Social Change as an Object of Educational Inquiry

Abstract

The term ‘social change’ has many connotations. Some of these arose during India’s freedom struggle, and others have their derivation in the theory of modernisation. The system of education was quite centrally involved in disseminating both sets of connotations. Education is also a personal experience that lasts for many years, during which several personal meanings of social change arise. Inquiry into social change generally refers to structural aspects, such as relations between castes and communities, men and women, parents and children, and villages and towns. The difference would arise from the actual experience of getting educated over a considerable period of early life. This experience is shaped by the state of the system of education and its specific conditions that intersect with one’s own life circumstances. This kind of inquiry dispels the generalised image of social change that the dominant theory of modernisation has created.