EDUCATION TODAY AND TOMMORROW
IN THE CONTEXT OF GANDHIAN BASIC EDUCATION
By Shri Dayalchand Soni
November, 1999, Udaipur.
Dear students from Concordia College, University of Michigan, and Gustavus Adolphus College:
I feel glad in welcoming you to Udaipur and in sharing my views on the educational situation in post-Independence India.
Mr. Kishore Saint, while asking me to speak before you, has suggested that I should concentrate on the following 5 points in my presentation:
1. Visions and aspirations of education during the post independence period of India.
2. Basic Education as was sponsored and propounded by Gandhiji.
3. How India failed to adopt Basic Education as the national pattern of minimum compulsory national school-education.
4. The relevance of Gandhiji's educational views in the modern times.
5. Education during the 21st century.
Let me confess, in the very beginning, that I do not feel I am fit for giving you satisfactory and expert views on all these five points. My only qualification is that I have had the fortunate opportunity of doing practical work in Basic Education propounded by Gandhiji, for fifteen years during the period between 1941 and 1955. I have been lucky in Gandhiji's residence in Sevagram in 1945 and listen to his views on education and other subjects. I have also had the fortunate opportunity of joining a team of Indian Rural educationists which visited Denmark to study its Folk High School system with a view of utilizing that system in India. Thus, I do have some experiences and I have also written quite a lot on education, but unfortunately, I have not read much and I have not been a good scholar, nor I am a highly degreed person. So, with the conscientiousness of my handicaps, I do not promise to follow the five points given to me in a strict manner. Though, I shall generally try to cover these five points, I may express myself on some other points also in the hope that you will excuse me for that lapse. Let me also say that my views generally do not agree with whatever is going on today in the name of education. I disagree with most of our policymakers, teachers and educationists and I am critical of what is going in the name of education.
You may be surprised to know that I do not agree with the view that education is the same thing as today's schooling is. I do not agree with the view that education is the monopoly of the schools only. I believe that the very process of human life is a process of inherent education. I do not oppose schooling. But, I do not feel that the modern schools have been planned to put in some adulteration in the sacred process of human education.
As for example, the Britishers planned and introduced such a school system in India which would produce learned persons who would be gladly willing to help the British Government in establishing its foreign rule in India and also in strengthening it. This was an adulteration in the purity of education accomplished through government schools. Schools have served as safe venues of adulteration in education. So, I do not believe in the generally accepted view that there is no education without schools. I believe that most of the education required by our society is provided by the society and the family without the help of schools.
When India adopted her present constitution, it was laid down in its Article 45 that "the state shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years, from the commencement of this constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years."
The general public, largely, is that this is a very good provision in the Indian Constitution. But, to my mind, this is a very wrong provision in our constitution. Here, you will question me and ask me to explain why I say so. My arguments are as follows:
Nothing, which is imposed by a government as compulsory exercise, can be truly called education. Compulsion is anti-education.
The Government is not a safe and qualified custodian of education. Education is a thing, which is based on mutual love and respect between the teacher and the taught. Government cannot be a mediator between the teacher and the taught.
My third objection to this Article is that it is silent about the defining concept of right education. According to this Article, anything that you do in a school is right education and anything that you do out of school is non -education.
And my 4th objection to this Article is that is does not lay down that parents will not be allowed to introduce class distinctions in the schooling system and even the rich and the elite parents will have to send their children to the same schools in which the children of poor parents get their education. This is the most serious sin of this Article. It exempts the rich and the elite class parents from undergoing the same educational process, which is provided for the poor people. Thus, class distinctions are introduced and implanted in the initial stage of life of the future citizens of India.
And therefore 5th and final objection to this Article of Indian Constitution is that it does not define and indicate the values, (i.e. moral values) which it aims to inculcate in the so-called educated generation. This education restricts itself to giving only knowledge and expertise to its students. Production of students who will stick to moral values in their conduct or who will strive for doing excellent work in their accepted job is totally ignored.
