Society, Community, and Education Overview

• This handout provides an overview of society, community, and education, also discussing educational philosophies and social institutions.

Basic Concepts Defined

• Society is a group of different personalities from identified and classified groups.
• Society is the largest group with diverse types, where small groupings comprise a society (e.g., towns of barangays).
• Society has a distinct culture shared by most members, including norms, standards, values, and language.
• Membership in a society comes from a reproductive source; new individuals are born into it, replacing those who pass away.
• Society lasts longer than the lifetime of its individual members.
• It involves persistent social interaction within a large territory, typically under the same political authority with dominant cultural expectations.
• Society is a group of people who have learned to live together, with statuses and roles.
• Dresler defines society as people sharing a distinct, continuous way of life and considering themselves united.
• Bertrand defines society as a social group occupying territory, recruiting members through sexual reproduction, and sharing a comprehensive culture.
• Smith, Stanley, and Shores define society as organized individuals seeing themselves as distinct, with shared loyalties and sentiments and willingness to sacrifice for the group.
• Horton and Hunt describe society as relatively independent, self-perpetuating, occupying a territory, sharing a culture, and having associations within the group.

Community

• Community is a social unit with common norms, religion, values, customs, or identity.
• Communities may share a sense of place, geographically or virtually.

Education

• Education comes from the Latin words "educare" (to rear or nourish) and "educere" (to lead forth or draw out).
• For the layman, education is change for the better.
• The goal of education is to improve individuals mentally, physically, socially, morally, and spiritually.
• To the biologist, education is adaptation; to the psychologist, it's a learning process; to the economist, it's an investment; to the philosopher, it's knowledge transmission for social order.
• For the social scientist, education is a consciously controlled process for changes in an individual and the group.
• Education transmits culture from one generation to the next.
• It involves securing desirable behavioral changes and developing individual potentialities.
• Education involves acquiring knowledge (cognitive), habits, attitudes, interests (affective), skills and abilities (psychomotor).

Social Interaction

• Social interaction is a dynamic sequence of social actions between individuals or groups.
• It's an exchange between two or more individuals, forming the basis for social structure.
• Social interaction can be studied between dyads, triads, or larger social groups.

School Culture

• School culture includes the way teachers and staff work together and their shared beliefs, values, and assumptions.
• A positive school climate and culture enhances students’ ability to learn.

Philosophical Perspectives

Classical Philosophies

• Idealism stresses mental ideas, intrinsic and spiritual value over physical or material aspects.
• Idealism emphasizes that truth or reality exists in the mind or spirit.
• Idealism starts with the idea and ends with the thing; thought is prior to being.
• Knowledge is independent of sense perception or experience.
• Knowledge is based on the mental state and stimuli perceived by the soul from an infinite spirit (God).
• The ultimate aim of education is the happiness of the individual and welfare of the state.
• Education should develop the mind, focusing on intellectual, moral, judgment, and aesthetic aspects.
• Idealists support a subject matter-centered curriculum to provide the best ideas of human culture and civilization.
• Idealist teachers should be role models of intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and vocational excellence.
• Realism is a school of philosophy as old as naturalism and idealism.
• Realism states that the world around us is a real world not dependent on any mind for its existence; being is prior to thought.
• Education focuses on natural phenomena and social institutions over languages and literature.
• Education should concern the realities of life and prepare a person for their duties.
• Humanistic Realism: aimed to secure a knowledge of human society and nature, emphasized content over form of the classics, espoused by John Milton and Francois Rabelais.
• Milton defined education in "Tractate on Education" as that which fits a man to perform justly and skillfully in all his offices.
• Milton believed education must prepare one for real life and advocated for boys to study formal grammar and classical literature.
• Rabelais attacked insincere education, advocating for studies to be pleasant, using games and sports for physical development.
• Education should be attractive rather than compulsive, gained through books with emphasis on the mastery of content and its use.
• Social Realism: emphasis on modern foreign languages and traveling advocated by Michel de Montaigne.
• Subjects like history and politics be offered in lieu of grammar and rhetoric.
• Montaigne believed education should prepare for practical affairs; bookish learning is insufficient.
• Ideas are acquired through interaction with others.
• Learning should be under pleasant conditions, with care for the body.
• The aim of education is not to produce scholars but to prepare a young boy to live the life of a gentleman.
• Sense Realism maintains that knowledge comes through the senses; emphasizes training sense perception over memory.
• It condemns excessive discipline and memorization without comprehension advocating for vernacular education based on perception of natural objects.
• The inductive method (from simple to complex ideas) should be used, with knowledge gained after experiencing a problem.
• John Amos Comenius: Moravian bishop advocated visual aids in teaching like the “Orbis Sensualium Pictus”, the first illustrated textbook.
• Comenius advocated for a comprehensive curriculum from elementary to university levels.
• Mulcaster maintained that education should be in accordance with nature and that teaching processes should be adapted to the pupils.
• Wolfgang Ratke advocated the use of the vernacular as the medium of instruction so child can concentrate on the lesson being studied.
• Ratke believed in mastering a piece of work first before proceeding and favored repetition for mastery.

