Essay on the importance of Adult-Education in India

"No nation can leave its security only to the police and the army, to a large extent national security depends upon the educa­tion of citizens, their knowledge of affairs, their character and sense of discipline and their ability to participate effectively in security measure.'' —Kothari Commission.

Democracy without education is meaningless. It is education and enlightenment that lifts a nation to the heights of progress and greatness. Unfortunately, the situation as it obtains in India in respect of education is not only distressing but disgraceful and deplor­able. At present about 60% of the people in India are illiterate; they cannot differentiate a buffalo from a black mole.

The problem in India is that we have adopted democracy without preparing the ground for it by educating population. But even now it is not too late if the programme of mass Adult educa­tion, or Social education is undertaken in right earnest as a mass movement. No doubt the provision of universal, compulsory and free primary education is the only solution to the problem of illiteracy. But the country cannot afford to leave out a whole mass of adults and grown-ups of our society from the benefits of the literacy-drive. Apart from the political justification to the problem, Adult education is needed because it is a powerful auxiliary and an essential incentive to primary education. No programme of compulsory universal education can bear fruit without the active support and co-operation of adults. It is, therefore, imperative that educational facilities should be provided to adults.

Adult education, as the term signifies, is the education of grown-up men and women who are above eighteen years. Bryson says, "Adult education includes all activities with an educational purpose, carried on by people, in the ordinary business of life who use only part of their energy to acquire intellectual equipment." Ernst Baker says, "Adult education is given on a part-time basis and, therefore, given concurrently with work and the earning of a living." Maulana Azad re-oriented the concept of Adult education for preparing every citizen to play his part effectively in a democratic social order. So he renamed Adult education as 'Social Education'. In our country, adult education is imparted tinder two aspects: (1) Adult Literacy i.e. education for those adults who never had schooling before; and, (2) Continuation education i.e. education for those adults who had some schooling before.

Agencies of Social (Adult) education include all the bodies, organizations or institutions which 'deliver the goods' which contact the 'consumers' of social education and satisfy their needs. They may be categorized as under:

(a) Teachers, Government servants, NSS and other volunteers, social education workers etc.

(b) Regular educational institutions like schools, colleges, rural colleges, community centres, agriculture extension groups, worker's educational associations and voluntary organiza­tions.

(c) Informal educational devices like forums, study circles, group discussions, listening groups, camps.

(d) Recreational, educational bodies like theatres, cinemas, clubs, societies, fairs, melas, nautanki etc.

(e) Institutions whose primary aim is not education, such as religious bodies, the Army, Parents Associations, Co-operative Societies and other Government Departments.

The scope of Adult education is very comprehensive. Social education covers all those topics that are not touched by education in general at school. Topics like religion, politics and family plann­ing can now be discussed with adults who have a mature under­standing. Moreover, it aims at giving a new orientation to the out­look of adults to suit the dynamic world. Then, the growth grooves of each individual are different from those of others. Social education harmonizes differences in growth and it also provides an opportunity for growth to those who have not been able to grow properly or completely earlier.

About the need and importance of Social (Adult) education Swami Vivekananda remarked : "So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor, who having been educated at their expense, pays not the heed to them. Our great natural sin is the neglect of the masses and that is the cause of our downfall. No amount of politics would be of any avail until the mas­ses are well educated, well fed and well cared for." National deve­lopment and reconstruction is closely allied to Adult Education. If democracy is to survive, we must educate the masses for social educ­ation is the new hope for illiterate masses. Social education is heeded to widen the intellectual and political horizon of the illiterate adults. It is also needed to sharpen the aesthetic sensibility of the adults and to set the cultural tone of the community. Moreover, social educa­tion is needed in order to guide in spending their leisure in health­ful recreations and useful activities. Lastly, illiteracy and ignorance is a sin; an illiterate adult is a burden on society. Adult education emancipates people from the tyranny of illiteracy.

The objects, or purposes, or functions of social education may be stated generally or pragmatically. The philosophically oriented functions of Adult education are clearing concepts of reality of universe and life, reconciling the old and the new approaches to life, balance and independent judgment, self-realisation, human relationship and citizenship training and economic efficiency. According to the second approach which is more pragmatic and practical education has to perform two-fold purposes—to the indivi­dual and to the society. From the individual's point of view social education fulfils various purposes— remedial, vocational, health, recreational, self-development and social skills. From the social and national point of view the purposes of social education are social cohesion, national efficiency and development of national resources.