Of course such education could be the aim of the British government in India, because, people educated with high degree of morality would not serve the purpose of a foreign government. But, why should India continue to educate Indians ignoring the moral aspects of education is something, which I cannot understand. The reality, therefore, is that spread of this so-called school education and the spread of moral degradation of the so-called educated people of India are mutually related. Gradually, the standard of work Ethics is falling down. People are not ashamed in doing less and less work and being paid higher and higher salaries and other benefits and perks.
Whoever is educated in schools and colleges, craves for pen-paper and table- chair jobs only and hates to engage himself or herself in productive labour or skilled craftwork. Thus, expansion of education or the spreads of education results in increasing the number of pure consumers whom do not do nay-productive work to help the economy of the country. And, since, it is the government that sponsors, arranges and advocates such education, therefore, government has to employ these so called educated people even if the government can run efficiently without increasing the number of these employees. A number of government departments are not necessary and most of the government departments are over staffed. Shirking of one's duty-work is common and corruption is not uncommon. For the sake of providing government employment to unemployed youth that are educated and trained in very disproportionate number, the in-service employees are retired at the early age of 58 years while they are still quite capable of doing good and efficient work. Then, these retired people are entitled to life-long good income in the form of pensions.
Thus, this so-called education is the main cause of the financial crisis that is being faced by not only our state government but also even by our central government. Hence, let me draw your attention to another article of the Indian Constitution, which directs the states to prohibit intoxicating drinks and drugs except for medical purposes (i.e. Clause 47 of the constitution). But, our state governments cannot adhere to this clause because those people who consume alcohol and wine contribute a great deal of tax income to the state government which is required by the state to meet its expenses on schools opened and run to educate the new generation. Thus, indirectly, the new generation should be grateful to the drunkards of the society who provide money for their school-education on a free basis in accordance with the section 45 of the contribution.
This situation clearly indicates that the Clause 47 of our constitution must be racketed and ignored to meet the requirements of the Clause 45 of the same constitution. And even then to be accomplished only within 10 years has not been accomplished during these fifty years after or since the adoption of this constitution.
But, now rises the most important question is: "Is this a misfortune of India that this pro-consumption and anti-production, pro-intellect and anti-labour education has not spread on the universal scale as expected by the constitution?" Or has it been a good fortune of India that such wrong and defective and polluted education has nor spread too much? My answer to this question is that it has been a good fortune without doubt. I say this because it is really the vast majority of unschooled people of India still occupied in productive work and still consuming less, which is the backbone of Indian economy and even of Indian democracy. To say that these people are uneducated is a false statement. These people are educated for life and through life which is led in their families and their communities and which is related with their local cultural and natural environment.
The greatest fallacy in post-Independence Indian education is its self-contradiction. The Indian elite or even the Indian politicians make very loud noises about universalising school education but they are not prepared to modify the system of education to make it suitable for the masses. The obstinately insist that school education should be only such as would suit and serve the purpose of the elite minority only. On the one hand, they are not prepared to make any changes in the educational system inherited from the British period, which was definitely meant to serve the elite minority only. And on the other hand they cry from their housetops to make education universal. Look at this hypocrisy.
Perhaps, all of you know the story of a fox who was very friendly to a crane bird and so he invited his for a dinner. The crane accepted the invitation for which the fox thanked him. But, when the crane actually reached the dining table, he found that the dinner offered was liquid soup served in a broad bowl. The fox showed great affection and implored the crane to take the served soup as much as possible. But, the crane could not eat or drink it because of his beaky mouth while the fox consumed all the soup with the help of his long tongue. So, the elite foxes, while inviting, with great pomp and show, the mass cranes to their dining table are serving educational soup, which cannot be consumed by the mass cranes. This is the diplomacy and the strategy of the elite class and the politicians of India in the post independence period. They invite the masses for the educational dinner, but they serve dinner of education in a form which the massed cannot consume. Thus they are quite successful in being congratulated for their deep concern for the poor uneducated masses on the one hand, and in depriving them from education on the other hand.
