Education for Villages |
"Unfortunately we, who learn in colleges, forget that India lives in her
villages and not in her towns.
"India has 7,00,000 villages and you, who receive a liberal education, are
expected to take that education or the fruits of that education to the
villages. How will you infect the people of the villages with your
scientific knowledge? Are you then learning science in terms of the villages
and will you be so handy and so practical that the knowledge that you derive
in a college so magnificently built—and I believe equally magnificently
equipped—you will be able to use for the benefit of the villagers?
"Lastly then, I place before you the instrument to which you may apply your
scientific knowledge and that is the humble spinning-wheel. Seven lakhs
villages in India are today pining for want of that simple instrument. It
was in every home and every cottage of India only a century ago, and at that
time, India was not a lazy country that it is today."
(The Hindu,
19-3-1925; 26:302.)
" 'But what about my children and their education?'—says the candidate
worker. If the children are to receive their education after the modern
style, I can give no useful guidance. If it be deemed enough to make them
healthy, sinewy, honest, intelligent villagers, any day able to earn their
livelihood in the home of their parents' adoption, they will have their
all-round education under the parental roof and withal they will be partly
earning members of the family from the moment they reach the years of
understanding and are able to use their hands and feet in a methodical
manner. There is no school equal to a decent home and no teachers equal to
honest virtuous parents. Modern high school education is a dead weight on
the villagers. Their children will never be able to get it, and thank God
they will never miss it if they have the training of the decent home."
(Harijan,
23-11-1935; 62:133.)
"Those who go and live in villages as true villagers are needed where more
than persons like me who go there with their own thermos flasks; such
persons can provide living literature to the people."
(Harijan,
14-11-1936; 63:415.)
"When you are imparting knowledge to a child of 7 or 10 through the medium
of an industry, you should to begin with exclude all those subjects which
cannot be linked with the craft. . .
". . . Our education has got to be revolutionized. The brain must be
educated through the hand. If I were a poet, I could write poetry on the
possibilities of the five fingers. Why should you think that the mind is
everything and the hands and feet nothing? Those who do not train their
hands, who go through the ordinary rut of education, lack 'music' in their
life. All their faculties are not trained. Mere book knowledge does not
interest the child so as to hold his attention fully. The brain gets weary
of mere words, and the child's mind begins to wander. The hand does the
things it ought not to do, the eye sees the things it ought not to see, the
ear hears the things it ought not to hear, and they do not do, see, or hear,
respectively what they ought to. They are not taught to make the right
choice and so their education often proves their ruin. An education which
does not teach us to discriminate between good and bad, to assimilate the
one and eschew the other is a misnomer. . .
". . . What we need is educationists with originality, fired with true zeal,
who will think out from day to day what they are going to teach their
pupils. The teacher cannot get this knowledge through musty volumes. He has
to use his own faculties of observation and thinking and impart his
knowledge to the children through his lips, with the help of a craft. This
means a revolution in the method of teaching, a revolution in the teacher's
outlook."
(Harijan,
18-2-1939; 68:372-374.)
"Some work for adult education is being done in many places. It is mostly
concentrated among mill-hands and the like in big cities. No one has really
touched the village. Mere three Rs and lectures on politics won't satisfy
me. Adult education of my conception must make men and women better citizens
all round. To work out the syllabus and to organize the work of adult
education is a more difficult task than preparation of the seven years'
course for children. The common central feature of both will be the
imparting of education through village crafts. Agriculture will play an
important part in adult education under the basic scheme. Literary
instruction must be there. Much information will be given orally. There will
be books more for the teachers than the taught. We must teach the majority
how to behave towards the minority and vice versa. The right type of adult
education should teach good neighbourliness and cut at the very root of
untouchability and communal problem."
(The Hindu,
29-10-1944; 78:237-38.)
"According to Nai Talim, craft, literary instruction, hygiene and art are
not separate things but blend together and cover education of the individual
from the time of conception to the moment of death. Therefore, I would not
divide village uplift work into water-tight compartments from the very
beginning but undertake an activity which will combine all four. Instead of
regarding craft and industry as different from education I will regard the
former as the medium for the latter. Nai Talim therefore ought to be
integrated into the scheme."
(Harijan,
10-11-1946; 86:59.) |