maharashtra and some other parts of India. This cultural process served to counterbalance the effect of Western edu­cation and its literary and cognitive content. The new education was also different in its organizational structure. It was impacted by teachers who were appointed based on educational achievement irrespective of their caste or birth, a principle which was in basic contrast with the concept of Guru (teacher) in the Hindu tradition who had to be a Brahmin by caste.

Not only the content of education but also the structure of the teaching profession was thus secularized. Training schemes for teachers in the primary, middle and high and higher-secondary schools were launched. In Bengal, first Normal School for teachers was established in 1844 and the district primary and middle school education was placed under the charge of Inspector of Schools.

The Education Code of 1904 for the first time made the appointment of a certain minimum number of trained teachers a necessary condition for the recognition of schools. During 1919-20 the total number of vernacular teachers in India was only 201,000, of which 70,000 were trained. The teachers in Anglo- vernacular schools during the same period were 100,000 of whom 35,000 were trained and 11,000 possessed a degree. Since then there has been a tremendous expansion in primary, middle and high school education. The total number of teachers in lower primary schools during 1950-51 was 537,918 of whom 82,281 were women. During the same year the number of teachers in higher primary schools was 85,494, about 12,887 of these being women.

The estimated number of lower primary school teachers by 1965-66 is about 1, 050,000; out of this 200,000 would be women. For the same year the number of higher primary school teachers is estimated to be 520,000, about 140,000 being women. Although the rate of growth in the number of teachers has been low, through this profession an organized pattern for cultural diffusion in the country has emerged which contributes to the Great tradition of modernization in India.

The expansion of primary and secondary levels of education has been followed by growth in higher education. To the three universities, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras which were established in 1857, fifteen more were added till the end of the British rule in India. After Independence, however, the number of universities has more than doubled. Between 1947-66, forty- six new universities have been established and nine Institutes have been deemed to be universities.”

About 2,565 colleges are being controlled by the sixty-four universities which are functioning in India, with a total enrol­ment of 15, 28,227 students. Comparing it with the figures in 1911, when there were only 186 colleges and about 13,551 students (in graduate and post-graduate courses), the progress is phenomenal. Percentage increase in the output of post-graduate students in basic sciences has been of 120.6 per cent during 1950-51, of 83.6 per cent during 1955-60, and of 48.2 per cent during 1961-63. The number of engineering students, which during 1889-94 totalled only 1,104 (an average of about 221 students per annum) was recorded in 1964-65 alone to be 78,114. However, it may be added that as compared to the total number of students pursuing higher education, this number constitutes only 5.4 percent, which is small. However, the balance of enrolment between science and humanities (arts) has been considerably made even if we compare the 42.0 per cent of total enrolment of students for arts courses with 31.3 percent enrolled for science degrees and additional 12.4 percent enrolled for degrees in engineering, medicine, agriculture and veterinary science.

 The above graph shows us the progressive increase in the literacy rates of our country India.

 Progress has also been made in other spheres of educational planning and modernization of its organization. Percentage of girls going to schools and colleges has increased. In many States schooling of children has been made free and compulsory. New vocational and poly-technical institutions have been started for better utilization of educated manpower for the eco­nomic and social growth of the country. The working conditions and salaries of teachers at all levels have, been improved to a considerable extent, although some imbalances remain. But all this growth appears phenomenal only in temporal sense. In magnitude the growth rate of education does not seem to be very impressive or phenomenal. Also, the expansion of education has not led to a sociologically meaningful degree of social mobility and change in stratification system. Higher edu­cation is still primarily confined to the upper classes, is a scarce good and reflects the advantages of wealth and social origin More than seventy- five per cent of people is still illiterate. The proportion of national income devoted to education in India is small in comparison with edu­cationally advanced countries of the world.

Despite these limitations, education has been one of the most influential instruments of modernization in India. It has led to the mobilization of people’s aspirations for nationalism, liberalism and freedom. It alone has been responsible for the growth of an enlightened intelligentsia which carried for­ward not only a movement for Independence but also a relentless struggle for social and cultural reforms. It has created a sub-culture of students in India which though not fully modern, contains elements of transition from tradition to modernity. The persistent strains that we find in the internal system of this sub-culture partly reflects the stresses of transition from one constellation of values to another and partly results from the structural maladjustment of this culture with that of the larger society. Yet, its moderni­zing significance is self-evident.

