School, Society and Family | UPSC Mains Essay Preparation PDF Download

School, Society and Family

structure

(1) Opening    —    Disciplined way of life is laid in schools.

(2) Body    —    Maintaining order in school become difficult.

    —    Laws and Society.

    —    Parents are often critical.

    —    Schools in this age cannot operate in isolation.

    —    Conditional Support of the Society.

    —    Rules represent order.

    —    Parental involvement is vital.

    —    Society must face up to the problem it is creating.

(3) Closing    —    Society must supply the support to the schools.

No one can deny that some basic minimal code of rules are in man’s best interest. Discipline is a scheme which is designed to facilitate the smooth working of some activity whether it is the acquisition of knowledge by students or any other field like craftsman, soldier or artist. To reach the best possible end in each of these, energy has to be harboured and canalised, time must be measured and allotted and many of man’s impulses temporarily curbed. Discipline is needed to subdue the natural ego-centric so that they can live in and with society. Rules represent order, and the foundation of an orderly, disciplined way of life is laid in schools from where the child begins.

But many people today believe that maintaining order in the school is becoming difficult, though this should not come as a surprise. Society itself is changing and authority is under attack. Society has changed earlier too. Primitive people fought for food, women, home or fuel. As civilisation grew the need for laws to regulate the action of individuals and groups in community was recognised. Laws were made and given an aura of holiness because they were necessary to enable society to survive. But inevitably there were those who felt they are treated unjustly, they challenged the law often by force. The problem arises when some section of society sees law undermined and perceive profit for themselves in the challenge itself and act without regard to consequence. When violence is seen to bring advantage violence increases. That is what is happening today. Young people see the example of violence as the successful challenge to authority and tend to emulate it. Communication media attempts to present the news objectively, gives violence and disruption a tacit acceptance and do not condemn it. Youngsters seeing it uncondemned come to regard it as acceptance.

Children today are treated with a tolerance which allow for the rejection of authority. Plaradoxically parents are often critical of lax school discipline whilst tolerating such behaviour at home which would not have been widely accepted 20 or 30 year ago. Even more difficult to understand is any steps to make discipline in school more effective is questioned.

Being brought up in a tolerant atmosphere children are often shocked when attempts are made to make them behave reasonably at school. They find themselves having to adopt to two quite different behavioural patterns. This has a traumatic effect up on some children, which is itself an incitement to indiscipline.

Society as a whole appears to accept that the majority of children want to learn and that to enable them to do so discipline must be maintained in schools. Schools in this age cannot operate in isolation, whatever happens and whatever is tolerated in the world has an effect on the school. The attitude of adult with whom children come into contact, either by direct experience or through media condition the attitude of the pupil to all influences on their lives.

Until recently the few who disrupted school with extreme behavioural problem were from environments which thrived on violence and misbehaviour. But the growth of mass media specially the visual ones, and the decline of censorship has introduced a much wider group to extremes of behaviour. Thus a society which expects and believes that its children must be educated in a reasonably ordered situation tolerates the daily visual exposition of activities which can undermine and destroy that reasonable order. The problem arising from this contradiction is: when schools attempt the reasonable order which society wants, the support of the society is conditional. And in the long run this situation becomes intolerable. There is an increasing amount of violence and disruptive behaviour. Liberal attitudes among adults have probably given encouragement to these youngsters who have such disruptive inclinations. Be it any country, one sees the difficulty into which undue tolerance can lead.

Rules represent order, and however anarchic we may feel, we need order. no one knows completely the answer to the problem of maintaining order in schools. Schools cannot operate on their own. This is a social problem which cannot be disregarded by society and left to the schools. Neither must the schools assume that the teaching profession alone can deal with it. One reason for the dissatisfaction of the young 

with the society and family pattern in which they grow is, there is no hard and fast line to give them security. They find themselves growing in an atmosphere of adult uncertainty leaving them bewildered.

Parental involvement and understanding is vital to the schools both in the avoidance of extreme indiscipline and to its solution when it occurs. The main duty of the parents is to equip the child for living and for making the best of life, and how to benefit from the advantages of being a social animal. One of the lessons should be that in order to get the advantage certain sacrifices have to be made.

Society must face up to the problem society is creating. Tolerance, overindulgence, neglect of standards, abandonment of guidance, unwillingness to accept and reason are social attitudes which are affecting the school. At the same time social neglect in poor housing, unemployment, deprivation, lack of provision are also stimulating and fostering the development of bad attitude.

To discipline a child means to teach him how to live with others. it does not mean breaking but teaching, not only through rules, but its own attitude towards others and our own towards it. It is essential to convince that it is possible and also if necessary to disagree but this need not involve loss of dignity.

The thinking needs long term plan for social change. The fact is schools have their problems. They must be dealt with and society must supply the support to the schools. This is a demand which linvolves the protection and well being of the majority of children who want to get the best out of the very effective educational provision. If investment in children’s education is investment in our society’s future, then it is essential that society safeguard its investment by supporting those to whom it has entrusted the realisation of its children’s future.