Curriculum and Resources in Digital Era: Social Science Education - Seminar
SCHOOL TO COMMUNITY AND COMMUNITY TO
SCHOOL-RESOURCES-HISTORICAL-PALACE, MUSEUM, CAVES, FORTS, ARCHIVES.
Introduction
SCHOOL
A school is one of the
most important formal agencies of education. According to
Dewey, ‘the school is primarily a social institution-an effective agency in the
child to share in the inherited resources of the race and to use his own powers
for social ends’.
COMMUNITY
A community may be defined as a cluster of people
living within a small area and sharing a common way of life to a considerable
extent. Community plays a vital role in our social life.
COMMUNITY SCHOOL
|
The community
opens and maintains schools. |
The school
fulfils the educational needs of the community. |
|
The community
has a certain philosophy or objective of life. |
The school
translates the philosophy of the community into practice by educating the
children. |
|
Community
requires various categories of works- doctors, engineers, lawyers etc. |
The school
prepares the children for various jobs and services needed by the community. |
|
Community
provides the traditional culture. |
The school
balances, purifies and simplifies the complex activities of the traditional
community. It also enriches its traditional culture. |
Community resources stands for various man-material
resources available in the community or society in which the students live,
grow and function. A social studies teacher can organize the activities related
to utilization of community resources by adopting two different approaches.
1. Bringing
community to school and
2. Taking
school to the community.
BRINGING COMMUNITY TO THE SCHOOL
Some of the important means of bringing the community
to the school are given below:
1. The
school as a social, recreational and cultural centre
As most of the village, schools are the only common
meeting place in the villages, the cultural, the physical and social activities
in such localities should be planned, organised and held in the school as a
joint venture of the public, the staff and the pupils. In this way, social
service activities such as health and education weeks can be organised in the
schools. Religious discourses, national celebrations etc will attract members
of the community to the school.
2. Parent
- Teachers Association
There should be a parent – teachers association in the
school which will help all concerned to understand each other’s point of view
and will enable them to learn to co-operate in the common task of giving a
better, more rational and more sympathetic deal to the children.
3. Experience
of the members of the public
Various
‘resource visitors’ may be invited to the school and made to give out their
experiences in various walks of life and thus enrich the general knowledge of
the pupils. Interested members of the community engaged in various useful
vocations and professions, may be invited to the school from time to time to
talk about their vocation. Such talks can reveal the importance and
significance of the various jobs in the life of the community. If they discuss
also the difficulties as well as the rewards involved in the vocations such
talks can provide valuable vocational guidance to the students. By such
activities outside life will flow into the school and this current will break
the isolation between the school and community and also will make learning
dynamic and life centred.
4. Celebrating
fairs, festivals and national days
Various types of socio-cultural activities in the form
of the celebrating of fairs, festivals and national days may be organizes in
the school for providing opportunities for the utilization of community
resources. Such celebrating may be of the following:
·
Organization of the festivals, occasions,
gatherings, conference and meets created to different religious, rituals and
cultural traditions of the community
·
Birthday of generation from history,
national heroes, social reformers and leaders.
·
Celebration of national days like 15th
August, 26th January, Children’s Day etc.
·
Celebration of International days like UNO
day, International Peace Day, Women’s Day etc.
·
Organization of social science fairs and
exhibitions, cultural, festivals, various types of quiz etc.
5. School
library
Efforts should be made to
extend the services of the school library to the community and this may take
many forms:
·
Issuing of books to parents and other
members of the family in the name and responsibility of the pupils.
·
Opening of school library for public use
before and after school hours, on holidays and during vacations.
·
Giving a room to some social service
organisation for keeping books. This may be used by the community as a library.
·
Issuing of books to the secretary of the
old student’s association, who may act as librarian to the old students and be
held responsible for returning the books to the school.
6. Adult
Education Centre
The schools should become centres of adult education
in both rural and urban areas. They should conduct regular campaigns against
illiteracy and educate the adults of the locality. Students should also be
associated in this work.
