School And Society Essay

School and Society:

Many people today believe that maintaining order in the school is becoming difficulty, though this should not come as a surprise. Society itself is changing and authority is under attack. Society has change earlier too. Primitive people fought for food, women, home or fuel. As civilization grew the need for laws to regulate the action of individuals and groups’ in the community was recognized. 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 were treated unjustly, and challenged the law often by force. The problem arise 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 attempt to present the news objectively, give violence and disruption a tacit acceptance, and do not condemn it. Youngsters, seeing it uncondemned, come to regard it as acceptance.

According to an expert sociologist, children are today treated with tolerance which allows for the rejection of authority. Paradoxically, parents are often critical of lax school discipline whilst tolerating such behaviour at home which would not have been widely accepted 20 or 30 years ago. Even more difficult to understand is that any step to make discipline in school more effective is questioned.

Being brought up in a tolerant atmosphere, children are often shocked when attempts are made them behave reasonably at school. They find themselves having to adopt to two quite different behavioural patterns. This has a traumatic effect 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 school. 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 adults 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 misbehavior. 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 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 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 school. This is demand which involves 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 realization of its children’s future.