Gandhi on Education

Nation is to commemorate century year of Mahatma Gandhi’s return to India from January 2015. With the arrival of Gandhi a gust of fresh thoughts rejuvenated India. He through his speeches and writings touched every cord of Indian life and education is one of them.  Gandhi’s views on education have been compiled and edited in two slim books, Basic Education (1951) and Towards New Education (1953).  These writings are mostly miscellaneous, consisting of letters, speeches, extracts from books, and so on, but together they may be taken to constitute a coherent philosophy of education.

            Mahatma Gandhi had read Emerson, Ruskin and Mazzini. He also had read The Upanishads. All confirmed the view that education does not mean knowledge of letters but it means character building, it means knowledge of duty. This belief is articulated in his life and works. He believes that generally people do not have any idea of what true education is. We assess the value of education in the same manner as we assess the value of land or of shares in the stock exchange. We want to provide only such education as would enable the students to earn more. We hardly give any thought to the improvement of character of the educated.

In a letter to his son Ramdas, Gandhi writes: “True education lies in serving others; oblige them without the feeling of one-uppishness. ... I am not worried about your bookish learning as long as you perform your duties and observe solemn ethical conduct. For me carrying out fundamentals of ethics is duty.” For Gandhi to do good to others and serve them without any sense of egoism – is the real and true education.   

According to Gandhi the true occupation of a man is to build his character. It is not necessary to learn something special for earning. Gandhi was of strong belief that the man who does leave the path of morality never starves. So he advises his son in a letter that learning to live a good life is in itself education. All else is useless.

In his book Hind Swaraj he writes: “What is the meaning of education? It simply means knowledge of letters. To teach boys reading, writing and arithmetic is called primary education. A peasant earns his bread honestly. He has ordinary knowledge of the world. He knows fairly well how he should behave towards his parents, his wife, his children and his fellow villagers. He understands and observes the basic rules of morality. But he cannot write his own name. What do you propose to do by giving him knowledge of letters? So the knowledge of letters does not make men of us. It does not enable us to do our duty.”

He once said that education is that which helps us to know the atman, our true self; God and truth. To acquire this knowledge, some persons may feel the need for a study of literature, some for a study of physical sciences and some others for art. But every branch of knowledge should have as its goal knowledge of the self. That is so in the Ashram. Students carry on numerous activities with that aim in view. All of them are, in Gandhian sense of the term, true education. Those activities can also be carried on without any reference to the goal of knowledge of the self. When they are so carried on, they may serve as a means of livelihood or of something else, but they are not education. In an activity carried on as education, a proper understanding of its meaning, devotion to duty and the spirit of service are necessary.

Gandhi was of firm belief that literary education should follow the education of the hand- the one gift that visibly distinguishes man from beast. He says that it is a superstition to think that the fullest development is impossible without the knowledge of the art of reading and writing. That knowledge undoubtedly adds grace to life, but it is in no way indispensible for man’s moral, physical or material growth. His purpose is to “put training in craft on the same footing as education in letters. Those who thoroughly understand this point will never be eager for a literal education at the training in craft. Their book-learning will shine better and also prove of greater benefit of the purpose.” In this way, Gandhi wants our education has to be revolutionized. The brain must be educated through the hand. He asks, “Why should you think that mind is everything and hands and feet nothing?” Those who do not train their hands and go through the ordinary rut of education, lack ‘magic’ in their life. An education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and evil, to assimilate one and eschew the other is a misnomer. 

Gandhi says that there are certain aims of education and first of them is nationalism. He writes that education is just a means. If it is not accompanied by truthfulness, firmness, patience, and other virtues, it remains sterile and sometimes does harm instead of good. The object of education is not to earn money, but to improve oneself and serve the country. If this object is not realized, it must be taken that the exchequer spent on education has been wasted.

Indian community must realize that without the right kind of education the community will not only remain backward, but become increasingly so. Knowledge is justified only when it is put to good use and employed in public cause.

