COGNITION TRANSFORMATION & LIVES

INTRODUCTION

Social Work as a profession or as an academic discipline deals with problems of the individual.
Professional Social Worker seeks to help individual in such a so that they can help themselves. The
phrase “Help Themselves” has some assumptions. It means social work believes in the fact that
individuals have inherent capacity to help themselves or in other words individuals have free will
transform and train their mind. Neurologist would disagree that individuals have free will and they argue
that biology, conditioning and learning that directs human behavior. Even If we believe that there is free
will .Then, how this free will should be channelized in bringing not only change but transformation.
What should be cognitive framework and how this framework can create a synergy between emotions
and cognition? How questioning the contradictions, value and norms of the society in the form of daily
writings can create a impetus for this change. We will also look at the fact that whether transformation
is a conscious or unconscious process and the need of transformation comes from societal pressures or
from deep inside us.

ABOUT FIELD PLACEMENT

Trainee is placed in an agency named, Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education which seeks to
empower the marginalized, through education, to reflect on their life experiences and contexts, and
strive for a life of dignity. For more than three decades, Ankur has been working in the field of
experimental pedagogy, with children, young people, and communities in marginalized neighborhoods
of Delhi. Ankur makes the children of marginalized neighborhood question their reality and
contradictions that exists in the belief, value and norms of the so called main stream society.
Organization believes in the following principles

o Mainstream – education system is indifferent to the reality of lives of students from

marginalized communities

o It discourages questioning and reduces the learner to a passive recipient of knowledge

o It fails to develop the inherent potential of learners

TRANSFORMATION

Change is the law of nature. However, Sustained and permanent change is transformation. Change often
occurs due to societal needs but transformation is the result of individual need. Change requires the
following cognitive processes-

1. Questioning
2. Gaining systematic Knowledge
3. Alternatives-Creating goals
4. Check Capabilities
5. Choose Paths
Questioning is the most important and primary instrument in the process of transformation. Eminent
figure, Karl Marx also argued that unquestioning of the primary and super structure of the society leads
to the creation false consciousness .The major institutions of society like Religion, education system ,
family and many other act as a buffer zone for the individual and maintains the status-quo of false
consciousness .Paulo Freire in his master piece, Pedagogy of the Oppressed also asserted false
consciousness can be replaced with critical consciousness by questioning their day to day living
experiences. Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education prepare children to question their realities
through writings. This questioning creates dissonance in them and creates following type of dilemmas

 Individual Vs community
 Short term pleasure Vs Long term pleasure
 Justice Vs Mercy
 Truth Vs Loyalty
 Right Vs Right
 Right Vs Wrong

Disharmony created within individual due to dissonance puts pressure on the cognitive framework of
the mind to transform

Role of Empathy and Ethics in Transformation

References:

1. Wayne Weiten, Dana S Dunn, and Elizabeth Yost Hammer (2011).Psychology Applied to Modern
Life:Adjustment in the 21st Century. Wadsworth publishing (10th edition).

2. Robert C. Carson, James Neal Butcher,Susan Mineka (2000).Abnormal psychology and modern
life.Allyn & Bacon (11th edition).