Difference between Community Development Programme and Extension Education
Community development programme and extension education both are for welfare of the rural peoples. These programmes are having more similarities than dissimilarities between these two concepts. The difference between extension and community development, as revealed by the various statements of objectives, processes, forms and principles.
Extension Education:
Objectives:
- Emphasis on the individual.
- Education aimed at individual development to obtain economic and social improvement.
- Has as its main theme the individual’s needs.
- Emphasizes decision-making for change by individuals and families.
Form:
- Extension is an educational arm of Government, usually through educational institutions or other Government departments.
- Emphasizes an organization that either carries out educational services directly or transmits knowledge from other resources to people.
- Usually represents a transfer of responsibility form administering Government organization to another “Educational Group.”
- Permits cooperation between departments and agencies.
- Essentially a “Branch” of the Department of Agriculture.ot directly involved in promotion of local units of the Government.
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Community Development:
Objectives:
- Emphasis on cooperation.
- Education aimed at groups of individuals to work collectively to obtain economic and social improvement.
- Has as its main theme the communities needs.
- Emphasizes decision – making by groups and representation of groups.
Form:
- Community development is usually a direct Government approach to straight line organization.
- Emphasizes the coordination of services by a working team made up of representatives of different services.
- Usually a tight control held by a Government administering agency to cut across participating Governmental departments:
- To recognize and include the various departments that must provide service.
- To eliminate departmental reluctance to participate.
- Forces departments and agencies to participate.
- Essentially a branch of Government serving several departments of the Government.
- Tied into promotion of local units of the Government.
Limitations:
- Most of the people are still illiterate and it is a difficult task to train about million people living in villages. For such a population the extension methods like demonstration, individual approaches, exhibitions, group meeting and training classes require thousands of extension workers.
- Lack of communication channels, lack of roads, lack of vehicles are the major limitation of community development programmes.
- Limitations of funds and staff for training farmers. In some backward state, where the villages are small and far away form each other, the extension worker have to act as technical advisor as well as act as a he has to do some administrative and clerical job also, and this reduces their working day and also efficiency.
- A traditional society, with old ways and practices does not want to take risk unless it sees the result. Because change creates insecurity and uncertainty so there was resistance in the early years.
- In an illiterate, traditional society the real leadership could not come forward. People with vested interests tried to get advantage by fooling the real client system, and the extension agency.
- Preaching to rural people and educating them in new practices requires very careful handling and needs highly skilled workers who have knowledge of “how change take place” and the skill to induce them. It is very difficult to produce a large number of such workers.
- In the beginning, such limitations may not have been realized and objectives were very vaguely formulated. Thus, when goals are not fulfilled, to the extent they were formulated, there is public criticism which leads to further weakening the support to community development.
- The change-over form an attitude of heavy dependence of the Government to one of self-dependence takes place very slowly, and since there is lack of properly trained personnel and weaknesses in the supply line in the initial stage there is disappointment among the people.