Addressing students at YMCA, Madras on April27.1915 he asks: “Are you receiving an education which will make you worthy to realize that ideal which will draw the best out of you, or is it an education which has become a factory for making Government employees or clerks in commercial offices? Is the goal of the education that you are receiving that of mere employment whether in the Government departments or other departments? If that be the goal of your education, if that is the goal that you have set before yourselves, I feel and I fear that the vision the Indian society pictured for itself is far from being realized.”

  In Young India, (1 October, 1919) he writes “If education is to be bought at the price of manliness and self-respect, the price is too heavy. ‘Man does not live by bread alone.’ Self-respect and character are above means of livelihood or a career. I am sorry that so many students have taken their expulsion so much to heart. The parents as well as students must revise their ideas about education. Education is treated merely as a means of earning a livelihood and acquiring a status in society. These are not unworthy ambitions. But they are not everything in life. There are many other honourable means of acquiring wealth and status. There are many independent activities in life which one may undertake without having to contemplate loss of self-respect. And there is no better or cleaner passport to status in society than honesty and selfless service of fellow-beings. If, therefore, after due effort, the college door remains banged in the students’ faces, they should not lose heart but seek other means of livelihood. And if the other students will empty the recalcitrant colleges as a matter of respectful protest, they and India will not be losers, but both will be considerable gainers.”

Fearlessness is the foundation of all education, the beginning and not the end. Purity of personal life is the other indispensable condition for building a sound education.

Gandhi exhorts that teachers must be men or women of high moral character. Conditions must be created to enable the poorest Indian to receive the best possible education. There must be a happy union of literary knowledge and Dharma. Education must be related to the conditions of life in our country. And the heavy burden on the minds of young men resulting from the use of an alien language as the medium of instruction must be removed. Unless education is reshaped so as to fulfill the foregoing the level of the life of Indian people cannot be raised. True national education should be imparted through the language of each province. The teachers must be men of high ability. The school should be located at a place where students would get clean drinking water, pure air and a peaceful atmosphere. The surroundings must be perfectly healthy. The scheme of education must provide for securing to the students knowledge of the main occupations and religions of India.

In Harijan 2 November 1947, he writes that the Basic Education has grown out of the atmosphere surrounding us in the country and is in response to it. It is, therefore, designed to cope with that atmosphere. This atmosphere pervades India’s seven hundred thousand villages and its millions of inhabitants. Forget them and you forget India. India is not to be found in her cities. It is in her innumerable villages.

The following are the fundamentals of Basic Education:

1. All education to be true must be self-supporting, that is to say, in the end it will pay its expenses excepting the capital which will remain intact.

2. In it the cunning of the hand will be utilized even up to the final stage, that is to say, hands of the pupils will be skillfully working at some industry for some period during the day.

3. All education must be imparted through the medium of the provincial language.

4. In this there is no room for giving sectional religious training. Fundamental universal ethics will have full scope.

5. This education, whether it is confined to children or adults, male or female, will find its way to the homes of the pupils.

6. Since millions of students receiving this education will consider themselves as of the whole of India, they must learn an inter-provincial language. This common inter-provincial speech can only be Hindustani written in Nagari or Urdu script. Therefore, pupils have to master both the scripts.

Gandhian educational ideas, founded as they are on certain eternal principles, will not lose their fundamental relevance in the years to come. Policy makers will have to think of a self-supporting primary education, which will improve the lot of the poorest of the poor.  That such an education would be based on action, problem-solving, and practical activity, rather than mere book learning is also perfectly valid.  An integral education, which allows the whole being of a person to grow, an education which emphases character-building and cultural identity, is once again, obviously desirable.  It is equally clear that nation has failed miserably in state-sponsored schemes to provide free, compulsory primary education to all.  The Gandhian model, therefore, retains its relevance and attractiveness. 

References:

Gandhi, M. K.  Basic Education.  Bharatan Kumarappa, ed.  Ahmedabad:  Navjivan,

1951.

-----. Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule.  1909; Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1984.

-----.  Towards New Education. Bharatan Kumarappa, ed.  Ahmedabad:  Navjivan, 1953.

Varkey, C.J.  The Wardha Scheme of Education:  An Exposition and Examination.

Madras:  Oxford University Press, 1940.