Education
One of the most powerful means of propagating and sustaining new developments is the system of education available in a society. Education is the means for organized transmission of society's collective knowledge to each next generation by the previous generation. It equips each new generation to face the opportunities and challenges of the future with the knowledge gathered from the past. It shows the young generation the opportunities that lie ahead for them and thereby raises their aspiration to achieve more. The information imparted by education raises the level of expectations of youth as well as their aspirations for higher income. It also equips them with the mental capacity to devise ways and means to improve productivity and enhance living standards.
Society can be conceived as a complex fabric consisting of interrelated activities, systems and organizations. Development occurs when this complex fabric improves its own organization. That organizational improvement can take place simultaneously in several dimensions.
- Quantitative expansion in the volume of social activities
- Qualitative expansion in the content of all those elements that make up the social fabric.
- Geographic extension of the social fabric to bring more of the population under the cover of that fabric.
- Integration of existing and new organizations so that the social fabric functions more efficiently.
Such organizational innovations occur all the time as a continuous process. New organizations emerge whenever a new developmental stage is reached and old organizations get modified to suit the new developmental requirements. The impact of these new organizations may be so powerful as to lead the people to believe that these new organizations are powerful in their own right. Actually it is society that throws up the new organizations required to achieve its objectives.
The direction that the developmental process takes is very much influenced by the awareness of the population as to what are the opportunities available in the society. Increasing awareness leads to greater aspiration which in turn releases greater energy that helps bring about greater accomplishment.
Read more about this topic: Social Development Theory
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“I am not describing a distant utopia, but the kind of education which must be the great urgent work of our time. By the end of this decade, unless the work is well along, our opportunity will have slipped by.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“In the years of the Roman Republic, before the Christian era, Roman education was meant to produce those character traits that would make the ideal family man. Children were taught primarily to be good to their families. To revere gods, one’s parents, and the laws of the state were the primary lessons for Roman boys. Cicero described the goal of their child rearing as “self- control, combined with dutiful affection to parents, and kindliness to kindred.””
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)