One way of thinking of education for democracy is considering the civil responsibility of various individuals. To greater heights Benjamin’s work explanation that there are shifts in the social order towards democratic ideals, shaping the aims of the institutions of higher education. The social purpose of education is at once to ensure equal liberty and equal opportunity to different individuals and groups, and enabling citizens to understand, appraise and redirect forces as well as events since this seems as though either strengthening or weakening their liberty. To a greater degree, education is a social imperative. Personal and professional success depends on excellent education and the social well-being tied to a well-educated population. The belief in these social imperative lies behind the motivation, in many, but not all, of various learning pioneers.
Barber stresses that since in a democracy, the ultimate purpose of education has involved the optimum growth of the individual, the neglect of social purpose and neglect of individuality are two ways of saying the same way (183). Hence, Barber’s position tends to affirm that anticipated casual relationship between the intervening variables values and knowledge, and democratic education shapes the concept of high culture. Therefore, Barber’s presumed cause and effect relationship established here seem to denote the individual as well as the social responsibility of democratic living that uphold high education for national development.
In the essay “Where College Fails Us” Caroline Bird, states that college education always has, though in a damaged form, served as a symbolic and concrete reminder that the conflict for democracy is, in part an effort to liberate man from kind obedience to authority. Individual and social meaning gained primarily through the freedom guaranteed by public sphere, freedoms in which the autonomy of individuals only becomes meaningful under the conditions that likewise ensures the workings of an autonomous society. What needs to be acknowledged in light of the legacy the intimate relationship between a functioning and a strong democracy and higher education is that the principle of the market should not become the organizational structure or either education and social relation or democracy itself. Higher education should neither be run like a business, nor simply be sold off to the highest corporate and government bidders (Bird 182).
Particularly, higher education encourages participation, not only in higher education governance, but in every activity that relates to the life if higher education. Theoretical studies have significance in engaging in the life of our society (Johnson 21). Also for individual credibility, higher education institutions need to practice that which they teach. One cannot support participation in theory, but in practice and remain credible. Building a community makes people feel that they are part of something important, and they have a stake in attempting to improve the community. If a college student feels a part of the higher education community, they will work to improve it, and a positive experience of community at the decisive stage of their lives will encourage them to engage with the communities they find themselves in later.
In conclusion, for every academic that show commitments to the values, principles as well as practices of democracy and have made sacrifices, there are, alas, counter examples of academics that out of conviction or by taking of least resistance, have denied and collaborated with dictatorship. Developing and maintaining a democratic culture is, therefore, a double task for the higher education community. It must do so for itself, and it must do for the benefit of others
Works Cited
Barber, Benjamin R. A passion for democracy: American essays. Princeton University Press, 2000.
Bird, Caroline. "Where College fails us." Signature 43 (1975).
Johnson, Valen E. Grade inflation: A crisis in college education. Springer Science & Business Media, 2006.