On the practical plane, however, there are some difficulties that confront a Social education planner or worker. Some of the main difficulties and problems are : isolation of adult education in education, accommodating difficulties, age structure of the adults, the family circumstances and background of learners, occupational grouping, cultural background, socio-economic background, geo­graphical location of the social education centre, level of the social education worker teacher, lack of proper knowledge of adult psy­chology, paucity of leisure lack of equipment, lack of motivation, fatigue of adults and their constitutional and temperamental lethargy, lack of proper publicity, hostility from certain vested interests, poor supervision of centres and half-hearted implement­ation.

The difficulties have to be overcome either by cleverness, or by fact or by compromise, or may be, by intentional avoidance. Only then we can hope to spread Adult Education. The purpose of all good teaching is to produce changes in human behavior. All adult education teacher must adopt a positive approach; he should help the adults learn quickly and effectively and willing by using any of the three prevalent methods - the Teacher Dominated methods, the Learner Dominated Method or the Co-operative Method. He may make use of any or all the seven types of aids given in the Govern­ment of India Handbook on Social Education viz, Spoken words, spoken words reproduced through radio or recording, written words, chart, graphs and maps, objects produced or reproduced as models, demonstrations, pageants, dramas, television and other objects re­presented as pictures, pictures reproduced by episcopate-slides etc., actual objects, field trips and specially arranged exhibitions, museums or films shows.

Gandhiji's idea of social service for college students during the vacation and, later on full time basis will prove invaluable in this regard. Young men and women taking up Adult education as a drive should be fired with a missionary zeal to eradicate illiteracy and ignorance from our country. The slogan should be "Each one, teach one."

Happily, greater emphasis has been laid on Adult Education in the Seventh Five-Year Plan. The tenth point in Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's 20-point Programme-'Expansion of Education'-also makes special mention of stimulating Adult literacy. Sizeable funds have been allocated and separate staff, including the block and Aanganwari people has been deployed to foster Adult education. Adult education officers have been appointed in each college and they supervise the running of adult schools by student volun­teers. The programme of Adult education has to be undertaken on war-footing.

What do you mean by the term education?

Education is one of the basic activities of people in all human societies. The continued existence of society depends upon the transmission of culture to the young. It is essential that every new generation must be given training in the ways of the group so that the same tradition will continue. Every society has its own ways and means of fulfilling this need. Education has come to be one of the ways fulfilling this need.

The term 'education' is derived from the Latin work 'educare' which literally means to 'bring up' and is connected with the word 'educere' which means to "bring forth'. The idea of education is not merely to impart knowledge to the pupil in some subjects but to develop in him those habits and attitudes with which he may successfully 'face the future.

The Latin author Varro wrote —"The midwife brings forth, the nurse brings up, the tutor trains and the master teaches. "Plato was of the opinion that the end of education was to develop in the body and in the soul (of the pupil) all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable. It means, in short, a sound mind in sound body (mens sana incorporate sano).

According to the Aristotelian conception, the aim of education is "to develop man's faculties, especially, his mind, so that he may be able to enjoy the contemplation of the supreme truth, goodness and beauty in which perfect happiness, essentially consists.

As Peter Worsety says, "A large part of our social and technical skills are acquired through deliberate instruction which we call education. It is the main working activity of children from the ages of five to fifteen and often beyond." A large part of the budget of many developed and developing countries is set apart for education. Education employs a large army of people.

Sociologists are becoming more and more aware of the importance and role of educational institutions in the modern industrialized societies. In recent years, education has become the major interest of some sociologists. As a result, a new branch of sociology called sociology of education has become established.

Definition of Education

Durkheim conceives of education as "the socialization of the younger generation." He further states that it is "a continuous effort to impose on the child ways of seeing, feeling and acting which he could not have arrived at spontaneously."

Summer defined education as "the attempt, to transmit the child the modes of the group. So that he can learn what conduct, is approved and what disapproved how he ought to behave in all kinds of cases: What he ought to believe and reject,"

F,J. Brown and J.S. Roucek say that education is "the sum total of the experience which moulds the attitudes and determines the conduct of both the child and the adult."

James Welton in Encyclopedia Britannica (11th Edition) writes that education consist in an attempt on the part of the adult members of human society to shape the development of the coming generation with its own ideals of life.

