The importance of education in modern society

The main value of modern society is a person capable of mastering new knowledge, searching for and making non-standard decisions. The society gets such people with the help of the educational system of higher professional education.

At present, higher professional education is an extensive network of educational, research and educational institutions. Education and the system of higher professional education are constantly transforming and changing. And this is mainly connected with the economic development of society, with the adaptation of the system of higher professional education to market relations, with the consideration of professional education as a sphere of services and goods.

When the educational process does not correspond to the pace of development of society, the task of preparing people for life in a rapidly changing environment appears. And this is possible if the system of higher professional education is able to easily restructure the direction and content of the material, working ahead of the curve.  

Changes in the system of higher professional education are inevitable, since they are determined not only by the development of society, but also by the emergence of global problems in the world that require cooperation to solve them, the expansion of intercultural interaction, and the formation of modern thinking among young people. In addition, one should take into account the continuous development of the economy, competition, a decrease in the need for unskilled or low-skilled labor, profound changes in employment, which determine the constant need for professional development and retraining of workers, the growth of their professional mobility.

Significant changes in the vocational education system are being addressed within the framework of educational reforms. However, in recent years such problems have arisen that cannot be solved in the reform process. Therefore, in the scientific literature, with increasing confidence, they state the existence of a global crisis in education, which consists in the training of narrow specialists according to the principle of the division of labor, while the integral development of a person is ignored. The crisis of the educational process in our country is additionally burdened by the process of modernization of the Russian education system.

Many educational institutions have appeared, where the practice of using modern information and communication technologies in education is actively spreading. Personal contact between the student and the teacher is minimized. Such a student will not have fundamental knowledge, he will not receive spiritual and aesthetic development. In the absence of communication, dialogue with the teacher, when “it is not so important - what is read, how important is who reads”, it is impossible to achieve a certain professional and personal level of student development.

It is sad that education has turned from a spiritual sphere into a “service industry”. However, reality cannot be avoided: in Russia the educational process is built on the principle of “education for the market”.

It should be noted the stabilizing role of education in solving the problem of sustainable development of society in the context of global changes and contradictions of the modern world. But, at the same time, it cannot be denied that education and its state depend on the socio-political and state structure of the country.

The institute of education has many functions. However, as practice shows, it does not successfully cope with all functions. In this connection, the functional model of the institution of education leads to the accumulation of contradictions. For example, the contradiction between the goals of the development of society and considerations of prestige, the structure of income leads to the fact that when choosing a profession, not everyone gets an education that meets their personal interests and, at the same time, the interests of national development.

Education, being the pivotal basis and fundamental indicator of the formation and development of mankind, performs the function of society, which ensures its reproduction and development of systems of activity in constantly changing social relations.

The social functions of education, being interrelated, simultaneously have oppositely directed integrating and differentiating properties that have a direct impact on the stratification of society, for example, educated and illiterate, provided for by their education and disadvantaged people who have low wages for unskilled work.

Education objectively contributes to an increase in social status, but at the same time, a fairly significant part of the population with a high level of education in conditions of market relations and competition is forced to lower it.

As you can see, the ongoing restructuring of the education system concerns not only the institution of education, but already affects the fundamental foundations of the development of society.