When I landed at Durban in January 1897, I had three children with me, my
sister's son ten years old, and my own sons nine and five years of
age. Where was I to educate them ?
I could have sent them to the
schools for European children, but only as a matter of favour and
exception. No other Indian children were allowed to attend them. For
these there were schools established by Christian missions, but I
was not prepared to send my children there, as I did not like the
education imparted in those schools. For one thing, the medium of
instruction would be only English, or perhaps incorrect Tamil or
Hindi; this too could only have been arranged with difficulty. I
could not possibly put up with this and other disadvantages. In the
meantime I was making my own attempt to teach them. But that was at
best irregular, and I could not get hold of a suitable Gujarati
teacher.
I was at my wits' end. I advertised for an English teacher who
should teach the children under my direction. Some regular
instruction was to be given them by this teacher, and for the rest
they should be satisfied with what little I could give them
irregularly. So I engaged an English governess at £7 pounds a month.
This went on for some time, but not to my satisfaction. The boys
acquired some knowledge of Gujarati through my conversation and
intercourse with them, which was strictly in the mother-tongue. I
was loath to send them back to India, for I believed even then that
young children should not be separated from their parents. The
education that children naturally imbibe in a well-ordered household
is impossible to obtain in hostels. I therefore kept my children
with me. I did send my nephew and elder son to be educated at
residential schools in India for a few months, but I soon had to
recall them. Later, the eldest son, long after he had come of age,
broke away from me, and went to India to join a high school in Ahmedabad. I have an impression that the nephew was satisfied with
what I could give him. Unfortunately he died in the prime of youth
after a brief illness. The other three of my sons have never been at
a public school, though they did get some regular schooling in an
improvised school which I started for the children of Satyagrahi
parents in South Africa.
These experiments were all inadequate. I could not devote to the
children all the time I had wanted to give them. My inability to
give them enough attention and other unavoidable causes prevented me
from providing them with the literary education I had desired, and
all my sons have had complaints to make against me in this matter.
Whenever they come across an M.A. or a B.A., or even a matriculate,
they seem to feel the handicap of a want of school education.
Nevertheless I am of opinion that, if I had insisted on their being
educated somehow at public schools, they would have been deprived of
the training that can be had only at the school of experience, or
from constant contact with the parents. I should never have been
free, as I am today, from anxiety on their score, and the artificial
education that they could have had in England or South Africa, torn
from me, would never have taught them the simplicity and the spirit
of service that they show in their lives today, while their
artificial ways of living might have been a serious handicap in my
public work. Therefore, though I have not been able to give them a
literary education either to their or to my satisfaction, I am not
quite sure, as I look back on my past years, that I have not done my
duty by them to the best of my capacity. Nor do I regret not having
sent them to public schools. I have always felt that the undesirable
traits I see today in my eldest son are an echo of my own
undisciplined and unformulated early life. I regard that time as a
period of half-baked knowledge and indulgence. It coincided with the
most impressionable years of my eldest son, and naturally he has
refused to regard it as my time of indulgence and inexperience. He
has on the contrary believed that that was the brightest period of
my life, and the changes, effected later, have been due to delusion
miscalled enlightenment. And well he might. Why should he not think
that my earlier years represented a period of awakening, and the
later years of radical change, years of delusion and egotism ? Often
have I been confronted with various posers from friends: What harm
had there been, if I had given my boys an academical education?
What right had I thus to clip their wings? Why should I have come
in the way of their taking degrees and choosing their own careers?
I do not think that there is much point in these questions. I have
come in contact with numerous students. I have tried myself or
through others to impose my educational 'fads' on other children too
and have seen the results thereof. There are within my knowledge a
number of young men today contemporaneous with my sons. I do not
think that man to man they are any better that my sons, or that my
sons have much to learn from them.
But the ultimate result of my experiments is in the womb of the
future. My object in discussing this subject here is that a student
of the history of civilization may have some measure of the
difference between disciplined home education and school education,
and so of the effect produced on children through changes introduced
by parents in their lives. The purpose of this chapter is also to
show the lengths to which a votary of truth is driven by his
experiments with truth as also to show the votary of liberty how
many are the sacrifices demanded by that stern goddess. Had I been
without a sense of self-respect and satisfied myself with having
for my children the education that other children could not get, I
should have deprived them of the object-lesson in liberty and
self-respect that I gave them at the cost of the literary training.
And where a choice has to be made between liberty and learning, who
will not say that the former has to be preferred a thousand times to
the latter?
The youths whom I called out in 1920 from those citadels of
slavery – their schools and colleges – and whom I advised that it was far
better to remain unlettered and break stones for the sake of liberty
than to go in for a literary education in the chains of slaves will
probably be able now to trace my advice to its source.