Role of Education to Understand the Social Diversity in India

Back to: Contemporary India and Education-Unit 1

Education is an individual’s dynamic force and plays a highly influential role in a person’s mental, emotional, social, physical, creative, spiritual, and ethical development. It helps an individual to go through various experiences and implement these experiences in creating a meaningful life. According to Plato,

“Education is the capacity to feel pleasure and pain at the right moment it develops in the body and in the soul of the student all the beauty and all the perfection which he capable of.”

Plato

India is a diverse country and in a classroom, there may be learners belonging to different cultures, religions, languages, ethnicities, social backgrounds, and the like. Education plays an essential role in helping learners understand the social diversity in India.

Increases Cultural Awareness

Cultural awareness can be bought in the classroom when the teacher understands each student. Every student is unique and the teacher should try to understand each student’s cultural background. This will help students learn about each other’s culture and have compassion for it.

Equal treatment of every student

The teacher should treat all the students equally. There should be no prejudice inside the classroom. A kid may feel that because of his/her cultural background, the teacher treats him/her differently from others. Looking at the teacher, many students may follow the same behavior with the kid. Hence, a teacher also must treat every student equally without any discrimination.

Incorporating assignments based on cultural diversity

Assignments related to their cultural background should be given to the students to present in the classroom. Students will do proper research on it and share their cultural knowledge with their classmates. This way every student will have an understanding of their classmates’ culture. The students themselves will also have a better understanding of their own culture.

Teaching materials

As a teacher, try to expand your cultural knowledge and share the information acquired with your students. This is a very effective way of making students understand the importance of cultural diversity. It helps in giving students a deeper understanding of diversity. This will not only be helpful for the students but the teacher too in broadening the knowledge of cultural differences.

Observing holidays of every culture

Celebrate the holidays of every culture so that students feel a sense of belonging in the classroom and school. This way the students will understand the holiday traditions of each culture and why it is celebrated. Encourage all students to celebrate the different cultures represented in the classroom.

These are some of the ways that foster the inclusion of Indian social diversity in the classroom. Every student is different and a diverse classroom should be encouraged to live in peace, harmony, and mutual respect.