Whither Indian Education?
The Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India constituted a committee for providing inputs for framing the new National Education Policy. The committee submitted a report in April 2016. The report opens with the following introduction:
The educational system which was evolved first in ancient India is known as the Vedic system. The importance of education was well recognized in India: ‘ svarājye pūjyate rājā vidvān sarvatra pūjyate’—A king is honoured only in his own country, but one who is learned is honoured throughout the world. The ultimate aim of education in ancient India was not knowledge, as preparation for life in this world or for life beyond, but for complete realization of self. The Gurukul system fostered a bond between the Guru & the Shishya and established a teacher-centric system in which the pupil was subjected to a rigid discipline and was under certain obligations towards his teacher. The world’s first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC and the University of Nalanda was built in the 4th century BC, a great achievement and contribution of ancient India in the field of education. Science and technology in ancient and medieval India covered all ajor branches of human knowledge and activities. Indian scholars like Charaka and Susruta, Aryabhata, Bhaskaracharya, Chanakya, Patanjali and Vatsayayna and numerous others made seminal contribution to world knowledge in such diverse fields as mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, medical science and surgery, fine arts, mechanical and production technology, civil engineering and architecture, shipbuilding and navigation, sports and games. The Indian education system helped in preserving ancient culture and promoting cultural unity and infused a sense of responsibility and social values. The ancient Indian education system has been a source of inspiration to all educational systems of the world, particularly in Asia and Europe. *1
During a televised discussion on the National Education Policy, Dr. T S R Subramanian, who headed the committee, without mincing words expressed his concern about what ails Indian education. He said the education system is on the verge of collapse owing to the rampant politicisation of educational institutions in India. *2 Sixty-eight years after Independence, achieving acceptable quality and outreach even in basic education continues to be an unfulfilled dream.
More than a hundred years ago, Swami Vivekananda gave us what was a possible blueprint for modern India’s first National Education Policy when he warned his countrymen of the pitfalls of the colonial system of education, which had replaced the Indian system. In his famous lecture on ‘The Future of India’ given in Madras on February 14, 1897, at the Harmston Circus Pavilion, Swamiji waxed eloquent on the need for redefining India’s education policy:
We must have a hold on the spiritual and secular education of the nation. Do you understand that? You must dream it, you must talk it, you must think it, and you must work it out. Till then there is no salvation for the race. The education that you are getting now has some good points, but it has a tremendous disadvantage which is so great that the good things are all weighed down. In the first place it is not a man-making education, it is merely and entirely a negative education. A negative education or any training that is based on negation is worse than death. The child is taken to school, and the first thing he learns is that his father is a fool, the second thing that his grandfather is a lunatic, the third thing that all his teachers are hypocrites, the fourth that all the sacred books are lies! By the time he is sixteen he is a mass of negation, lifeless and boneless. And the result is that fifty years of such education has not produced one original man in the three Presidencies. Every man of originality that has been produced has been educated elsewhere, and not in this country, or they have gone to the old universities once more to cleanse themselves of superstitions. Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life- building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library— “The ass carrying its load of sandalwood knows only the weight and not the value of the sandalwood.” If education is identical with information, the libraries are the greatest sages in the world, and encyclopaedias are the Rishis. The ideal, therefore, is that we must have the whole education of our country, spiritual and secular, in our own hands, and it must be on national lines, through national methods as far as practical. Of course this is a very big scheme, a very big plan. I do not know whether it will ever work out. But we must begin the work. *3
If only our politicians had listened to the sane advice of Swami Vivekananda and other Indian visionaries like Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, Mahatma Gandhi, and Rabindranath Tagore, who were all unanimous in their appeal to decolonise the education system, perhaps Indian education and Indian civilisation would be in a completely different state today. But that was not to be; and we continue to grapple with problems which should have been resolved long ago.
A ‘Mercenary’ System
Perhaps this is not the right place to delve into the topic of what ails our educational system. But it is important to understand the roots of this malady, since it is deeply cultural; and any positive reformation of Indian education will have to involve a cultural transformation of its content and approach.
