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EDUCATION FOR EVOLUTION TOWARDS SWARAJ
CREATIVE REFORM WITH AN INTEGRATED APPROACH
by
Dr. N. N. Panicker
Swaraj is self-rule. Individuals and communities aspire for
it. But few ever had it. However, the evolutionary progress
of humanity requires that more and more individuals and communities
should realise the right of self-rule. The primary purpose of
a social revolution visualized by Gandhiji and Jayaprakashji
is the establishment of Swaraj. People act like wound-up toys
or pre-programmed robots because of instinct or inculcation.
They get stuck in the quicksands of past habits and get grounded
by low expectations. They act as if forced, without their own
will or in spite of it, as admitted by Arjuna in the Bhagavad
Gita: ‘anicchan api varshneya, balad iva niyojate’. Not only
individuals but communities find themselves unable to control
their own destiny and denied of self-rule.
Speeding up the evolutionary process
What can we do to speed up the evolutionary process of empowerment
for self-rule? First, we should be aware of the right for empowerment
and be conscious of our goals. We should align and associate
ourselves with people, institutions and movements to reinforce
the goals. We should acquire knowledge and skills for achieving
self-rule both for ourselves and for the community in which
we live, the perception of which will expand with our evolutionary
growth.
To be able to rule ourselves, we have to empower ourselves.
Self-empowerment is the acquisition of control on ourselves
and in our field of action. It consists of both self-control
and competence. Education in its broadest sense is the means
to empowerment.
Education should provide the self-control and self-discipline
that enables focusing of energy and attention to achieve goals.
Energy saved is better than energy produced; therefore prevention
of waste and dissipation of one’s energy, and its focussing
is empowerment indeed. Plugging the leak should be the first
step in filling up. Both individuals and communities can go
a long way towards self-empowerment by restraining consumption
and conduct on the one hand and eliminating wasteful conflicts
and friction within and without.
Education should provide the motivation, knowledge and skill
required for empowerment and self-rule. Proper attitude, positive
approach and self-confident initiative for achieving essential
goals should emerge out of intrinsic motivation. The knowledge
required for recognising the inter-connections and the wisdom
for decision-making are widely accepted purposes of education.
The skills required to conduct oneself, to manage others, to
handle tools and situations as well as to gain the best effect
with the least effort are also to be achieved through education.
Education for most of us is also an effort in unlearning, to
free us from mental blocks, prejudices, pessimism and helplessness.
For future generations, proper education from childhood should
be provided to save them from this burden.
Education and training should include both formal and informal.
In the present context, informal education and training of the
masses assumes the greatest importance for empowering individuals
and communities for self-rule. Constitutional entitlements such
as independence,democracy and panchayati-raj would fail in their
realisation, as we are seeing today, in the absence of a concerted
effort in preparing people for them through value-based education.
Creativity in education
Man-making education is the need of the time. Many of the maladies
of our time, such as corruption, unemployment and alienation,
can be traced to irrelevant and inadequate education. Education
has also been used as a means for exploitation and colonisation.
Yet, it is through proper education that personal and social
transformation can be achieved. Therefore, educational reform
is a priority of our time. But reform that deforms and fixing
that fouls have been the bane of our socio-political dispensation.
Creativity is the expression of the capacity to generate new,
novel and potentially useful ideas. From the past experience
of educational reform attempts, it becomes evident that a creative
approach is needed here. In the context of the explosive expansion
of knowledge and instantaneous reach in communication, educational
reform demands an innovative approach. To extract the maximum
advantage and at the same time to maintain the proper balance
to sustain indispensable values, a large measure of creativity
is needed in educational reform. Creativity is also needed to
acquire popular support to implement the reform.
Need for Educational Reform As many of the maladies
of the present can be traced to improper education or lack of
it, a thoroughly reformed education system can help us to get
rid of the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ Gandhiji foresaw. A reformed
education may have the following purposes also:
- To remove corruption, unemployment and alienation
- To protect from exploitation and colonisation
- To facilitate personal and social transformation
- To benefit from emerging technology and opportunities
Education And Empowerment Are Mutually Complementary
Education confers empowerment and empowerment facilitates education.
The trouble we see around us is due to the deficiency in both,
which can be traced to the same source. Improper or inadequate
education incapacitates people, and they neither experience
nor exert the power to attain the objectives of life. Misplaced
power or lack of power negates autonomy and drive, and education
is hampered. Manifold maladies manifest as a result.
The fundamental objective of education is to empower each person
in his or her evolutionary growth so that each person can reach
the highest potential, which varies from person to person and
changes with time. Education, as the Latin word educatus (past
participle of the word educare to mean rear) connotes, is a
process of bringing up and drawing out. Literally it is, rearing
to form habits and manners, developing mentally and morally
through instruction and the associated training and schooling.
Rearing is empowering, like the mother bird enabling its offspring
to fly out of the nest. The common man also looks at education
in the same way.
Goal For Educational Reform
Education is a means to become free, efficient and properly
oriented. Therefore educational reform should facilitate one
to become free in the following ways:
- Liberation from exploitation,
- Liberation from bondage and
- Liberation from fear.
To become efficient, education should help an individual to
do the following:
- Acquire self-empowerment,
- Master self-discipline and
- Enhance knowledge, skill & motivation.
Education should enable people to become oriented properly for
life in the following ways:
- Move on a personal evolutionary path,
- Gain harmony & synergy in living and
- Uplift others who are below and behind.
Need For A Strategy Extraneous considerations
and interests now dominate the educational scenario. The substantial
and essential aspects of education fade away from the focus.
