Sociological Issues

Sociological Issues: Looking for solutions

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”, Martin Luther King Jr. rightly says. Sociology has taught individuals living in multi-cultural dimensions to appreciate diversity. In order to develop any nation at large, societies and communities are needed to be developed first. Education is a subject, which banks significantly on sociology.

Sociology facilitates any society in appreciating the “diversity”. Moreover, India is extremely diverse. Focussing on diversity will lead to holistic development of the Nation. The country has multitude of religion, culture, traditions and customs, which makes it unique in its character. Eventually, religion has become a “set of rituals” in the country. As such, religion has a major objective of socializing individuals into “morality”. Moreover, every religion has preached and continues to preach core human values- love, service, compassion, brotherhood, etc. Religions reflect civilizational age-old wisdom. Generation gap is widening and the morality keeps evolving and changes with time and context. This transition is inevitable. It would be interesting to observe how the Indian society will deal with young generations twenty years down the line. For instance, touching feet of elders is a ritual. However, today with changing times, it is both, an issue of ‘power relation’ as well as maintaining the ‘authoritarian structures’ around it. Change is eternal and so with the society but preserving the values and culture is always on the agenda of any society.

In order to sustain, the society has its own agents and school is one of them. School is considered to be miniature society. India has been trying to preserve some valuable elements of its culture through schools. School represents ‘modernity’. However, the concept of modernity has its own critically negative elements. Modernity provides space to individual freedom/autonomy. India has a collectivistic culture. For example, generally in an Indian scenario, grown-ups are dependent on their parents even after 30 years for various reasons. In other modern societies, a 20 year old takes care of all their financial needs. Thus, Indian parenting styles provides a smooth ride for the younger generation. We are in an age of transition/change. Relationships have started changing. With this change, the current generation is shuttling between individualism and collectivism, tradition and modernity.

With the change, people have recognized the cause and effect relationship of these rituals and traditions. Death ceremonies, marriage ceremonies, or birthday parties are indirectly meant to gather people for the occasion. However, they have become very conspicuous with time, i.e. showing of one’s own status and wealth. People often times try to demonstrate others who are economically of higher status. ‘Gurus’ were praised for their duty once now they are blamed for their negligence. Parents hold the teachers responsible where they themselves are neglecting their duties. They do not realise the significance of their own roles in child’s life. Giving directions is the responsibility of a teacher. How to drive ourselves depends on individual students. Even after so many years of education and opportunities, many are uncomfortable in learning the official language ‘English’ that has value in the market. Ultimately, teacher is to be blamed, not realising the importance of environment. Teachers also have many limitations and need to work in those limitations. If students are withdrawing from learning, we don’t have to blame or punish students. Parents must be oriented. Parents have become over possessive. Being rude is some kind of punishment though.

Intolerance among the society and individuals’ behaviour is extremely apparent. Peace is a social demand, ICT is a social demand, and Environment is a social demand. Considering the language case in point, Noam Chomsky and other linguists proved that anyone can learn 4 languages, if opportunity is provided. Knowledge is one and all subjects are the way to reach the knowledge after all. One can learn anything; the ultimate aim should be to bring peace and harmony in nature, which consists of both living and non-livings. Though there is a wide gap in thinking ideally and practical aspects of day to day life, the society keeps its effort on.

Things are relative. What is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’? What is happiness and what is sorrow? They are all relative. One can view them as philosophy, the other as quantum physics. Definition of a good society will vary from place to place and country to country. Every society aspires to be a good society where people have opportunities and participation. Respect for diversity and appreciation for equality. It is all relative. What matters is perception towards the action and how we analyse it. There is nothing good and bad. It is all about thought and perception. For some people it’s good and some it’s bad. The way we look at things depends where we stand. Another perennial question is what education has to offer to our younger generation? In today’s scenario where parents and students are too ambitious, society has cut throat competition for survival. Our society is very peculiar in terms of coping with tradition and modernity. No parents want their daughter/son to pursue fine arts or sport or any other non-main stream courses. We place high value to market oriented education/careers. And, market is highly competitive. Therefore, competition is inevitable. Now in such a competitive society, cooperation takes a back seat. It is through certain parental practices and school practices we can bring some elements of cooperation among younger generation. We can suggest our students for instance, not to compare themselves with others, learn some better qualities from their classmates rather than getting jealous compete with their own selves. Today’s ‘YOU’ has to be better than yesterday’s ‘ME’.

The complexity is that teachers in spite of the knowledge of the current scenario are in a trans and dilemma but what about common people, even highly educated people can’t understand the sociological peculiarities. Competition has led us here. While inducing a competitive spirit, personally we fall prey to the competition in case of our own kids. Society places a value in professions and so the teaching profession is avoided. In Japan, teachers have different status on par with parliamentarians whereas Indian scenario is depressing.

Every society goes through some changes. Change is gradual, most of the times. However, in order to bring that change, first we need to begin with us.

(This topic was discussed with Mr. Anand Valmiki, Asst. Professor in Sociological Foundations of Education, RIE Bhopal and drafted by Miss Deepti Yadav, Asst. professor in Education, RIE Bhopal)