Finally, the educational system has contri­buted to modernization by growth of new forms of rationally organized structures in the shape of school, colleges and universities, which serve as cultural networks for the diffusion of knowledge and cultural categories which are modem in ethos. However, some elements of conflict between tradition and modernity can persistently be discerned in the functioning and administration of the educational system in India at all levels. Whereas modernization has in some forms been welcomed there has also been a conscious effort to preserve the traditional values. This has a very logical explanation. Modernization in all traditional cultures goes along with the process of a new identity consciousness. Since the former is outer-directed process, the latter must necessarily be inner- directed. Hence identity consciousness finds its basic symbolic structure in the past tradition. Nationalism, as a modernizing process in such societies emerges as a queer blend of modern psychology of outer-directedness and the core commitment to tradition as revealed by inner-directed search for national symbols.

In the field of education, a good example is the following statement in the Report of the Education Commission, 1964-66, appointed by the Government of India:

"The most powerful tool in the process of modernization is education based on science and technology. The one great lesson of the present age of science is that with determination and willingness to put in hard work prosperity is within the reach of any nation which has a stable and progressive government. There is no doubt that in the years to come India’s trade and commerce will grow; there will be more food for all; more education, better health and a reasonable standard of living will be available. But India’s contribution can, and should be far more than these material gains. She should learn to harness science, but she must also learn not to be dominated by science."

Role of Education in the Modernisation of India: 

Education and Increased Production.

Education and Equalisation of Educational Opportunity.

Education and Promotion of Emotional and National Integration.

Education and Establishment of a Socialistic Pattern of Society.

Education for Democratic Values.

Education and Secularism.

Education for International Understanding.

Education and Synthesis between Scientific and Cultural Values.

The following are the recommendations regarding the impact of modernization on programs of educational reconstruction suggested by the Education Commission (1964-66).

 

EXPLOSION OF KNOWLEDGE: During the last few years, there has been an explosion of knowledge. In the traditional society, the quantum of knowledge was limited, and the main aim of education was preservation, maintenance and promotion of the existing culture. But in the present society the quantum of knowledge is very vast. Knowledge earlier was received passively but now it is discovered actively. The traditional society believed in 'to know' but now the society believes in 'to know by heart', this leads to creative and critical thinking. The Education Commission also emphasis by observing the present condition to have better methods of teaching in the new concept of education and to have well training of teachers at the school and colleges level without much of boredom.

RAPID SOCIAL CHANGE: In our last blog we discussed regarding this aspect. We can conclude that due to the rapid social changes the education centres should be a step ahead in the teaching methods. There is need of a dynamic policy in the field of education. The Education Commission also believes that unlike the traditional methods of teaching, the teaching should bring awakening of mind, curiosity, development of interests, attitudes, values and building up essential skills. For example: to differentiate between good/bad and critical thinking and better judgement.

NEED FOR RAPID ADVANCE: Once the process of modernization has started we cannot step it in the half way to go back to the traditional society. Hence, there is need for a rapid advance to take this modernization to peaks. It is obvious to get problems, issues, like economical, cultural and political. But we need to overcome and move rapidly forward.

MODERNIZATION AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS: With regards to modernization and education progress the Education Commission too feels that the progress in modernization is proportional to the education. Modernization is a process of bringing change. Modernization does not necessarily mean a complete change in or isolation of own tradition.

For modernization attempts should be made on foundation of the past, reflecting the needs of the present and vision for the future. Modernization of the Indian society should be based on morals and spiritual values and self-discipline.  Education Commission also believes that modernization will lead towards offering individual a larger way of life and wider variety of choices. Freedom of choice has some advantage no doubt, but it is also dependent on the value system and motivation. Knowledge and power of individuals gets expanded and individuals develop a deep sense of social responsibility and power of appreciation of moral values and spiritual values. Modernization should not be madly followed at the cost of human values. Therefore, attempts should be made in to inculcate value oriented education at all the stages of education. Children should learn to maintain a balance between spiritual and material values of life while modernizing them. 

 

To modernize the Indian society, we have few problems that include:

Problems of mass-illeteracy.
Socio-political problems.
Modernization brings changes in the social structure, values and social norms. 
Problems of National Integration.
Problems of Science and technological development etc.