Human education is a very simple and easy thing to be achieved. God has made the human living process itself as an educative process. Man is compelled to do some work so that he could live. But, the work provides a worker not only bread but also education. Work is the prime and the constant teacher of man. Secondly, the mother tongue of a child is a spontaneous and ready means of communication, which is needed for education. Thus, education is a very simple and cheap process. But, what we have done with education is very surprising. We have black-listed work as the enemy of education and we have thrown it out of the school premises. Secondly, we have banished and expelled the mother tongue of the child student from the school. The child is asked to get educated without the easy and the natural tools of education (i.e. work tool and the mother tongue tool). This is how school education has become a great burden and cruelty on children. This is how school education today is a violence against childhood. Now, if the children who are suffering from such cruelty and violence in their education, turn out to be violent against other people in the society, how can we blame the students? Today, all over the world, there is great concern over the fate of those children who cannot attend schools because they are forced to become labourers in their childhood because their parents are poor and need the money that their children may earn through child labour. This concern may be all right. But, why should we concentrate on the cruelty suffered by the out of school child only and why should we become blind to want the cruelty inflicted by the modern schools on children? The phenomenon exposes our hypocrisy in a clear way.
Now, if we try to trace the causes of this hypocrisy in depth, we shall discover that the craze for modern development has caused this illness in our educational system. According to us, a developed society is that which does not have to do any productive labour and which is engaged only in higher consumption intellectual pursuits or passive entertainment. Development means cricket, T.V., and travelling in vehicles which pollute the air. Development means getting the help of automatic gadgets relieving human beings from straining not only their limbs, but also their brains. This defective concept of human development is the cause of such cruel education for our children.
Dear friends from the two U.S.A colleges, you must be feeling, by now, that I have spoken for too long Indian Education as I find it today and I have not touched the next point which is related to the Basic Education propounded and advocated by Mahatma Gandhi in 1937 for educational reconstruction in India when political freedom from the foreign British rule was quite in sight. But, my feeling is that the time I have spent in describing the present condition of Indian education has also given us a proper back ground to understand/ and appreciate the Gandhian Basic Education easily and properly. In short, we may know that what Gandhiji did in offering the new scheme of Basic Education was to correct the mistakes or wrongs of the educational system introduced and established by Macaulay in the British rule period of Indian history and which is still in vogue in India.
As each new born baby has a mother with breasts to feed him or her with her own milk; in the same manner, human education has productive work as its mother to feed it with its breast milk education. But Macaulay had deprived education from its mother's breast milk by eliminating productive craft -work from his schools. Gandhiji restored the mother (with her breast milk) to the baby i.e. restored craft work to school education Gandhi said that productive craft work should be the mother of education and the teacher should assist this mother as a nurse in taking good care of the child. Neither books, nor the teachers are the main sources of man's education. Living is the real source of education and productive work marks life. Today's work -less schools are life less schools. They are dead schools. These schools are themselves doubtful about the success their of so-called education. That is why these schools provide paper certificates and degrees to declare that the students are educated. Real gold does not carry with it. Real gold does not carry with it a certificate to prove that it is really gold and not copper. Why should a really educated man require a certificate or a degree declaring him as an educated human being?
When you are engaged in a craft-work, you are related to nature on the one hand, because, you get the raw material required from nature, and you are also related to your community because the finished product is to serve human beings. The craftsman is the meeting place of nature and man. This experience is very significant from the educated point of view.
Secondly in productive craft- work, or industry, the class fellows of a school have to do cooperative work instead of being engaged only in rivalry and competition. This is very significant from the educational point view.
Thirdly when one is engaged in some craft- work or some industry, one faces many difficulties and problem, which can be solved only with the help of literacy or mathematics or physics or chemistry. Thus, students who are engaged in craft work or industry become curious and interested learners, which is very helpful in their educative process. All abstract knowledge is born from concrete work experience. Thus concrete productive craft- work or industry is not an obstacle in the search for abstract knowledge. In fact, concrete work and abstract knowledge are friendly and helpful to each other. Thus, practical craft- work, in a school, is not an obstacle in the path of pure knowledge, but it is promoter of pure and abstract knowledge. Craft- work makes the educative process quite easy and quite simple.
Moreover, a child under fourteen year's of age, is naturally or psychologically interested in craft- work engagement. Craft is the center of his age interests. Thus, he enjoys the educative process centered around craft-work. He faces no boredom in a school, which provides his craft- work.