Existentialism

• Existentialism rejects objective, authoritative truth, emphasizing individual responsibility for determining what is true, right, or beautiful.
• There is no universal human nature individuals have free will to develop as they see fit.
• An existentialist curriculum offers a wide variety of options/free ideas allowing students to decide for themselves.
• The staff, not the students influence curriculum.
• The humanities are emphasized.
• The teacher should act as a guide, resource person not interfering with the students decisions.
• Teacher is to teach the students how to think, not what to think.
• Childhood is not adulthood play is essential, enabling children to work and face difficulties later with improved ability to handle unpleasant tasks.
• Existentialist methods focus on the individual with self-paced, self-directed learning with significant individual contact with the teacher.
• The doctrine emphasizes the freedom of human beings to choose without absolute values.
• A doctrine primarily attributed to Soren Kierkegaard who argued existence was marked off by a persons power to choose.
• Existence provides the freedom to find meaning, purpose and uniqueness.
• Existentialists have no concrete concept to support God or absolute values one molds their own destiny.
• Truth is relative to the individual, who is the sole determiner of truth and value.
• Education should enable individuals to make life choices, revealing the truth of existence.

Pragmatism

• Pragmatism is derived from the Greek word pragma, meaning a thing done, a fact that is practiced.
• The meaning of a proposition or idea lies in its practical consequences.
• Credited to John Dewey, Charles Pierce, and William James.
• Education is vain if it does not perform social functions or be considered a social institution.
• Society cannot fulfill an educational task without a dedicated institution.
• The school should maintain intimate relations with society and aim to be a specialized institution designed to represent society in simplified forms.
• Specialized institutions should be qualitative ( ethical ) manner as it represents society to the young.
• Designed to be responsible in giving the child a balanced and genuinely representative acquaintance with society.
• The aim of education involves the total development of the child’s practical experience, self activity or learning by doing.
• Education is life, growth, a social process, and the construction of human experience.
• Curriculum offers subjects providing opportunities relevant to learners' needs, abilities, interests, socio-economic conditions.
• The learner is the center of all educative processes a concept.

Modern Philosophies

Perennialism

• Is an educational theory that adheres to absolute principles.

Modern Philosophies

• This contrasts with progressive theories, which emphasize change.
• Human nature remains the same everywhere, so education should be uniform for everyone.
• Since rationality is the highest attribute that a man possesses, he must use it to direct his instinctive nature in accordance with deliberately chosen ends.
• Education's role is to impart knowledge of beauty, goodness and truth.
• Education prepares for life.
• Students should learn basic subjects to understand the world better.
• They should study the greatest works of literature, history, philosophy, humanities and science.
• Perennial means "everlasting".
• Despite differing environments, human nature remains the same.
• When immersed in profound ideas, students will learn for its own sake and become true intellectuals.
• The great books of ancient, medieval and modern times are a repository of knowledge.
• By neglecting reasoning skills, students lose the ability to use their "higher" faculties.
• Teacher-guided seminars and Socratic dialogues enhance historical understanding.

Progressivism

• Progressivism is a new approach contrasting essentialism and perennialism.
• The educational theory of pragmatism.

Humanism

• Is a modern philosophy where the aim of education is to target the overall development of the human person as an individual and a member of society.
• It takes into account all the powers, faculties and innate potentials within the human person, respecting the dignity and worth of each individual.

