Education, Society, and Social Diagnosis

A curriculum cannot be designed in a vacuum. Before deciding what to teach, a developer has to understand the society the school serves and how it is changing. That reading of society is social diagnosis, and it begins from a simple fact: education is a social process.

Education as a social process

Education is the process by which people acquire the ways, the beliefs, and the standards of their society. It is how a society reproduces itself in its young. Schooling is a specialized aspect of this larger process: a deliberate, organized slice of the much wider learning that goes on everywhere in a community.

The relationship runs both ways, as the socio-cultural foundation already showed. The school is shaped by the larger fabric of ways, beliefs, and ideas held by the people of a society at a given time. At the same time, what goes on in the school affects the social system. The link is so tight that a social system is significantly mirrored in its educational program; you could learn a great deal about an unknown society just by studying its schools.

Flashcard

How are schooling and education related as social processes?

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Answer

Schooling is a specialized part of the wider social process of education

Education is how a society passes its ways, beliefs, and standards to its young. Schooling is the deliberate, organized slice of that much larger process.

In times of social change

The relationship between school and society matters in calm times, but it matters most in times of change. The handout distinguishes periods of little social change from periods of profound, intense change, and the second is where the danger lies.

In a time of deep change, new and old social elements exist side by side and compete with one another. Schools, left to themselves, tend to reflect the older elements; they are slow institutions that hold on to what they know. This creates a risk: the teaching profession must guard against making the school a repository, a store house, of old ideas, ideals, and skills that the society is already moving beyond.

The constructive alternative is for the profession to keep the school up to date and to shape educational programs that influence the form and direction of social development. To be on the side of constructive influence during a transformation, the profession must be aware of the facts that social diagnosis provides, drawn from scholars in psychology and the social sciences.

Flashcard

Why is the school-society relationship especially important in times of profound change?

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Answer

New and old elements compete, and schools tend to cling to the old

The profession must guard against the school becoming a store house of outdated ideas, and instead keep it current and help shape the direction of social development.

What social diagnosis requires

To do this work, the profession has to be informed. Social diagnosis requires knowing about changes across several parts of a society:

1. The economic system.
2. The value system.
3. Home and community life.
4. Occupational activities.

Knowing the changes is only half of it. The profession must also understand the tasks these changes set for the school. A shift in the economy or in family life is not just news; it is a demand on the curriculum, a signal that something new needs to be taught or something old retired. Social diagnosis turns observations about a changing society into instructions for the curriculum.

Flashcard

Which areas of change must social diagnosis track?

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Answer

The economic system, value system, home and community life, and occupations

Tracking these changes is only half the job. Social diagnosis also works out the tasks each change sets for the school, turning observation into instructions for the curriculum.