Then, craft- work in schools was friendly to the Gandhian concept of decentralized and self sufficient village life. According to Gandhiji, freedom of human beings does not lie in just a freedom from foreign political rule. According to Gandhiji, freedom of human beings lies in freedom from all types of exploitation and all types of dependence on others. According to Gandhiji, over dependence on the state machinery or on the government denotes lack of real freedom. According to Gandhiji, small and decentralized communities or villages should establish their own local self discipline so that even the courts established by a government are seldom approached for justice and justice may be available from the local village councils or honourable aged persons. Today's political freedom, specially, under democratic rule, people are making themselves more and more dependent on the government in all respects and the democratic government also extends more and more allurements to the people to seek popular support of votes. According to Gandhiji, this over dependence, even on a democratic national government, was a form of slavery in disguise. He did agree that the State could not be abolished totally. But, he believed that the tasks and responsibilities of the State should be reduced to the minimum. According to Gandhiji, spread of education should result in the shrinking of the State. Education that expands the State's responsibilities and state's machinery is no education.
He believed that State management and State dependence could not be reduced without establishing a self-sufficient and decentralised economy. So, his insistence on introducing productive craft-work or industry in the educative process in the schools also suited his philosophy of human freedom.
Today's education is uprooting people from their local villages and their ancestral private occupations. Today educated people are marked with a qualification seal and are made readily available commodities to be hired or exported. Thus, there is a very great deal of turmoil and confusion in today's world. Mobility of man as well as of material is increasing to a dangerous pitch. Man is not at ease any longer. Fast vehicles have reduced the availability of time. Moreover, it is the most important cause of air pollution and noice pollution. Man was born to seek God who could be sought anywhere locally. Then why is today's man rushing from one peace to the other place? The reason is that education has badly failed to inform and convince man that he is born to seek God through his education and that God could be sought in each place in this world. Today's education instigates man to make himself the manager of this universe. And science also instigates man to become the manager of this universe. But what are the results? Devastation, in the name and in the guise of development, is the result. The cause of this tragedy lies in over wrong school education which inculcates wrong values of life in the students and so, Gandhiji wanted to correct school education so that man might avert that tragedy of calamity. Gandhiji's second suggestion was that, at least, the primary education in a school must be imparted in the child's mother tongue. It is the mother tongue in which a child can assimilate new knowledge without any difficulty and it is the mother tongue in which, a child can express himself most conveniently. When a school rejects the child's mother tongue as a medium of education, it makes the assimilation of new knowledge very difficult on the one hand and it suppresses all self- expression of the child on the other hand. What does this ultimately mean? This means that the process of education becomes very difficult for the child because of the change of medium. Secondly, the child's self expression is thwarted and suppressed. When you examine this phenomenon from the educational point of view, you will be convinced that education is meant to bring out the latent talent of a child, which cannot take place without self-expression. Denying self-expression to a child results in the denial of his education. The word "educe" means (according to the Oxford dictionary) to bring out or develop from latent or potential existence. Thus, self-expression is the essence of all education. But Indian schools today are proud in rejecting the child's mother tongue and are insisting on using English as the medium of education even in the primary stage. Gandhiji tried to correct this mistake by insisting that the medium of education must be the mother tongue of the child.
When the mother tongue of a student is rejected in a school as a medium of education, the student develops a sense of inferiority for his inherited language and the culture which is dependent on his mother tongue. Moreover, education, which is not imparted in the local language of the people, cannot percolate or filter down to the family or the community of the student.
The third principle, which was introduced in Basic Education was that the craft-work or the industry adopted by a school must earn a profit which should be utilised in supporting the school or even in meeting the salaries of the teachers. Gandhiji knew this fact that state governments rely on income from the tax they collect from the sale of wine or alcohol for meeting the expenses of state provided free education. This process involved using wrong means to achieve a right end. But Gandhiji always insisted strictly on using right means to achieve right ends. So, he insisted the educative process itself should be financially productive to a sufficient degree so that it may be purified and so that if might exercise some autonomy and some power and influence. Education should be protected from impotency from which it is suffering today. Productive craft-work at the center of all educational learning ensures that power or potency to the school and to the educational system. Only such an in built potent and power system of education can empower people in a democracy.
