news details |
|
|
| SARVEPALLI RADHAKRISHNAN’S VIEWS ON EDUCATION - ARE THEY RELEVANT IN PRESENT TIMES ? | | | *DR. RENU NANDA | 9/5/2009 2:58:56 AM |
|
Radhakrishnan felt it vital for students to acquire the ability of discernment, independent analysis, and judgment. The process of education should be able to create mental detachment and objectivity, which were the essential prerequisites of a well- balance personality. This was Radhakrishnan’s own philosophy of life too. Towards the freedom struggle, for instance, through which he lives, contemporaneously with Azad and Nehru, Radhakrishnan’s a approach was reflective and rational. He held that a university man should be basically unattached and yet not unconcerned.
To Radhakrishnan dogmatism was anathema. He felt that the University had the responsibility of inculcating a liberal outlook capable of accommodating different points of view. Only by cooperation could there be coexistence.
Although Radhakrishnan was full of the values of India’s rich tradition, he was careful to distinguish between outmoded and outdated values and values that were relevant to the modern times. While calling himself a modernist, he defined modernism to mean the preservation of whatever was valuable in India’s ancient heritage and the jettisoning of all that was irrelevant. He cautioned students to adopt a purpose of life which was not just time-honoured and traditional but one that was geared to the relevant needs of the present times. He said that the ideals of the University was liberty of mind and freedom from conformity. A scientific spirit was something which enabled a man to distinguish knowledge from opinion, fact from theory.
*The Author Is Associate Professor, Faculty Of Education University Of Jammu
Any satisfactory system of education should aim at a balanced growth of the individual and insist on both knowledge and wisdom, jnanam vijnana-sahitam. It should not only train the intellect but bring grace onto the heart of man. Wisdom is more easily gained through the study of literature, philosophy, religion. They interpret the higher laws of the universe. If we do not have a general philosophy or attitude of life, our minds will be confused,and we will suffer from greed, pusillanimity, anxiety and defeatism. Mental slums are more dangerous to mankind than material slums.
The importance of education is not only in knowledge and skill, but it is to help us live with others. Co-operative and mutually helpful living is what we should be trained for. Moral qualities are of greater values than intellectual accomplishments.
If you reflect on the figure of Sarasvati you will have an idea of what our ancestors aimed at in education. The goddess has for her vehicle a swan, hamsa, which is endowed with the capacity of separating milk from water. Education has for its aim not merely the acquisition of information but the capacity for discernment. Judgment is more important than cleverness. In our country today we have many men who are clever but not many who are upright. We should cultivate respect for integrity. We must weed out corruption and clean up the nation. Purity is essential in daily life and administration.
We should instill into our youth zeal for the advancement of knowledge. We have enough material but it is not guided-properly. We need education in character. We have to make good men. Education should give the children not only intellectual stimulation but a purpose. We should not encourage them to think of situation as either black or white. We should not inject children with the poisons that have entered our bloodstream. We must not make them as corrupt as we happen to be. We passed through two wars and are giving to the children as a possibility a war of utter annihilation. Every new life should be and improvement on the old. Children should be taught to be gentle, truthful and forbearing.
The true aim of education, according to the Indian sages, is second birth. We are born into the world of nature and necessity, we must be reborn into the world of spirit and freedom. In silence and meditation we discover the spirit in us, learn truth and love, acquire grace and strength by which we can implement our ideas
Unless we have this complete integration, a human being cannot be regarded as truly civilized. So we require vital dynamism, intellectual efficiency and spiritual direction. The three things together constitute the proper aim of education. If the end products of our educational system today are unsatisfying, it is because we lay stress on one or the other but not all the three things together.
The problem that is facing us is that we have come together, for good or ill, and we cannot be separated any more. All the nations, all the culture and all the civilizations have come together. What is the attitude which we shall adopt if we wish to settle down into a peaceful world, a world without wars, a friendly, neighbourly kind of world ?
Faith in the exclusiveness, in the absoluteness, in the finality of our particular systems-that has brought about wars and wars again. We want to impose our particular view.
