Role Of Educational Institutions In Promoting Social Awareness

Social awareness and consciousness serve as a precursor to social movement. There are a lot of social problems like female infanticide, domestic violence, rape, corruption, maltreatment, alcoholism, drug abuse, and superstitious beliefs etc. which are still a huge problem in India. The most significant challenges facing the society are intolerance, discrimination and racism, economic and technological backwardness and the absence of comprehensive and fair peace. It is vital that more and more people be made aware of these issues so that we can fight them as a united country. Social awareness give the ability 

• to understand and respond to the needs of others, 

• to understand the other person’s emotions, needs and concerns, 

• to understand the politics within an organization and how these affect the people working in them.

• to understand and meet the needs of clients and customers etc. 

Awareness is knowledge and knowledge is power. This means when we create awareness among people. We are also empowering them to face certain difficult situations and at the same time we are helping them to overcome these difficulties. There is an argumentative relation between social awareness and social existence. The social existence is the basis upon which the social awareness is built. The intellectual component of society represents science, theories, knowledge beliefs, ideas and concepts that help the individuals to understand, think, and search for possible solutions for social problems facing them. Awareness has positive relation with science and knowledge. 

The starting place for becoming socially aware is self-awareness. Self-awareness is essential in order to understand the feelings and emotions of others. Open communication plays an essential role in managing diversity and building an awareness of social situations. As we improve social awareness we also improve our experience of life, create opportunities for better work life balance, become aware of other people’s emotions, and improve our ability to respond to change. 

Awareness is the realisation of issues based on intellectual background and scientific basis, so it is a state of mind represented in the individual’s realisation of the world mentally and emotionally. The human know different types of awareness as social awareness and what it includes as ethical, religious, legal, cultural, health and political awareness. 

Educational institutions build moral essence and ethical values to produce socially desirable behaviour, personality and character which promote innovation, peace, equal opportunities and justification among individuals, society and nation. There is necessity to reconsider the roles of colleges, curriculum and methods of teaching and evaluation in promoting the social awareness by preparing programs which promote the social awareness and to design courses that enrich the student’s humanistic knowledge in different fields that suit their social status. Items of curricula and method of teaching and evaluation plays important role in promoting the social awareness. Innovative method of teaching involves dialogue, discussion and problem solving so as to develop the student’s ability of analysing and criticizing issues of the society. 

Evaluation tools should be used to diagnose the student’s point of weakness and strength. The updating curricula should suit the student’s cultural, social and behavioural activities compatible with  the requirement of present and future. The institution program should aim to deal directly with the student so as to strengthen their loyalty towards the society and activate the youth forums and utilize their free times through cultural, educational and cultural programs in order to meet the youth needs. Many traditional college students lack the social awareness that leads to social change. The institution should encourage number of social activities and provides enough time to practice them and supports the activities that assured the freedom of speech, thinking and constructive criticism. Institution should aware its students of social problems in the society, and prepare them to face these problems. The institution should consider the courses to enrich the students’ knowledge in the field of  human, social, scientific and cultural knowledge and update these courses time to time to suit the student’s social states.