EDUCATION

[Guest guest]

HOW STATE OF EDUCATION CHANGED IN INDIA

SOURCE.

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=3&theme=&usrsess=1&id=21880

Tagore’s warning that a totally state-sponsored education system only retarded

independent thinking and creativity is relevant even today .Tagore’s grew up

at a time when the newly established universities of Kolkata, Mumbai and

Chennai were busy bringing out Macaulay’s brown sahibs. The elitism of the

British education policy was reflected in the rejection of Gokhale’s primary

education bill in 1912. Santiniketan was established in 1909 and similar

private initiatives were evident in the establishment of the Dayanand

Anglo-vedic College in Lahore, which eventually spread over entire North India.

Sir Sayyed Ahmed Khan’s Aligarh Muslim University, Madan Mohan Malaviya’s

Benaras Hindu University and Swamu Shradhananda’s Gurukul at Hardwar are among

such initiatives. The Swadeshi movement between 1905 and 1908 brought in an

enthusiasm for nationalist education. Under Aurobindo’s stewardship the

National College was established. However, after the Swadeshi movement receded

the only meaningful survival was the Bengal Technical Institute, which later

became Jadavpur University. But one lasting effect of the Swadeshi movement was

the effort made towards adult education. As a consequence night schools and

colleges sprang up in which political leaders took active part. But the neglect

of primary education continued. British India had a literary rate of only 5.6

per cent and a very limited higher education available mostly to the

urban-based middle class. Tagore’s major emphasis was to go beyond the

curricula imposed by a foreign government. This is the primary reason for lack

of any original thinking emanating from our centres of advanced learning. To

prove his point Tagore gave the example of the Irish experience. In Ireland, a

British-controlled education did not bring any benefit and the students were

subjected merely to Saxon-oriented curricula. The English language was imposed

at the primary and secondary school level replacing Irish. There was even a ban

on teaching Irish history and society. Tagore found this in the Indian

situation. Till they were 19 and 20 years of age their life was spent in an

exercise which was creatively futile. The British attempted to make Indians

British just as they attempted with the Irish. In a different context, Tolstoy

writing about the Czarist educational system pointed out that there was an

attempt to teach subservience and conformism, which rather than leading to

advancement of knowledge led to a triumph of mediocrity. What Tagore emphasised

was the fact that merely copying the European way of teaching could not yield

any positive result. There was need to innovate in accordance with the

aspirations of our country and its historical, cultural and social evolution.

An elitist education system, which was not in consonance with the society and

its people, would be counter-productive. It would fail to develop any link with

one’s society and thus remain artificial and irrelevant. Tagore contrasted this

artificially imposed Western education with the ancient Indian educational

system. Unlike the present state-sponsored education, the basis of ancient

Indian education was that it was independent, self-sustaining and intimately

linked with human existence. Living with the guru and his family in natural

surroundings gave the young impressionable mind an opportunity to develop in a

spontaneous manner. This was unthinkable in modern India and the result was the

emergence of mechanical individuals rather than thinking human beings. Tagore

also cautioned against a major drawback of the ancient Indian educational

system: it was restrictive. He emphasised the need for an open space, clear

blue skies, natural surroundings as a precondition for developing both mind and

body. Such an atmosphere existed in pre-British period and its absence explained

the basic reason for the failure of the modern Indian educational system. For

Tagore, education was not just about training to get a job but to develop human

capacities and thinking. It was a quest for knowledge that would create

self-confidence and self-reliance. He desired a system that could be sustained

without government patronage. Merely bookish knowledge would not advance

knowledge. It needed to be accompanied with practical experience and emphasis

on self-development. Technical education by itself would remain incomplete

unless it was linked with life itself. Since Tagore accepted change as

inevitable, he wanted education to reflect it within a natural environment. But

the aimlessness of modern education in India was unable to face this challenge.

He also advocated similar curricula for both men and women and added that this

similarity would not detract women from their intrinsic nature, namely their

love for children. An ideal basis of educational system in India ought to

incorporate studies of Vedic literature, the Purans, Buddhist and Jain

literature along with the more recent ones that emanate from Islamic, Parsi and

European civilisations. This allowed the evolution and a social acceptance of a

universal order. What India lacked was faith in universal values and that led

to narrowness, a feeling of dependency developing into sycophancy and localism.

Tagore gave a call to get out of this localism and build an educational system

which would emphasise human unity and universal cooperation. This idealism led

him to initiate the project of Visva Bharati. He even asserted that even if we

were deficient in resources we could always make it up in human resources by

building up modern centres of learning in the tradition of Taxila, Nalanda and

Vikramshila where the very best from distant lands came and enriched themselves

by quality and meaningful education. His criticism of the Soviet educational

system also emanated from a belief that totally state-sponsored educational

system would retard independent thinking and creativity. Tagore warned that the

contemporary university system did not reflect Indian society and as a

consequence it was not conducive to developing personality and independent

thinking and producing the best in one’s area.The educational system did not

unite the mind with the heart, creating a void. Visva Bharati was a symbolic

attempt to bridge this gulf by creating a cooperative basis of sharing

knowledge.