TAKING SCHOOL TO THE COMMUNITY
1. Field
Trips
Field trips to places of
civic, cultural, geographical, social and scientific importance. These trips
are very helpful in integrating diverse ideas presented at the time of
classroom instruction. It also helps in stimulating imagination and for
learning through sensory perceptions. The pupils can observe life vividly,
learn the art of living with others and expand emotional and intellectual
horizons.
2. Community
Service
Community service which
includes cleaning of public places, attending the sick, social service in
fairs, planting of trees, digging of manure pits, making of drains etc. All
these activities help in developing a sense of dignity of labour,
fellow-feeling etc.
3. Social
Survey Clubs
Social survey clubs should be organised in
schools, which could undertake to investigate some of the urgent needs and
problems of the surrounding areas, example: the poor condition of roads,
non-availability of toilets in houses, unhealthy sanitary conditions, low
percentage of literacy, the lack of proper drainage system etc.
Both the
approaches of bringing community to the school and taking school to the
community may help a social study teaches to have ways and means for the proper
utilization of the man-material resources of the community in the task and
activities created to the desired teaching learning of the subject social
studies, besides contributing towards the welfare and all-round development of
the social studies students.
COMMUNITY RESOURCES-HISTORICAL - PALACE,
MUSEUM, CAVES AND ARCHIVES
1. MUSEUM
Museums have a great educative value. These are the
recreation centres also. These contain non-reading materials, which presents
valuable information concerning the past periods. Events, persons etc are
presented in the form of real objects, pictures, drawings, etc. The museums can
procure and maintain various materials that could be effectively used in
classroom teaching. It provides insights into how people lived, how society has
progressed and how science has developed since time immemorial. It stimulates
enthusiasm for deep study and research among students as well as teachers. The
Secondary Education Commission has rightly remarked that, ‘Museums play a great
part in the education of school children as they bring home to them much more
vividly than any prosaic lectures, the discoveries of the past and the various
developments that have taken place in many fields of science and technology’.
2. CAVES
Another important community resource is Caves. It is
very helpful to the teaching learning process. A cave or cavern is a hollow
place in the ground, especially natural underground space large enough for a
human to enter. Caves form naturally by the weathering of rock and often extend
deep underground. The word ‘cave’ can also refer to much smaller openings such
as sea caves, rock shelters and grottos. Speleology is the science of
exploration and study of all aspects of caves and the cave environment.
Visiting or exploring caves for recreation may be called caving, potholing.
Example:
Idakkal Caves in Wayanad
3. PALACE
Another community resource is historical palace. A
palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence or the home of a head
of State or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop.
The word itself is derived from the Latin name
‘palatium’, for Palatine Hill, the hill which housed the Imperial residences in
Rome. In many parts of Europe, the term is also applied to ambitious private
mansions of the aristocracy. Many historic palaces are now put to other uses
such as parliaments, museums, hotels or office buildings. The word is also
sometimes used to describe a lavishly ornate building used for public
entertainment or exhibitions.
4. ARCHIVES
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or
the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents
that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization’s
lifetime, and are kept to show the function of that person or organization.
Professional archivists and historians generally understand archives to be
records that have been naturally and necessarily generated as a product of
regular legal, commercial, administrative or social activities. They have been
metamorphically defined as ‘the secretions of an organism’, and are
distinguished from documents that have been consciously written or created to
communicate a particular message to posterity.
Conclusion
The community resources provide a connection between
the past and the present and it inspires men everywhere. It has a dignity and a
meaning. If teacher fails to make full use of the community in which his school
is situated than he is over-looking one of the richest sources of education for
his pupils. For utilizing the community resources fully, the school should take
itself to the community as a big laboratory for the education of its pupils. An
all-out effort be made to discover the community resources, understand its
culture, appreciate its problems and to provide solutions to the problems of
the community. While working in community the student gets opportunity to
explore not only physical setting but also the human setting.
Submitted
by,
Gayathry. P,
B.Ed 1st
year (Social Science)
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