A.W.Green, "Historically it has meant the conscious training of the young for the later adoption of adult roles. By modern convention, however, education has come to mean formal training by specialists within the formal organization of the school,

Samuel Koening says "Education may also be defined as the process whereby the social heritage of the group is passed on from one generation to another as well as the process whereby" the child "becomes socialized, learns the, roles of behavior of the group into which he is born."

Education as a social process:

Education stands for deliberate instruction or training. Man does not behave in society impulsively or instinctively. He behaves in a way according to which he is trained. Some thinkers have equated it with socialization. A few other regard education as an attempt to transmit the cultural norms of the group to its younger members. It is also understood more knowledge. All these three interpretations of education as a process or a continuous entity the word process stressed continuity.

Firstly, education, viewed as socialization, is continuous. Socialization is social learning. This social learning is not intermittent but continuous. Perfection in social learning is rarely achieved the more we try to learn our own society and fellow beings the more remains to be learned.

Social learning begins at birth and ends only at death. It continues through out our life. There is no point or state in our life at which we have learn everything about one group or society and beyond that nothing remains to be studied. We belong to different groups at different stages of our life. As these groups change, we must learn new rules and new patterns of behavior.

Furthermore, we do not always remain within the same role. We being as children, pass through adolescence into adulthood, marry, become parents, enter middle age, retire, grow old and finally die. With each role comes pattern of behavior that we must learn and thus through out our life, we are involved in the socialization process.

Secondly, education viewed as an agent of cultural transmission is also continuous. Culture is growing while there can be break in the continuity of culture. If at all there is a break, it only indicates the end of a particular human group. The cultural elements are passed on from generation act as the agents of cultural transmission. Education in its formal or informal pattern has been performing this role since time immemorial. Education can be looked upon as process from this point of view also.

Thirdly, education implies, as an attempt to acquire knowledge, is also continuous. Knowledge is like an ocean, boundless, limitless. No one has mastered it or exhausted it. No one can claim to do so. There is a limit to the human genius or the human grasp of the things. The moral man can hardy know anything and everything about nature, which is immoral.

The universe is a miraculous entity. The more one tries to know of it, the more it becomes mysterious. Not any the natural universe but also the social universe is complex. The human experiences limited to have a thorough knowledge of acquiring more and more knowledge about the universe with all its complexity. Education thus is a continuous endeavor, a process.

essay on the Deteriorating Standard of Education in India

A well-known Gujarati writer and professor wrote a fantasy 'Eklavya' in the seventies. It was a superb piece of fiction. The hero, a laborious village boy secures first position in the High School Examination. Principals of a number of prestigious colleges approach him asking him to take admission in their college. The pampered student takes admission in one of the institutions. He is so studious and so intelligent that after a few days instead of being taught he starts teaching the teachers who are not well, prepared. He becomes the President of the State University College Students Union. He gets a resolution passed that there is no need of lecturers in colleges. They require simply good coordinators who would play tape recorders or VCRs in the classes. It would save money that can be used for research and for helping poor students.

The fantasy, it seems, is gaining grounds in the present education scenario in the country. The deterioration started long back in Bihar and Orissa and has been spreading like wild fire in the Hindi belt. Instead of being centers of education many educational institutions have become innovative not in any branch of learning but in Mafiaism. Groups of young men can be seen strolling all over the campus during teaching hours.

Many of them do not take the examinations. Someone else represents them in the examination hall. Neither the Principal nor the teachers dare stop the rot. An Intermediate college in the rural setting in one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh was known for its notoriety during examination season.

The Principal and the Manager of the college pocketed lakhs of rupees every year for allowing large scale copying and manipulating a number of things. It was only in the Kalyan Singh regime in 1992 that anti-copying bill came into force and the two had to lick the dust. The next Chief Minister was a seasoned politician who won the elections on the promise of withdrawing the bill and scrapping the 'Goondah Act'. If an invigilator is not required in the examination hall the students are not going to be examined for their ability in learning but in that of copying. Naturally there won't be any need for scholars to engage classes. The universities will have to devise some other way of imparting knowledge to the young ones who want to have it.

A number of medical colleges, engineering colleges and other professional colleges, specially in the South and the West are being run on capitation fee now euphemized as donor seats. Many of these colleges throughout the country are ill equipped both in educational aids like laboratories and accessories and in staff too.