Post Modern Philosophies

Sociological Perspectives

• Social Dimensions of Education
• Introduction
• The Four Pillars of Education

The Four Pillars of Education for the 21st Century

• Learning to know: acquiring the instruments of understanding.
• Learning to do: acting creatively in one’s environment.
• Learning to live together: participating and cooperating with others.
• Learning to be: developing one’s personality and acting with autonomy, judgment and responsibility.
• Learning to know implies learning how to learn by developing one’s concentration, memory skills and ability to think.
• From infancy, young people must learn how to concentrate on objects and on other people.
• The process of improving concentration skills can take different forms and can be aided by the many different learning opportunities that arise in the course of people's lives (games, work experience programs, travel, practical science activities, etc.).

Learning to do

• Learning to do a job or work entails the acquisition of a competence that enables people to deal with a variety of situations, often unforeseeable, and to work in teams, a feature to which educational methods do not at present pay enough attention.
• It demonstrates that in order to learn to live and work together productively and harmoniously, we must first find peace within ourselves, expand our acceptance and understanding of others, and continually strive towards living the values which enable us to contribute more fully to the development of a peaceful and just society.
• It is anchored within the context of lifelong learning and technical and vocational education and training, in preparation for life and the world of work.

Learning to Live Together in Peace and Harmony

• Is the one of the most vital to building a genuine and lasting culture of peace.
• It can be achieved by developing an understanding of others and their history, traditions and spiritual values.
• On this basis we can create a new spirit guided by recognition of our growing interdependence and a common analysis of the risks and challenges of the future.
• This may induce people to implement common projects and to manage the inevitable conflicts in an intelligent and peaceful way.
• Consensus and Conflict Theory both attempt to apply learning more broadly.
• Dahrendorf says society has two faces (conflict and consensus) and sociological theory should be divided into conflict theory and consensus theory.
• Consensus theories see shared norms and values as fundamental, focusing on social order based on agreements and incremental change.
• Consensus theory examines value integration, conflict theory examines interests and coercion.
• Conflict is the equilibrium state, based on widespread disagreement.
• Consensus theory relates to social order and stability / social regulation more broadly.
• Dominate social theorists are Karl Marx, Emile Durkeheim and Max Weber others have supported Talcott Parsons, others include Ralph Dahrendorf and Herbert Mead and Herbert Bulmer.
• Conflict theories see domination of some by others, and social order based on manipulation.
• Change comes rapidly, as subordinate groups take over from dominate groups.
• Conflict emphasizes the heterogeneous nature of society, especially social class and differential power distributions.

Conflict Theorists

• How to understand schools unequal distribution of people.
• Conflict theorists claim schools contribute to this unequal distribution.
• The larger issue for conflict theorists is the role that education plays the prestige, power, and economic and social position of the dominant group in society.
• Social behavior is understood through conflict & struggle.
• Conflict theory arose about of the work of Karl Marx.
• Discourse of conflict theory on emergence of conflict and causes of conflict.
• The works of Marx in his early years was interpreted by some social theorists as emphasizing the role of human beings and social conflicts.

Weber

Structural Functionalism

• Structural functionalism emphasizes for all action systems includes adaptation to environment.
• Goal Attainment is a result of the personality systems and the resources provided.
• Interrelationships of components should exist.
• Finally a cultural system should include the latency function that occurs with actors of norms.
• Heart of Parsons work is the four action systems.
• This is done across each type of systems and the functions they encompass.
• 7 Key assumptions exist which each system has to allow for appropriate functioning.
• Parsons conception is broken down on a micro level where systems begin.
• Structural components are considered valuable and worth understanding.
• Any society assumes a functional perspective.

Functionalist Perspective

• Claims each particular form occurs because it works in some capacity.
• Various points that must be considered in such analyses.
• Interdependency must first exist and allow for functions to change as well.
• Consensus and Cooperation should also work with each other.
• If these exist then equilibrium can occur in most systems.
• Functionalist social model has preset patterns and allows stability to continue.
• Functionalist sociologists examine how well parts of society are integrated.

Interactionist Theories

• interactionist theories are critiques and extension of functionalist and conflict perspectives.
• Actionist theories attempt to label the commonplace actions each day.
• From this the processes will labeled accordingly as students from an interactionist view.

Symbolic Interactionism

• Actionist theory has origins in social psychology and interactions must be considered together.