Enlist the difference between health education and propaganda
Answers
Education is the indoctrination of children, propaganda that of adults;(ii) Education is what schools do, propaganda is any other effort to mould thinking:(iii) Education consists of teaching truth, propaganda of teaching lies;(iv) Education is rational, propaganda is irrational;(v) The contents of education are desirable, those, .of propaganda are undesirable;(vi) Education promotes general welfare, propaganda supports special interests;(vii) Education supports the moral values and standards of the society, propaganda always attacks them;(viii) Education is open minded, propaganda is narrow minded;(ix) Education is a counter-argument against propaganda.In pointing out the above differences between education and propaganda Woddy has used the word propaganda in a bad sense.According to Lass-well, education seeks to promulgate a skill, mental or physical, as its primary objective while propaganda regards its content as always secondary, a means to the end of securing some immediately desired kind of behaviour. According to Bird, propaganda proceeds primarily by the use of suggestion toward an emotional objective, while education uses, principally, the mental process of inquiry or investigation of detail. Obviously, education aims at clarification, not persuasion.Since education seeks to influence the social attitudes and behaviour of the maturing citizens, it may be said to verge on propaganda as propaganda also seeks to influence the behaviour of the people cry groups. Among the modern methods of education use is made of pedagogic techniques which may be called propagandistic However, these methods are only incidental.A working distinction between them can be pointed out by saying that the aim of education is wider than that of propaganda. The latter is consciously designed to bring about a particular type of behaviour and can be used for any purpose. Propaganda seeks to influence decisions in ways favourable to the propagandist, whereas education provides information on the basis of which decisions may be made.But when the teacher communicates his preferences and convictions to his students with a view to influencing their behaviour, education may take the form of propaganda. The teacher in Soviet Russia propagates communism through education. But for that the teacher is not to be condemned. If the teacher does so with social objectives which are regarded as desirable, then his activity also is desirable.If, on the other hand, his objectives are not desirable then his activities are to be deplored whether they are primarily educational or propagandistic. In other words, education must be judged in terms of its aims and its products. As Roucek remarks, like education, propaganda may be good or bad, again like education it is not necessarily either.Propaganda is always aggressive. It seeks to support some feeling and attitudes which already exist or to create attitudes and feelings which did not exist before. It may be negative or positive. It is negative when its aim is to weaken or dissolve the target group. It is positive if it looks forward to building the morale and strengthen the unity of the target group.