It is now increasingly recognized that a balanced view of education should be adopted. In addition to intellectual training, imagination should be fostered and the emotions refined. The inquisitive mind, the intuitive heart, the sensitive spirit and the searching conscience should all be developed. In this age of science and technology, we should remember that the tree of life is something quite distinct from a grid of steel. Even as we try to remove poverty by the application of science and technology, poverty of mind requires to be removed by fine arts. Man does not live by bread alone though he cannot live without bread. Material poverty is not the only source of unhappiness. We should serve not the power interests of community but its human interests. Man is not mere clay on the whirling potter’s wheel of an increasingly dehumanized society. He is a master of his social environment, a creative force himself, working for human purposes. He is not merely a Pavlovian dog with conditioned reflexes trained to serve the power interests. He is not a guinea pig or a monkey tested in the hands of a cosmic experimenter for life beyond this planet. Aesthetic and spiritual values contribute to the making of a full man. Man’s creative side is nourished by art. In man are gaiety and laughter, the lust of the flaming life and the lure of the flashing eye.
If education is to help us to meet the moral challenge of the age and play its part in the life of the community, it should be liberating and life – giving. It must give a basic meaning to personality and existence and equip us with the power to overcome spiritual inertia and foster spiritual sensitivity.
Education is there to help us to find out what we are for in this world. Is it merely to grow rich or grow learned, or is it for the purpose of fulfilling yourself and making yourself and offering to the supreme? Man cannot be satisfied by wealth by learning, but by developing the quality of detachment, of renunciation, making himself the instrument of a higher purpose. It is there that the realization of the fulfillment of man abides, and it should be our endeavour to develop it.
The true friend of education is an enfranchised human being, a being who is free form all prejudices and presuppositions and looks upon all as kith and kin. The function started with a recitation of a few verse from the Bhagavadigita. What is the aim of education? It has been said that ted dvitiyamjanma, it is a second birth. It has to be different from what you are. It is to be a new kind of being not in your own self, mata savitri, pita acaryah. The teacher gives the spark which will enable you to develop a new outlook on life and a new kind of being. Several verse from the Bhagavadgita were quoted:
Duhkhesv anudvigna manah sukhesu vigatasprhah
Vitaragabhayakrodhah sthitadhi munir ucyate
Yalt sarvatra anabhi snchas tat-tat prapya subhasubham
Na bhindandati na dev’sti tasya prajna pratishita
That man has steadfast wisdom is truly enfranchised , is truly emancipated, and is not depressed when he is faced by sorrow: he is not elated when he is faced by happiness, but looks upon both as equal, more or less. Similar, he has an attitude of friendship for all, whether it is good or evil, that overtakes him; he does not feel exalted, he does not get depressed. It is that man’s nature that can be regarded as steady, as being steadfast.
The true end of education in not the acquisition of information, important thought it may be, or acquisition of technical skills, though they are very essential is modern society. One must have that superior outlook that outlook which goes beyond information and technical skill. Information is not knowledge, nor is knowledge, nor is knowledge wisdom. One must have the capacity to subsist in the battle and to look at things as they happen without any kind of inward disturbance or perturbation of one’s being.
The end of education is self-knowledge, in so far as the self is a clam discriminating spirit. When we know the inner man, not as a Teuton or a Gaul, not as soldier or a priest, not as a member of the hungry proletariat or the class of bourgeoisie but as a man facing what is permanent in the world, are we truly human. Our education should confirm the spontaneous aims and ambitions of the child mind which identifies itself with the whole of humanity, if false education does not interfere with these natural impulses. Where are the educators today who are not merely preachers of opinions or fitters of tools but makers of men?
If we are to train the youth of a free society, we must teach them not only one role, the obligations and rights of individuals, but their meaning and value for life. Every system of education aims at physical health and efficiency, intellectual alertness and learning, and guidance of the soul, including the education of the emotions and imagination. What matters in any system of education of the emotions and imagination. What matters in any system of education is the accent. Hitherto we have laid stress on learning rather than on life, on intellectual development rather than spiritual growth. Expansion of the surface consciousness is not deepening of life. By excessive specialization and insistence on the outer, the measurable, the quantitative, we tend to extinguish every spark of that light by which man is truly man.
Indian educationalists believe that the aim of education is to increase our awareness of the reality of spiritual values, unseen by the mortal eye, of the beauty and wisdom that the senses do not perceive, which we can reach only by the mind or the soul which we only apprehend inwardly. We must be educated into the realization of the truth that we are members one of another. We must reach a unity of spirit before we can get together for political unity.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