Some educational bodies, in certain areas, look like empires of a large number of such institutions. They provide batal lions of graduates and post-graduates in different faculties every year. Many of them are known for their sub-standard teaching.

They are at least filling the gap that the government institutions are not able to. Within no time we shall have a large number of qualified medicos, engineers, technicians and teachers spread throughout the country. Having no employment opportunities in the country they are going to be export commodities. It is just one's guess if they will be accepted in the foreign market.

Of late institutions of business management have proliferated in the country. Almost every university has one such college, besides many run by many colleges. There are postal courses for these being offered by university departments. There is a spate of open universities after establishment of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) in 1985.

These Universities teach through printed lessons prepared by experts in the subjects. The process of educating the people has been taken up by Doordarshan too through UGC programmes. Some of them are excellent. 'Turning point' presented by well known cine world personality Girish Karanad with Prof. Yashpal, the former UGC chief as adviser did yeoman's service in its own way.

Thus, it seems that some alternatives are being offered in our country to provide knowledge through experts on the small screen, through communicative devices and seminars. There seems no harm in weaning away the students who don't want to be taught and those who don't want to teach seriously at the individual or institutional level. 40 minute tapes supported by small screen demonstration, 45 minute serials prepared by experts displayed through VCRs would do a lot in this direction. They may be continued for three months or so. To sum up the things quarterly seminars arranged at prestigious institutions in the country can serve the cause of imparting knowledge to the deserving youth better. Let it be a well organized plan and conscientious effort.

To minimize the human error the programme may be conducted through robots who can be experts in manoeuvring audiovisual aids. This all would be far better than gaining knowledge through cheap guides that are available now in the South too—a cheap prescription for getting through the examinations but quite cancerous for achieving the goals of life in the long run.

Advantage of technical education

Technical education is the crying need of India. India has had an over-dose of liberal education. Our education is incomplete and without any purpose if we do not receive some sort of technical education besides our liberal education. A just balance between liberal education and technical education needs to be maintained.

Our British masters did not encourage technical education in 0ur country. The result was terrible unemployment. We depended up0n the industrial goods of other countries. Technical education enables student to pick up a skill with which he may make his living, even if he remains unemployed after taking up his graduation.

We need an army of highly technical hands for our multi-purpose river-projects, steel factories, fertilizer industry, locomotive and air-craft manufacture. Even agriculture is being rapidly mechanized by means of tractors and bulldozers.

We need more and more technicians to manufacture tractors in India. We need scientists and technologists with practical knowledge of banking, insurance and business organization which includes salesmanship and advertisement in all their numerous aspects. Technical knowledge is as vast as the sea.

India is predominantly an agricultural country. Our peasants are idle for six months during the year. If they are trained in cottage industries, they can add to their income. Without developing our cottage industries, we cannot solve the grim problem of unemployment. A young man who has received technical education need not knock from office to office for a petty clerical job. He can earn his living by making articles of daily use.

A mere knowledge of Shakespeare, Kalidas or Sanskrit Grammar or Philosophy or Mathematics may adorn a young man's mind but how on earth will it enable him to keep the wolf from the door? Scholars and men of liberal education may starve but a skilled labourer never does.

Gone is the time when manual labour was looked down upon. A manual labourer is now as respectable a member of society as an intellectual luminary. Manual work is as important as any other type of work and technical education is as dignified as liberal education. Technical education makes a man self-reliant and plucky. He begins taking initiative. He becomes more practical.

The safety of the country lies in striking a golden mean between liberal education and technical education.

Essay on hospitality(short)

Hospitality means general and friendly reception and entertainment of guests, invited or uninvited. It is a great quality of a human being to possess a sense of hospitality. It comes generally from one's family tradition, or sometimes it is acquired by individuals born or trained with the feeling of compassion and self-sacrifice.

In the ancient society, hospitality used to be considered as a great virtue and refusal a great sin. Travelers from distant lands were offered warm reception with shelter and food for the night, even without knowing the stranger's whereabouts.

Anyone, known or unknown, asking for shelter and food, was never refused inspire of the host's natural poverty or any other inconvenience. Thus this noble virtue saves the travelers of long distances from insecurity, inconvenience and distress.

In the Western countries, hospitality is confined only to the known circle and that also in a limited way among close friends and near relatives. And that is held only in a formal way, hardly with hearty welcome or sincere service. The spirit of selfless service is rather wanting there. But in the east, hospitality is not rare today.