“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.”
---------------------------------------------------- Socrates, quoted by Plato in The Republic. (c. 427-347 BC)

“Vidya Vinaya Sampannah.”

It is in the educational process that each of us has to learn to discard bad thoughts and replace them with good ones. In every line of thinking ranging from Marxism to capitalism, philosophies like logical positivism, naturalism, existentialism and what have you, psychologies of all hues and colours, the student will eventually have to acquire the capacity to separate the wheat from the chaff. The last needs the ability to look within for guidance at times. That last, and the most important, strength of the mind and the character has to come from the educational process. That is the essence of Indian thought-the para vidya.

“Avinayam Apanayam Oh Vishno.”
Shankara’s Shatpathies.

While crossing the river of life in a boat one does not get much solace in knowing all there is to be known in the world of science, technology, history, written by the older breed of historians or the new ones, geography and natural sciences when one does not know how to swim. The education to swim in this turbulent ocean of life is the one that the Indian system tries to teach the aspirant to have the appetite-that of universal compassion, altruism, humility, and the absolute need to live for others-to be of some use to some one in need. More than them all Indian system encourages the most important aspect of life; that is to have tolerance towards others and their views.

Intolerance is the basis of all trouble in this world today. The heat of the arguments between the various shades of opinion, even about the future of education in the country, has grown so fierce these days that the good habit of any civilized discourse seems to have been forgotten by even those who proclaim to be teachers of eminence. This is the cancer that needs to be nipped in the bud, as otherwise, we would have no future at all. Socrates, the great teacher in Greece, whom all our “intellectuals" venerate, had this to say about this tendency. “One should learn to doubt-particularly one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas, and one’s axioms. Socrates was an ethical leader, and the epitome of a righteous man. He was accepted by all the aristocratic youth of that country at his time as such. I think it is time our intolerant people learnt their lessons to think objectively about other’s point of view as well.

With this in mind, it is nice to read Professor Bloom’s book and learn from their experience in America. Wise men, most of us in India, learn from our own mistakes; but wiser men learn from the mistakes of others. The latter seems to be more profitable. Let us learn from their experience to modify our system if need be. My being a teacher for well over forty years might have coloured my vision, but it is better to have one’s own empirical experience to be culled into wisdom with the information and knowledge that one gets from outside. This essay, therefore, will have all those trappings in plenty. Liberal education, at the higher level should aim at making the student realize his dreams to the extent possible and be able to humanize the barbaric and the animal instincts in man. The student should get his appetite wetted but the eating has to be done by him from his won efforts. Books alone can not give a student higher education. In the Indian concept a good teacher is one who makes the student want to learn. I would like to call this the “midwifery system “ of education where the teacher, like the midwife, stands by the side of the student empathizing with him, coaxing him, cajoling him, encouraging him, and sharing his own experience with the student to let him have the enthusiasm to go on; but the learning has to be done by the student. We must, therefore, have three prerequisites for the future of higher education in this country:

• Allow the student to learn for himself/herself.
• Provide all the needed infrastructure for that.
• Protect him/her from the status-quoist teachers!

What is liberal education?

Indian system of education in the distant past could be called the most liberal of educations. Liberal education could be defined as that which helps the student precisely to pose the question to himself, to become aware that the answer neither is obvious nor simply unavailable. Life is a continuous concern for such questions for a truly liberally educated man. He/she does not have a closed mind. Liberally educated person always keeps an open mind on every question and tries to seek an answer going as far away as is needed. Rock music, says Prof. Allan Bloom, is the one that killed the chances of liberal education in the sixties in USA. He goes a step further to equate Rock Music with the drug culture there. Unfortunately that culture has invaded our country in a big way. This should be our greatest worry about the future generation. Liberal education has no meaning in the present western type of scientific enquiry, where boundaries are all fixed by known theories limiting the abilities of the person’s intuition to go after the answers to unanswered questions. “Who am I?” would be the first such questions.

Even after fifty years of political independence, we still live with a slavish western mentality in our education. We seem to have forgotten our hoary past in this field where most of the great minds, even from the West, took their education. Pythogoras was known to have had his indoctrination in the Samkya school of thought for a period of five years. Most of the western wisdom owes its origin to him. It was Albert Einstein who said: “ we owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.” Another great brain that gave unreserved credit to India was Mark Twain, who wrote: “ India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only.” French scholar Romain Rolland said: “ If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living man have found a home from the very earliest existence, it is India.” We always look for certificates from the West for any recognition. These certificates should more than please us!