Indian education today fits the description of a ‘bread-winning’ education, as Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa called it more than century ago. It is largely driven by the requirements and pressures of industry; and only those skills and disciplines which are highly valued by industry tend to find buyers in the ‘educational market.’ For example, software professionals were in great demand till a few years ago; students from all degrees tended to gravitate towards the software industry by honing their computer programming skills through crash courses.
In this industry-driven system, there are no (or very few) takers for important disciplines like literature, history, archaeology, sociology, and other branches of the humanities. Many colleges have shut down history departments because there are no takers anymore! How much emphasis Swami Vivekananda placed on the rewriting of Indian history in his talks and conversations! If an ancient civilisation like India does not value the learning and teaching of its own history, and demeans it in favour of a short- sighted careerism, then we are doomed as a civilisation indeed. No wonder thinkers like Sri Aurobindo called this a ‘mercenary’ system!
There was a time when Swami Vivekananda poignantly asked the young men of Bengal whether becoming a barrister was the highest goal of life they could aim for. Perhaps today Swamiji would ask the youth of India if becoming a software professional is the highest goal they can aim for!
This job-oriented approach of Indian education would not be such a problem if there were at least a basic emphasis on man-making and character-building, as Swami Vivekananda wanted.
The Voice of Voiceless Students
In 2008, I had the good fortune of being part of an NGO called International Forum for India’s Heritage, which conducted a survey on cultural content in the school curriculum. The survey revealed that while the major stakeholders in education—students, teachers, and parents—wanted more cultural content to be included, our politicians will not allow this to happen, to keep their vote banks intact.
Commenting on the striking results of this survey, Michel Danino, a French historian and educationist under whose initiative the survey was conducted, writes thus:
The Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India constituted a committee for providing inputs for framing the new National Education Policy. The committee submitted a report in April 2016. The report opens with the following introduction:
The educational system which was evolved first in ancient India is known as the Vedic system. The importance of education was well recognized in India: ‘ svarājye pūjyate rājā vidvān sarvatra pūjyate’—A king is honoured only in his own country, but one who is learned is honoured throughout the world. The ultimate aim of education in ancient India was not knowledge, as preparation for life in this world or for life beyond, but for complete realization of self. The Gurukul system fostered a bond between the Guru & the Shishya and established a teacher-centric system in which the pupil was subjected to a rigid discipline and was under certain obligations towards his teacher. The world’s first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC and the University of Nalanda was built in the 4th century BC, a great achievement and contribution of ancient India in the field of education. Science and technology in ancient and medieval India covered all ajor branches of human knowledge and activities. Indian scholars like Charaka and Susruta, Aryabhata, Bhaskaracharya, Chanakya, Patanjali and Vatsayayna and numerous others made seminal contribution to world knowledge in such diverse fields as mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, medical science and surgery, fine arts, mechanical and production technology, civil engineering and architecture, shipbuilding and navigation, sports and games. The Indian education system helped in preserving ancient culture and promoting cultural unity and infused a sense of responsibility and social values. The ancient Indian education system has been a source of inspiration to all educational systems of the world, particularly in Asia and Europe. *1
During a televised discussion on the National Education Policy, Dr. T S R Subramanian, who headed the committee, without mincing words expressed his concern about what ails Indian education. He said the education system is on the verge of collapse owing to the rampant politicisation of educational institutions in India. *2 Sixty-eight years after Independence, achieving acceptable quality and outreach even in basic education continues to be an unfulfilled dream.
