http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/887063.cms
The Times of India, October 16, 2004
Recasting Education: Vision of Gandhi, Tagore Relevant
for Rural India
KRISHNA KUMAR
Education works in so many different ways and has so many different meanings
that one cannot risk making a flat statement about its nature and role. It
can do so many things which are not necessarily coherent, affecting people,
nations, and the world itself in ways not always predictable. Who would have
thought that the system designed to colonise India will inspire many to seek
her freedom from British rule? No less plausible is the counter argument
that education did assist in the colonisation of India and stunted its imagination,
to the extent that the attainment of political freedom could not make a difference
to the system of education itself.
Both arguments are valid. The first reminds us of education's potential
as a means of resistance; the latter reminds us how subtly it works in favour
of the status quo. The relationship between education and conflict offers
a similar set of well-matched arguments. It is widely believed that the spread
of education enhances the probability of peace. Beneath this belief is the
benign perception of education as an agency which expands the mind. This
image does convey a certain truth but it shouldn't blind us to the possibility
of education putting down the shutters on the mind.
J Krishnamurty, analysing education as a process with complex social ramifications,
says that modern education has made a significant contribution to conflicts
at all levels. To understand this interface, we need to distinguish the
historical role of education from its normative meaning and function. Therein
lies the solution to the problem of retaining one's faith in education without
losing sight of its historical character. In modern educational and political
thought, no question has proved as teasing as the one Rousseau had raised:
Can we educate good citizens who are also good human beings? Both Tagore
and Gandhi worked hard to preserve the universalistic aims of education while
attempting to tune education to national goals. They developed institutional
and pedagogic practices which revolved around needs rather than abstract
ideals, and around experience rather than information.
In the case of Tagore, aesthetic needs received precedence. The creative
components of artistic activity emerged as a means of channelising the child's
energy away from aggression and violence. Gandhi, on the other hand, proposed
a curriculum which elevated dexterity in work as a higher goal than knowledge.
He hoped to soften the individuating effects of knowledge with the collectivising
influence of work. Read in the context of his utopia of a self-reliant community,
Gandhi's proposal for nai talim offers a principle of social order which
softens the divisive edges of collective identity.
Our ability to benefit from this heritage of pedagogic thought depends
on how mindfully we perform the task of scripting the school's response to
the common human need for an identity. By itself, identity is a dualistic
concept.
It requires us to think in terms of a 'self' which is distinct from an
'other'. Construction of the self is hardly possible without constructing
an other, a true other which cannot be included in the self. Applied to the
individual, this dualistic construction has definite use, especially in the
early part of life. By nurturing an awareness of the self, one is able to
develop a sense of purpose for one's life. This forms an important aspect
of growing up. One salient way in which modernity compels the individual to
be responsible is in terms of a sense of purpose. As individuals, we must
find goals that motivate and protect us from dissolving into meaninglessness
under the onslaught of circumstances and information we are unable to make
sense of.
A personal identity helps us to locate and sustain a sense of purpose in
life. Identity, however, has another dimension to it which deals with sameness.
In this dimension, identity refers to the collective self which the young
assimilate in their personality, starting with the early years. Aspects of
the collective self blend themselves into the formative individual self through
processes which are embedded in culture. Among the processes most firmly embedded
are the ones related to the use of language and practices linked to religious
faith. The growing child begins to feel 'different' from others even before
he or she has any stable individual 'self' organised around personal preferences
or aspiration. In creating and nurturing a sense of purpose or meaning in
life, the collective, inherited aspects of identity have a shaping role as
much as personal aspects. How we should define the role or stance of the school
in the context of these inherited aspects of identity is a moot question.
Tagore indicated an answer to this question when he asked us to notice
the fact that "we have our greatest delight when we realise ourselves in others".
Reorienting education towards the ideals of Gandhi and Tagore is no easy
task. Anyone who doubts its validity, or feels that Gandhi and Tagore are
irrelevant, must look at the depressing picture that rural India presents
in education, employment and health. There can be no other priority as high
as the need to make education relevant and motivating for the rural child.
By viewing rural education as a common goal of educational reform, we may
succeed in ending the conflicts that erupted in the context of education
in the recent past.
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