No wonder there is no autonomy, no freedom and no empowerment;
but there is servitude, incompetence and exploitation.
An ideal for the future should take off from a solid normal
base. Therefore, the first requirement is to establish the solid
base with the common man's perception of education and empowerment,
which would be a great advancement from the perverted state
that exists today.
Once the normal state is established, natural processes of evolutionary
progress would take over through reform, refinement, enhancement
and sublimation. The all round development of the 3H (the Head,
the Heart and the Hand) that Mahatma Gandhi pleaded for, would
naturally be incorporated in education.
Instead of preparing to get a job at the end of education, skills
to create jobs would be acquired through education. Education
would also become a process of unfoldment. "Education is the
manifestation of the perfection already in man", Swami Vivekananda
observed a century ago. Empowerment would also come to mean
aiding in the discovery of the immense potential within the
individual and its arousal, unfoldment and effective engagement.
Education in other words would be the means to Swaraj, which
is sovereign self-rule with self-restraint. The strategy of
starting reform with the common man's perception is a creative
strategy to make educational reform acceptable to people. We
have to walk along with people first in order to guide them,
or rather help them to guide themselves. The trend of the time
has to be understood and accepted so that it can be modified.
Such an opening would get us out of the rut we are in and condition
people for basic reform with regards to content, context and
meaning.
People's Perception The common man's perception,
the straightforward view on education, is firmly grounded in
facts, needs and practicality. People today view education as
a means for empowerment: to assure a better position in life
for their children than themselves and to place them in a position
where they have greater power than themselves in earning income,
gaining influence and commanding respect.
"To get a job" is the purpose many attribute for education -
a job that is 'good', where the goodness is measured by income,
security, prestige, comfort and satisfaction. That is empowerment,
pure and simple. The folks are not bothered about the convoluted
considerations of calculating operators and confused thinkers,
such as University Grants Commission scales, institutional traditions,
political predicaments and plan objectives.
The rat race and the gate crashing that is pervasive today,
will not be there if we let the common man's straightforward
thinking prevail in deciding what facility should be available.
New institutions, courses and teaching staff would be made available
in accordance with demand.
In such a situation everyone who is interested and capable,
would get entry into programs of his/her choice. The quality
and content of programs would also suit the purpose of empowerment,
with proper checks and balances from the user occurring naturally.
Of course, there would be swings of the pendulum, overshoots
and over-corrections. They are inevitable anyway, in sustaining
the dynamic equilibrium necessary for progressive evolution.
The external interventions of government, unions and other third
parties would not have relevance and effect, unlike at present,
in such a situation where education delivers empowerment. Those
who deliver the goods are left alone, when the goods are valued
and needed for deliverance. Autonomy would be automatic. Where
education is for empowerment, there will be empowerment for
education.
Reform In The Information Age Educational reform
in the information age offers new opportunities and challenges.
After the information revolution, content is readily available
irrespective of geographical location. What is important is
the skill to find information, and to determine its relevance
and accuracy.
The emphasis now in education should be on context and meaning
as well as on experience, discipline and skill. What is needed
is to prevent people from becoming "compulsive" consumers of
data, favouring passive reception over the more challenging
act of thinking.
As John Keats put it, "Many have original minds who do not think
it – they are led away by custom". Content is no longer scarce,
but context and meaning are.
Content includes data, information, knowledge and even wisdom.
Data are bits of facts or elements that can be used for analysis.
Information is data with context. Knowledge is information with
meaning. Wisdom is knowledge with experience and insight.
This brings to mind T. S. Elliot's question, "Where is the wisdom
that we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have
lost in information?" This query is relevant in the information
age, particularly for educational reform. Education should prevent
these losses and should be a gainful experience throughout.
Context, meaning, experience and insight are all essential for
education, sublimating data, information and knowledge into
wisdom.
A creative reform should result in an integrated education system,
utilizing the useful features of ancient methods and modern
experiments. Creativity is needed for harmonious synthesis and
implementation to suit the person and the time.
There is a role for amassing data as in the old-fashioned objective
style of memorizing. It instils discipline for the mind, enhances
memory and enables ready reckoning and quick response. The drill
can expand the capacity, flexibility, speed and endurance of
the mind and brain, which is a necessary function of education.
Its value has been demonstrated by the excellence achieved by
those who have had such training in ancient and modern India.
In the name of reform or fashion we should not completely throw
away the proven traditional techniques of learning.
It may be noted that in disciplines where perfection and excellence
are in great demand, as in classical art performances, the traditional
methods still thrive. For example, the rigorous drill and training
of a Koodiattam artist in the traditional objective style results
in the achievement of esoteric excellence. Early memorization
drills in arithmetic and linguistics may no longer be necessary
in the information era; but the mental agility and capacity
gained may still be an advantage. Nevertheless, it has to be
realized that it is a difficult method of extracting excellence.
For those to whom it is not acceptable, other ways have to be
found. Simply because it works for some, it may not be the only
way or the best way. More efficient and enjoyable ways have
to be explored as an attempt at continuous reform, while retaining
the entire option or its useful features in a carefully integrated
mode.
In educational reform, "Let us not follow where the path may
lead. Let us go instead where there’s no path and leave a trail",
as the Japanese proverb says. In balance with this bold attitude,
we should be firmly rooted in what is good in the traditions
and aspirations of our people. This strategy of setting out
from a solid base with boldness and creativity would reform
the educational system. Such a reform will result in a generation
of persons trained in motivation, skill and knowledge with a
penchant for physical fitness, intelligence, morality and emotional
stability. Such a generation can thrive in the coming age of
interdependence.
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