Education to Change or Sustain?

by: Josephine Luz=)

Should education be designed to change or sustain society?” is a frequent yet controversial debate especially in the education sector. Education has an important role in developing and maintaining the properties of society.

As we enter a new kind of society, the information era, our education system must be equipped with the needs of the new generations. On the one hand, I believe that education should be designed to change only a part of the society where we can pave way to development. The very purpose of education is to impart and contribute to the betterment of man and society, and without this change, no development will take place. On the other hand, education should also be designed to sustain a vital part of the society like the standards, norm, and its ancient roots. As to Oak (2009), if social norms deprive certain strata of society from progressing in life and come in the way of social welfare, it defeats the purpose of education.

Banathy (1991) stressed that we should offer education that will define the creative capacity, competence and character of the new generation which will shape the society of the 21st century. There is growing awareness in the paucity in the current design of education that deal with the new realities of the information or knowledge era. Banathy also suggested that education must be transcend rather than improve it; re-vision it rather than revising it; and transform it by design rather than reform it. Thus, education must be designed in a way that will fit the students of the new generation to their generation.

With the above mentioned issue, we must always consider the interrelation of education and society as well as their impact to each other. Oak averred that society and education are tightly bound entities and hence cannot be separated from each other. The link of these two remained as the roots of educational issues.

Education must be modified from time to time in order to meet the needs of time but at the same side, it must also ensure that these changes will not corrupt the ancient roots and the foundations of the society.