Question

conclusion for role of education in modernisation​

Answer 1

Education and Modernization in India  

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 of the 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 (with the exception of 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 on account of the medium and content of education. At the primary level the medium of instruction (with the exception of 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 analyzed 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.  

Thomas Huxley, John Morley and Burke yield place to Bertrand Russell and Harold Laski; Mazzini and Ruskin are supplemented by Marx and