note on role of education in cultural development
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Education and culture are intimately and integrally connected. The cultural pattern of a society conditions its educational pattern. For example, if a society has a spiritual pattern of culture, then its educational procedures will emphasize the achievement of moral and eternal values of life. On the other hand, if the cultural pattern of a society is materialistic, then naturally its educational pattern will be shaped for the attainment of material values which promote pleasures of senses and material comforts. A society devoid of any culture will have no definite educational organization. Hence the culture of a country has a very powerful impact on its educational pattern.
The ultimate relationship between culture and education is evident from the fact that one of the major aims education is to impact to the child his cultural heritage. In any human group, the various elements and parts of culture evolve after thousands of years of the experience, and these are handed down as a whole to the succeeding generations. Hence every individual is born into a particular culture which provide him definite patterns of behaviour and values which guide his conduct in different walks of life. He has thereby saved the necessity of making fresh experiments every time. Obviously, then, culture plays an important part in man‘s life in the adaptation to the natural environment, in the adaptation to the social environment, in the development of personality and socialization.
Every society has a culture or a method of operating which is unique to it. To live harmoniously in a given culture, its members must be aware of the various modes of conduct which are acceptable to that culture. It is through the process of education that children and new members are apprised of these facts. Also, in order to survive, the individual must become acquainted with the nature of these things in his environment with which he may have to cope. In very general terms then, it may be said that universally, the purpose of education is to inform the individual about the nature of his culture and the acceptable methods of coping with that culture. The implication, clearly, is that education should teach the students of a particular country how to look at the world and doing things according to the way of doing things of his own country.