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The Social Context of Education

Summary/Abstract: Education may not be analyzed without studying the social context; similarly, educational reform may not be examined without a better understanding of the context of social changes.Social context is defined as a set of social characteristics, such as: key social changes and the speed thereof; value systems within a society; impact of society as a system on education as one of its subsystems.The relationship between society and education is not a political one, event hough it is often portrayed as such, especially when the emphasis is placed on the issue of educational reform. It is rather a socio-cultural problem, connected to the issues surrounding social development. Therefore, the goals of educational reform must be defined within the wider context of social goals.In order to conduct changes in education, it is important to define what thesociety expects from education. In premodern societies, the main goal of upbringing and education was to socialize young people into the wider society. In other words: social reproduction.Being of a low and slow level of change, they had a low-level demand for educational reforms as well. Modern societies, and especially highly developed contemporary ones, undergo fast changes and demand education that will accelerate social changes and enable a more rapid development within certain areas of the society, as well as the society as a whole. If society is understood as a place of constant change in social relations and structures, then educational changes (reforms) ought to be considered a permanent and crucial aspect thereof.We will further discuss several social characteristics and changes, as well as theimpact of those changes on both education and culture.

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