Policy makers should revamp their thoughts on what constitutes sound education in the Indian context. Our greats have provided the hints
The world of education, under the glamorous influence of the Information and Communications Technology, has no time to recall the educational ideas of Indian thinkers who really understood India, its history and heritage, and above all, its culture of acceptance. It is tough to recall any serious national-level discussion organised by the Governments at the Centre or in the States on the educational ideas of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Zakir Husain, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Mahatma Phule, BR Ambedkar and several other luminaries. During the last couple of years, the West-ward orientation of the Government of India has been total: Wisdom resides only in the West and must be borrowed without any hesitation. Experts in education working in national institutions are being regularly sent to the US for training.
In 1906, Tagore in the context of the National Education Council, set up to ‘keep an eye on the entire education system of the country’, posed the question “as to the idea according to which education will be conducted”. He added that the rules to be followed or the textbooks to be prescribed are external issues”. His elaboration in that context remains totally relevant even in current times and could guide policy-makers and programme implementers provided they were willing to internalise the essence. Comparing the school to a kind of machine that delivers education, he finds the teacher as one of its part. Machines deliver uniform products as ordered, but ‘men differ from one another.' In these days, when practically every human activity including education is greatly influenced by the advances in ICT, Tagore's one simple-looking sentence could pave the path for educational regeneration: “And man can never get from a machine what he can get from another human being.”
The CBSE has decided to ask questions on values in its examinations. One wishes they had studied Tagore's perceptions on moral instructions in schools: “It is futile to expect that a few bookish words delivered between ten to four in the school can rectify the corruption of taste that is being perpetrated every moment by thousand of lies and perversion of our artificial life-style”. It is the societal norms and practices and the role models and icons that inculcate and nurture values. Teachers nurture and develop these. How prophetic were his observations that urban schools would not allow the learner to see the soul of universe pervading “fire, water, sea, land and the entire world”.
In these days of ever-increasing curriculum load that deprives the child of his childhood in prestigious public schools, Tagore's vision is very revealing: “Is it the child's fault that he appeared at birth, without practising algebra or memorising history textsIJ Is that why the poor wretch must be deprived of his air and light, his happiness and leisure and his education made punitive in every wayIJ Could it not be that children come in this world without any knowledge so that they could savour the excitement of knowing from a state of not-knowingIJ”
To move ahead in the process of knowing, the family and the teacher contribute in a big way. These days, schools have rigid and fixed regimes; these are augmented by concerned parents through imposition of tuitions, extra coaching in areas like tennis, dance classes, swimming lessons and much more. In the extreme that India is blessed with, there are millions of children who have no school to go; and then there those children who are left with no free time at all! The sufferings of both of these groups are to be ameliorated. It is not a new phenomenon but one that has persisted and has become more intense and demanding with time. Deeply concerned to the core on the suffering of children Tagore said: “Our incompetence and brutality may prevent us from making the acquisition of knowledge a pleasant thing, but must we go out of our way to deliberately and cruelly give the school room of these innocent children, the shape of a prison houseIJ”
Is it not the time that the nation sits up and sets its education system in orderIJ