Indian wisdom, in the field of the major sciences, was unsurpassed up until the eighteenth century, when the Royal Society of London, sent a team of twenty scientists to study the Indian knowledge of yore. Some of them lived here for over a couple of decades. One such was a physician, Dr. T. Z. Holwell, who gave a graphic description of the successful method of vaccination against small-pox, in his presentation to the Royal College of Physicians of London, in the year 1747. The method was even better than the Jenner’s method, which came into vogue much later, serendipitously. Our astronomy was far too advanced, we had blast furnaces to produce the best steel in the world and, our cloth was so fine that the silk sarees, six yards long, could be manoeuvered into an eggshell.

Sanskrit language is now accepted as the mother of Indo-European languages. The literature in this language is so profound that it would take more than a lifetime for one to master the whole of it. Our medicine was more ancient than all the other systems in the world and, possibly, influenced Hippocratic writings to a great extent! The Vedas, that treasure house of all that needs to be known, are timeless. They have evolved over thousands of years and therefore, by definition, are very scientific. Our ancient system of Gurukula education was never like the one we have chosen for our children today. The student in a gurukula learnt more by example rather than memorizing and replicating. The whole edifice of Indian primary education was based on universal love and compassion and, was aimed at producing a good citizen for the future. The aim, certainly, was not producing good replicators of the textbooks. Education without inculcating human value systems, love and, understanding is no education and, is, in many instances, counter-productive. My worry is only about the primary education, the time when a little child, full of love for everything in this world, is put in an atmosphere of sheer competition from day one in the school. One gets reminded of what Socrates once said:

“Let not my schooling come in the way of my education.”

“No man can teach any one anything that the recipient already does not know” is an old Indian adage. This is probably true according to the modern molecular biology. The day the human being is made in the mother’s womb, the tiny spec of protein that the new life is, weighing just about 0.0000000000001 gm, it would know all about every other living organism in this Universe, postori and priori! This is the consciousness which modern science had been unaware of till very recently.

Education, then is, what Swami Vivekanada once said: “the manifestation of the perfection, which is already in man.” We should let the child bring out the best inside for the good of humanity at large, through the process of education. Even the Greek root of education means the same. To bring out your best, like the mother brings out her child, is education. The greatest impediment for the right type of education today is the competitive ethos even in elementary schools.

Almost from the first day the innocent and loving child is being transformed into a human monster full of jealousy, hatred and, anger in addition to immense pride, because of the competition in the evaluation system. I have been at a loss to understand why we need to rank students that young. They should be helped to learn for themselves with love, caring, camaraderie, and co-operation, the teacher acting like a midwife coaxing, cajoling, empathizing, and encouraging the expectant mother. Just as the pregnant lady herself would have to deliver the baby, the student would have to learn for himself with the help of an understanding teacher, who is only a role model for the growing child. That would bring forth a generation of young men and women who would live and let live.

The monetary economy of today, being spearheaded by the western society and western media, brainwashes the young to compete with greed and with the killing instinct to come up in life. This is manifested in every walk of life, making man unhappy at the end of the day. The dreaded epidemics in the West today are suicide and divorce, both originating from the competitive ethos in life. Even the other killer diseases like cancer and heart attacks have their origin in these demonic thoughts in the human mind. It is not what one eats that kills, but it is what eats one that kills!

Unfortunately, many of our economists and thinkers seem to agree with the western societal rules. There is dichotomy in every walk of life in the West. One example would be sufficient. The United Nations, born to save mankind from total destruction after the Second World War, has a Security Council of five permanent members. They, between themselves, produce ninety per cent of the arms manufactured in this world. Their economy, to a great extent, depends on selling those arms. They have to, per force, create situations of conflict around the world to survive. That makes good business sense but very bad moral sense. That is the long and short of our present make-believe world, the reductio ad absurdum.

To change all that for the better, at least for the next generation, we have to change the elementary education. The emphasis should be on co-operation, love and, understanding as the foundation of that education. Even Pestalozzi, the great teacher that he was, set out to prove that “every child has inborn strength, which loving care can awaken. Let your child be as free as possible, let him go and listen, stumble and stand up, err and find.” Children should never be made to fit into adult patterns!

This new method would make the child a partner in progress of a harmonious family of human beings. All the competition in the world could be taught if needed, after the age of fifteen, when the child, having been brought up in love, will never change for the worse. The earlier we concentrate on elementary education the better for the world. India could certainly show the way to the rest of the world. It had done that in the past and time is now ripe to rekindle that spirit in primary education of Universal Love!

Modern science now is waking up to the reality that most of the killer diseases of mankind, like heart attacks and cancer are the result mainly of human mind suffering from the maladies of hostility, anger and, pride. Prevention being better than cure we should start to wake up to the reality and change the education pattern before it is too late. I only hope that the powers-that-be see the writing on the wall. Remember the famous saying of Aristotle:

“Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.”