More than a hundred years ago, Swami Vivekananda gave us what was a possible blueprint for modern India’s first National Education Policy when he warned his countrymen of the pitfalls of the colonial system of education, which had replaced the Indian system. In his famous lecture on ‘The Future of India’ given in Madras on February 14, 1897, at the Harmston Circus Pavilion, Swamiji waxed eloquent on the need for redefining India’s education policy:
We must have a hold on the spiritual and secular education of the nation. Do you understand that? You must dream it, you must talk it, you must think it, and you must work it out. Till then there is no salvation for the race. The education that you are getting now has some good points, but it has a tremendous disadvantage which is so great that the good things are all weighed down. In the first place it is not a man-making education, it is merely and entirely a negative education. A negative education or any training that is based on negation is worse than death. The child is taken to school, and the first thing he learns is that his father is a fool, the second thing that his grandfather is a lunatic, the third thing that all his teachers are hypocrites, the fourth that all the sacred books are lies! By the time he is sixteen he is a mass of negation, lifeless and boneless. And the result is that fifty years of such education has not produced one original man in the three Presidencies. Every man of originality that has been produced has been educated elsewhere, and not in this country, or they have gone to the old universities once more to cleanse themselves of superstitions. Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life- building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library— “The ass carrying its load of sandalwood knows only the weight and not the value of the sandalwood.” If education is identical with information, the libraries are the greatest sages in the world, and encyclopaedias are the Rishis. The ideal, therefore, is that we must have the whole education of our country, spiritual and secular, in our own hands, and it must be on national lines, through national methods as far as practical. Of course this is a very big scheme, a very big plan. I do not know whether it will ever work out. But we must begin the work. *3
If only our politicians had listened to the sane advice of Swami Vivekananda and other Indian visionaries like Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, Mahatma Gandhi, and Rabindranath Tagore, who were all unanimous in their appeal to decolonise the education system, perhaps Indian education and Indian civilisation would be in a completely different state today. But that was not to be; and we continue to grapple with problems which should have been resolved long ago.
A ‘Mercenary’ System
Perhaps this is not the right place to delve into the topic of what ails our educational system. But it is important to understand the roots of this malady, since it is deeply cultural; and any positive reformation of Indian education will have to involve a cultural transformation of its content and approach.
Indian education today fits the description of a ‘bread-winning’ education, as Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa called it more than century ago. It is largely driven by the requirements and pressures of industry; and only those skills and disciplines which are highly valued by industry tend to find buyers in the ‘educational market.’ For example, software professionals were in great demand till a few years ago; students from all degrees tended to gravitate towards the software industry by honing their computer programming skills through crash courses.
In this industry-driven system, there are no (or very few) takers for important disciplines like literature, history, archaeology, sociology, and other branches of the humanities. Many colleges have shut down history departments because there are no takers anymore! How much emphasis Swami Vivekananda placed on the rewriting of Indian history in his talks and conversations! If an ancient civilisation like India does not value the learning and teaching of its own history, and demeans it in favour of a short- sighted careerism, then we are doomed as a civilisation indeed. No wonder thinkers like Sri Aurobindo called this a ‘mercenary’ system!
There was a time when Swami Vivekananda poignantly asked the young men of Bengal whether becoming a barrister was the highest goal of life they could aim for. Perhaps today Swamiji would ask the youth of India if becoming a software professional is the highest goal they can aim for!
This job-oriented approach of Indian education would not be such a problem if there were at least a basic emphasis on man-making and character-building, as Swami Vivekananda wanted.
The Voice of Voiceless Students
In 2008, I had the good fortune of being part of an NGO called International Forum for India’s Heritage, which conducted a survey on cultural content in the school curriculum. The survey revealed that while the major stakeholders in education—students, teachers, and parents—wanted more cultural content to be included, our politicians will not allow this to happen, to keep their vote banks intact.
Commenting on the striking results of this survey, Michel Danino, a French historian and educationist under whose initiative the survey was conducted, writes thus:
We first questioned students on aspects of Indian heritage: arts, science, festivals, traditional sports and games, literature, inspiring historical or mythical characters, yoga and spirituality. The results were striking: 91% of all students felt that they would benefit from learning elements of Indian culture. Among the aspects of Indian culture that students would like to learn, art comes first, followed by asanas and pranayama, physical games such as kabaddi, and meditation.Coming to values, only 38% of the students felt that they were acquiring some values at school – an unflatteringly low proportion; 7% specifically stated they were acquiring no values at all, 11% gave intermediate replies, and 44% did not reply at all. As regards the values which students said they would most like to practise in their own lives, honesty came first, followed by truthfulness, brotherhood and friendship, duty and dharma, reverence for / inspiration from one’s parents, self-perfection, courage and simplicity, and finally non-violence. When asked which values they felt they had acquired from stimulating stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Panchatantra, etc., the categories and proportions were very similar, which reflects on the inspirational potential of such texts and stories when used as educational tools. . .Indian culture has been kept out of sight of our children, and they are asking for it to be restored to them – a legitimate demand. When their British, French or German counterparts are imparted something of their country’s culture at school, it is baffling why Indian students should be denied access to Indian culture and the world-acclaimed values that it has nurtured for millennia. *4
The new National Education Policy should address this cultural vacuum in schools and colleges. It is eating into the very roots of Indian civilisation.
