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This article provides information about the Gandhian Concept of Education !
Gandhi firmly believed that basic education was an important means to develop the body and the mind. This stood out in sharp contrast to the common understanding of the concept and function of education as knowledge of letters, and of reading, writing and arithmetic as the basic constituents of primary education.
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He said that there was a need to improve all our languages. India should adopt Hindi as the universal language for the country with the option of writing it in Persian or Nagari characters. Further, the English books that are indeed valuable need to be translated into different Indian languages.
“My head begins to turn as I think of religious education. Our religious teachers are hypocritical and selfish; they will have to be approached. The Mullas, the Dasturs and the Brahmins hold the key in their hands, but if they will not have good sense, the energy that we have derived from English education will have to be devoted to religious education. This is not very difficult”. Gandhi was convinced that excessive emphasis on English education would enslave the nation.
He was sure that those who have received education through a foreign tongue could not represent the masses because the people do not identify themselves with such persons. In fact, they are identified more with the British than with the masses. It is commonly believed that people educated in the foreign tongue are not able to understand the aspirations of the masses, and therefore cannot speak on their behalf.
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On the contrary, instruction imparted in vernaculars leads to enrichment. Gandhi went to the extent of saying that the problems of village sanitation and others would have been resolved long ago and the village panchayats would have been a living for suited to the requirements of self- governance. He did accept, however, that it was not indeed possible to do without English education altogether, at the same time adding that all those who have studied English needed to teach morality to their children through the mother tongue.
Those who confine themselves to education in foreign languages undergo strain and often commit themselves to imitating the west. This has far-reaching results on both, the body and the mind. Ideally, the school should be an extension of the home, which means that there should be no gulf between the impressions which the children gather at home, and those in the school. What he was asking for was continuity in terms of the social environment and value system at home and in the school.
For Gandhi, education did not imply spiritual knowledge or spiritual liberation after death. In essence, knowledge consists of all that is imperative for the service of the humankind; and for liberation, which means freedom from enslavement to domination and from the ambit of one’s own created needs. Education, therefore, has to be geared in this direction. According to Gandhi, our ancient system of schooling and the education imparted in those schools was enough because character building was accorded the importance it deserves. For Gandhi, character building was basic in any educational system.
The basic objective of meaningful education was to generate the potential in children to create a new world order. This, Gandhi felt, was possible by way of engaging in socially useful labour, i.e., labour in the service of welfare of humankind. The idea formed the basis of his nai-talim, which was conceptualised in a way that would involve a harmonious development of the body, mind and soul. The process incorporated involvement in craft and industry as a medium of education.
The hub of his ideas on education rested on the mission to place learning of a craft at the centre of the teaching programme whereby, spinning, weaving, leather-work, pottery, metalwork, basket- making, book-binding and other such activities that were often associated with the lower caste people or ‘untouchables’ were performed by upper caste pupils and literacy and acquisition of knowledge which were the prerogative of the upper caste people were available to the ‘untouchables’. He wanted the schools to be self-supporting or else providing education to all the children would never become a reality. Further, financial independence would bring with it freedom from intervention by politicians and political parties.
The issue of adult education was crucial to Gandhi. Through adult education he envisaged to open the minds of the adult pupils to the greatness and the vastness of the country and to generate awareness about the ills of foreign rule by word of mouth. It was widely realised that several villages were ignorant of the evils of foreign rule and of the means to overthrow it. He sought to combine education through word of mouth with literary education.