Extension and Community Development Questions and Answers

Answer: A

A good extension programme should be flexible.

Extension programmes are built on people's felt needs, which change, and are carried out in changing conditions of weather, markets and policy. A good programme therefore allows for adjustment as needs and situations change, while keeping its long-term objectives.

A rigid programme cannot respond to such change, 'problematic' is not a desirable quality, and extension is an informal, out-of-school system of education rather than a formal one.

Answer: B

School education is not a characteristic of extension education.

Extension education is out-of-school, informal education for adults and rural people. It is based on people's needs, flexible in content and method, and multidimensional, covering agriculture, health, home science and community life.

School education is formal and follows a fixed curriculum, which is the opposite of extension. The other three options are standard characteristics of extension.

Answer: A

Such relationships are found in a primary group.

Charles Horton Cooley described primary groups, such as the family, close friends and neighbourhood play groups, as small groups marked by intimate, face-to-face, informal and lasting relationships, which shape a person's personality and values.

Secondary groups are larger and more formal, with impersonal and goal-oriented relationships, as in a trade union or a company. Voluntary groups are defined by free membership and congregate groups by people gathered in one place, not by intimacy.

Answer: B

A principle of extension education is the principle of need and interest.

Extension programmes must start from the felt needs and interests of the people, because people take part in and adopt what they see as useful to themselves. This is among the first principles listed in extension texts, with participation, cultural difference, adaptability, learning by doing and others.

Centralisation and passive participation contradict extension, which favours local planning and active participation. 'Understanding and translation' is not one of the listed principles.

Answer: D

The most student-centred and interactive method is group discussion.

In a group discussion every participant can express views, question others and build on their ideas, with the teacher acting mainly as a moderator. Learning comes from the exchange among students themselves.

A lecture is teacher-centred and one-way. A symposium has a few experts presenting different aspects of a topic to an audience, and a seminar has a presenter followed by discussion; both are more structured and allow less interaction for each participant.

Answer: A

The programme responsible for the green revolution is the HYVP, the High Yielding Varieties Programme.

Launched in 1966-67, the HYVP spread high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, used with assured irrigation, fertilisers and pesticides. It produced the sharp rise in food grain output, especially of wheat in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, known as the green revolution.

The Intensive Agricultural Areas Programme came before it as a preparatory step, while the IRDP (Integrated Rural Development Programme, 1978-80) and WDP were later programmes aimed at rural poverty and development, not at raising crop yields.

Answer: C

Training is concerned with specific job skills.

Training is a short-term, organised process that improves an employee's knowledge and skill for a particular job, such as operating a machine or using software. It is usually contrasted with development, which is broader, longer term and aimed at general growth, especially of managers.

That contrast rules out the other options. Training is typically of shorter duration, it is often technical, concerned with operating skills, and it is mainly given to operative and non-managerial staff, while executives receive development programmes.

Answer: C

The answer is Organised whole of learning and other experiences provided by educational institution, to realize self-goals.

In its wide modern sense, curriculum is not just a list of subjects or a syllabus. It is the totality of planned experiences that a school or college provides, in the classroom, laboratory, library, playground and community, to help learners reach the goals of education.

The other options are narrower. Subjects of study, courses to be completed and prescribed syllabi with practicals and projects describe parts of the curriculum, its content or its course structure, rather than the whole of the learner's experiences.

Answer: D

The keyed objective of formal education is to get a degree or certificate.

Formal education is the structured, graded system of schools, colleges and universities, with a fixed curriculum, examinations and age-related levels. Its distinguishing feature, and the aim most learners enter it with, is a recognised qualification at the end of each stage.

The other options describe aims that do not set formal education apart. Personal and social development is a goal of every kind of education, formal, non-formal and informal, while emotional reward and satisfying a passion for learning are personal motives that drive self-directed and informal learning without any certificate.

Answer: B

The keyed answer is country level.

Community development is a process by which the people of a local community, with government help, work to improve their own economic, social and cultural conditions. In India the Community Development Programme of 1952 was organised through the village, the development block, the district and the state, which planned, staffed and administered it down to the village level worker.

A whole country is not a community in this sense, so the key treats the country level as falling outside community development, while the village, district and state levels are all part of its structure.