Educational Studies Questions and Answers

Answer: C

By community is meant a group of people with a similar aim and at least one factor in common among caste, class, religion, profession or belief. A community is more than a gathering of people, and a shared purpose along with some common bond holds it together.

The first option, a group with only the same caste, class, religion or profession, lacks a shared aim, and the second option, similar aim only, lacks the common bond. Since the third option is the combination of the two, 'None of the above' is also wrong.

Answer: C

The key gives the answer that religion is an institution because it imparts moral and spiritual education to people. Religion is a social institution as it is an organised and lasting pattern of beliefs and practices which gives members of society moral and spiritual guidance.

The first option, that it teaches religion to people, only repeats the word and gives no reason, and the fourth, that it respects the individual in society, is not what makes it an institution. The second option, that it discharges an important social function, is also true of institutions in general, but the key follows the third.

Answer: D

Physical mobility, the movement of people from place to place, is not related to modernisation in the way the other types are. The mobilities that go with modernisation are psychic mobility, the capacity to imagine oneself in the position of others, scientific mobility, the movement of knowledge and ideas, and social mobility, the movement between social positions.

So psychic, scientific and social mobility are each tied to modernisation, and physical movement alone is not specific to it.

Answer: C

Teaching how to respect elders and talk to them is an example of socialisation, the process by which a child learns the values, manners and norms of the society and becomes a member of it, through the family, the school and the peer group.

Social cohesion is the bond that unites society, social change is the alteration of social structure, and social adjustment is the way the individual fits his environment. None of these three names the learning of manners from the elders.

Answer: D

The census is not a factor for social change in India. It is a count and a record of the population and not a force that changes social relations.

Caste, regionalism and language are all social forces that have shaped social change in India: caste through its changing role and mobility, regionalism through demands for states and regional identity, and language through the reorganisation of states on linguistic lines. So these three are factors, and the census is the exception.

Answer: D

Religion is a barrier to social change because it is based on faith. Faith asks for acceptance of beliefs and customs without question, so the religious attitude resists the questioning and change that social change needs.

Preaching values, depending on gatherings and expecting participation of all age groups are features of many social institutions, which do not make religion a barrier to change as such; the one feature that opposes change is the reliance on unquestioned faith.

Answer: B

The dictum comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Emile he argued that the usual practice of his day, which forced adult ideas and bookish discipline on children, should be reversed, so that education follows the child's own nature and stage of growth; this is the root of his naturalism. Plato is wrong because he built education around the state and the training of guardians. Mahatma Gandhi is wrong because his basic education centred on handicraft and self-reliance, not on reversing common practice. Dewey is wrong because his pragmatism stressed learning by doing and the social setting of the school, and he is not the source of this saying.

Answer: A

The correct matching is a-iii, b-i, c-ii, d-iv. Learning by doing is the pragmatist method, associated with Dewey. Having no lofty educational aims, but letting the child's natural development guide education, belongs to naturalism. Realization of truth, beauty and goodness is the aim of the idealists. Taking the world as it is here and now is the realist stand. Option (B) pairs learning by doing with naturalism and truth, beauty and goodness with idealists, but it gives b as existentialism, which is wrong. Option (C) pairs the realist view with existentialism. Option (D) pairs learning by doing with the idealists, which reverses the actual philosophies. Existentialism (v) is the extra item that matches none of a to d.

Answer: D

The key takes option (D), that educational change and social change are interdependent, with no way to say which causes which. This is the position of an interactive view: schools are shaped by society, and schools in turn help to change it, so the causal direction cannot be fixed. Option (A) claims education changes society, which is a one-way claim. Option (B) claims educational change only follows social change, which is a one-way claim in the other direction. Option (C) says the two are independent, which contradicts the fact that schools are social institutions. Some readers attribute the view in (B) to Ottaway, so this item rests on the key's reading.

Answer: C

The key marks option (C), Empathy, as the item that is not a characteristic of modernization. This is open to doubt: Daniel Lerner, in The Passing of Traditional Society, treats empathy, the ability to put oneself in another's place, as a mark of the mobile modern personality, and participation and mobility are also standard modernization traits. Religious faith, option (A), is usually set on the traditional side, because modernization stresses rationality and secularization. The official key nevertheless gives (C), and no source I could cite shows the key to be a mistake, so the key stands. A student should know that textbook lists differ on this item.