Cultural Refinement: the Most Important Goal of Education
As a member of the teaching community in India, I cannot but deplore the crudity which is all-pervasive today—not only on educational campuses, but in our private and public spaces. One only has to look at the average Indian’s behaviour in public spaces, while driving or while at a shopping mall, to see how low we have stooped as a civilisation today. The great scientist and visionary Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam often used to comment that India is an advanced civilisation in an advanced state of decay.
Swami Vivekananda spelled out the highest goal of education when he said, ‘Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man.’ Swami Ranga- nathananda, the 13th President of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, elaborated further on the importance of cultural refine- ment in education. He said:
We have refineries in India now, we take crude oil and refine that oil, and out of that refinery we get beautiful petroleum products. Even fine scents you get out of it. Refining is essential so far as crude oil is concerned. Similarly, nature has given to man a wonderful refinery of experience within the human system. Take crude experience, refine it, and then send out beautiful products of character—love, compassion, peace, efficiency of work, dedication—out of the crude energy that you get in yourself. This is the subject which every youth must think about and work out in life. How to refine my experience? Today, in the concept and practice of education all over the world, there is very little of this refining of experience. The crudity that has come to our life is appalling. Crudity in the ordinary human relations, crudity in politics, crudity everywhere; education is there, but no refining; that crudity is the sign that we have not used our body-mind complex as a refinery of experience. *5
The revival and renaissance which Swami Vivekananda predicted for India must start with a cultural transformation of Indian education. This transformation is the surest way to resolve the major ills afflicting our society today.
Moving towards a Dharmic Education
One of the biggest collective failures of India in the post-independence era has been the sidelining of the true understanding of dharma in education and all other spheres of our individual and social life, in preference to the shallow western notion of ‘secularism.’ Sixty-eight years after Independence, we are still debating the unfulfilled agenda of decolonising Indian education to reflect the dharmic values of Indian civilization instead of taking a giant leap to achieve a cultural renaissance as envisioned by Swami Vivekananda.
The Indian educational system must reflect on the core values of Indian culture. Proposed below are four new purusharthas which every educationist in India should strive for, in order to fulfil Swami Vivekananda’s ‘plan of action’ for Indian education:
1. Skill and career development are an important aspect of education, but these cannot be the only goals or the highest ideals of education. Man-making and character-building should be the primary cultural goals of Indian education.
2. A child’s career choices should not be unduly influenced by parental or peer pressure or the popular choices guided by the demand- and-supply flow of industry. Education should help a child discover his or her innate cultural talents and allow him or her to pursue them to the fullest possibility.
3. It is the birthright of every Indian child to know about the positive aspects of Indian culture through Indian literature, art forms, epics, and spirituality. We cannot suppress or deny this right for any reason, political or otherwise.
4. The core of Indian culture is spiri- tuality. Yoga, meditation, and the benefits of such Indian spiritual practices are being accepted worldwide today. The United Nations has declared 21 June to be the International Day of Yoga. Yoga, meditation, and spirituality should be an integral part of the school and college curricula in India.
References
1. Report of the Committee for Evolution of the New Education Policy, National Policy on Education 2016, Ministry of Human Resource Development, www.nuepa.org/New/download/NEP2016/ ReportNEP.pdf
2. The Big Picture - New Education Policy: Highlights and Hitches, Rajya Sabha TV, Guests: T S R Subramanian, former Cabinet Secretary and others, 1st July 2016.
3. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata, Mayavati Memorial Edition, Vol. 3, pp. 301-302
4. School education: what students say. http:// www.teacherplus.org/2008/november- december/school-education-what-students-say
5. Universal Message of the Bhagavad-Gita, Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata, Vol. 1, pp.193-194
NOTE:
The author is an Assistnt Professor in the Department of Cultural Education at Amrita University, Coimbatore.Courtesy: The Vedanta Kesari ~ 500 ~ DECEMBER 2016
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