The fourth cardinal feature of Basic Education is that the knowledge to be given to the children must be given to the children must be relevant to their life including their school craft-work or their physical or their social environment. Knowledge has not to be imposed on the students just for the "storing" that knowledge. Any knowledge, which is not relevant to the student's need at present, should not be given. Basic Education does not believe in isolating the child from his surroundings and in trying to educate the child ignoring his surroundings. So, wherever a Basic school is running the local surroundings of the school shall also be improved by the efforts of the school involving the students. Today, the school is totally cut off from the social and the physical environment and the knowledge imparted or gained has not relevance to the local History or local Geography or local Economics or local Politics, or local Health. Thus, the syllabus of each Basic School will be different from the other school of the other village or other town. Basic Education will aim not at uprooting people from their locality, but will try to strengthen their roots in the same soil so that they can lead a better life without migrating to the cities to dwell in slums.
But, as we all know, Basic Education was not accepted or adopted by politically free India. Perhaps India still suffers from the old tradition of upper castes and lower castes. Classes have crumbled but classism still persists. Those who are in power and are the decision takes want that there should be two classes at least in the Indian nation i.e., the elite class and the mass class of ordinary and common people. To my mind, this is the cause of Basic Education remaining ignored and unaccepted.
But, the elite classes have disallowed the elite-ish school-education to spread among the masses and the masses are still educating themselves through productive work in their families and in their farm fields.
Thus, we can see that Basic Education continues to be relevant in spite of its being rejected by the formal schools of education run by the elite class and the politicians. Just as honesty and good will can never lose their relevance in society even if the schools of today do not promote honesty and good will, Basic Education too, cannot lose its relevance just because the present schools do not recognise its relevance. What we must never forget is the fact that education is not a prisoner in the jails or the prisons which are called schools. Education begins from the day a child is born and it continues till he has lived his life and reaches his death. Education does not recognise school bells dividing the periods allotted to different subjects. Life itself is an educative process provided we learn the art of learning and educating ourselves Basic Education aims at making a man his own self teacher or his own self educator. People living on the banks of lake are taught swimming by the lake itself. Thus, education is the gift of living. The school's claim of monopolising education is a fraud. So, Basic Education is not dead in spite of the schools, which have rejected it.
And Basic Education is not going to die even in the 21st century. Bad results of to day life less drudgery schools are showing themselves day by day. Man has to return to right education i.e. "living education" if mankind is to survive on this planet called Earth. Today mankind is running blindly and restlessly without any sense of direction. The results are awful. Religions, so long and so far in human history, have of course emphasized pity towards other creatures. But, mankind during its past history never thought that even our natural and physical surroundings needed our pity, or mercy and our compassion so that this mother- nature could preserve its capability of sustaining its creation on earth. But, today a new prophet and a new faith or religion are needed to compel mankind to stop its violence and cruelty against the dumb but life sustaining mother-nature. Let us hope that the 21st century will give birth to such a new prophet and introduce such a new faith, such a new creed and such a new religion. Basic Education will prove to be the right type of education for such a new era. This is my hope and my dream.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: SHRI DAYAL CHANDRA SONI
The author was born in 1919 in Salumbar, a small town in Mewar, Rajasthan. Having received intensive training in ‘Basic Education’ under well known people such Mahatama Gandhi, Zakhir Hussain, Vinobha Bhave and Khwaja Galamusadan, he worked as a teacher for several years at Vidya Bhawan, a small school founded in 1931 in Udaipur, based on Gandhian philosophy and principles of community service. In the 1960s, the author left Vidya Bhawan because of his controversial views and made a living through tutoring, freelance writing and eventually set up a small flour grinding mill in his house. He later worked at Seva Mandir, an NGO in Udaipur, on a literacy campaign for rural areas. He was chosen to represent India in the Canadian World Literacy Programme and made a positive contribution to adult education.
During the past 60 years, the author has written more than 300 essays and published around 25 books on basic education, non-formal education, adult education, women’s education and public administration. In 1992, he was given the ‘Madan Mohan Malviya Award’ for his book on non-formal education.
At present, the author lives with his wife in Udaipur and runs a small flour grinding mill in his home. His address is: 26 Vidya Marg, Devali, Udaipur 313001 RAJASTHAN, INDIA.