Building Blocks of Social Engineering in Education System (Social)

We know that education system is back bone of society, but it is also a fact that even after 69 years of independence such educational hubs capable of creating socially conscious and active citizens are rarely found. Aspiration of securing high marks and grabbing high salaried job through education is motivating new generation to get prepared to race in the market. As a result the competitive and self centered attitude controls their mind and restricts the socialization of their personality. Unlimited desire of gaining all means of comfort, false vanity and ego centric attitude along with competitive mentality invites the diseases like hypertension in their lives. It could be counted as the short come of education system to develop efficient philosophy of life among new generation.

Dissemination of knowledge in institution with an aim to make an individual realize personal and social responsibilities can lead to the formation of philosophy of life in students. Developing concept from information provided in chapter and creating a vision to understand and identify the dynamics and crises of society can motivate especially the Arts students to think of ways to facilitate the society through application of their knowledge. Students of Arts discipline can be inspired to think of ways to combat the socio-cultural crises of present era. The students of Economics may be motivated to think of ways to get financial support from the businessmen community for the upliftment of any area. This approach can promote research oriented, creative thinking among students. Creating visionary and creative students demands effective teaching strategy along with clubbing of contents in meaningful clusters. The collective efforts of teachers and educationists through series of discussions and workshops are required to make this possible.

Present era demands innovative and interdisciplinary approach in field of higher education especially in social science with long-term orientations on social and cultural aims and needs. Though our education system requires massive changes to meet this requirement but keeping pace with the demand of time the university education system must have some scope to create and disseminate knowledge through research and provide a service to the community in socio cultural field. In order to enable university education system to play such significant role in society ‘Community Service Research Cell’ can be established in university. It can promote research oriented community service by providing platform to the students interested in planning effective projects based on knowledge gained from formal education and implementing it skillfully in society. The approach of work must be interdisciplinary as any crisis related to human life and society usually needs to be seen in its historical context to understand the roots effectively. It is pertinent to understand the psychological impact of the crisis in the lives of the people. The economic and the financial perspectives are needed to be explored to plan an effective project to combat the crisis. Besides, literary/ artistic/ educational or other disciplinarian approaches can enable a project thereby creating a positive impact in the social condition of the locality.

CSRC can provide platform for ‘Action Research’ and ‘Theoretical Research’. The Action Research can deal with the direct implementation of a project in a locality and the Theoretical Research can deal with the planning of modules to design the project. The cell can play an important role by opening an avenue for the young generation to express their ideas to serve the society on the basis of their knowledge and experiences. The ideas written in an open register in CSRC can help a student to find friends of similar thinking patterns.

The coordinator of CSRC can suggest a student team the names of specific resource persons capable of guiding the team to make any idea conceived by them more effective and practical. CSRC can organize leadership training, time management training and training for attaining peace of mind to enable students to develop philosophy of life in order to cope up with the changes in life and society.

Coping up with the students’ mentality of studying for gaining high marks to grab good jobs and motivating them to work for CSRC is really a challenging issue.  To combat this crisis a separate ‘Golden Book Page’ can be created in the website of Ministry of Higher Education. This page can have the information of the projects accomplished by the student team under CSRC of a university. By the virtue of registration of name in ‘Golden Book’ the University and the members of student team can get a ‘Golden Book ID No.’ and the University can get the right of issuing Votive Tablets against its entry in Golden Book.

The ‘Votive Tablet’ were dedicated and given in fulfillment of a pledge or vow in ancient India.  It advertised for goodwill and motivated people to do well. The practice of giving votive tablets originated in India and the practice was carried forward by the Buddhist monks to other countries of the world.

Votive Tablet can be a significant gift for the guests of the University and can reflect its special status. In the existing competitive world most people are motivated to work for their own benefit. The works inspired by the humanitarian values are rarely encouraged. Under such circumstances, votive tablets will advertise for the humanitarian values. The right to distribute votive tablets provided to a university by a remarkable event organized by the Ministry of Higher Education can give rise to positive competition among the college and university students to facilitate society through CSRC and get their names registered in ‘Golden Book’. The provision of presenting special Votive Tablet to businessmen or companies for their financial support in accomplishment of the project can motivate them to come forward to support such projects.

The Votive Tablet may have Golden Book Registration Number, Pledge statement and Star number. Each star will represent each successfully accomplished project.

CSRC can mitigate the gap between knowledge and action and can motivate the students for social work. The scope of good exposure by social work and a step towards the fulfillment of their psychological needs of discovering own identity and formation of philosophy of life can create a healthy environment for learning.