EDUCATION FOR SARVODAYA
by J.C. Kumarappa
(Undated. Source: Kumarappa Papers, NMML)
Education and training are not a special feature peculiar to human beings. All animals, especially the young ones, go through a period of training. Watch animals, especially the young ones, go through a period of training. Watch pups at play. They are getting their training to chase and hunt when grown up. Kittens roll and catch balls preparing themselves to catch rats when they become cats. Similarly, other animals teach their young ones their life activities. Their play is not merely a form of recreation or an outlet for surplus energy. It is definitely a purposeful activity. It is vital to the adult life of the full-grown animal.
In the same way, the training of young human beings has to prepare them for their life activities. This is the purpose of all education. To fulfil this purpose satisfactorily, we should be clear as to our aim in life. A system of education should be adopted to give the training necessary to perform one’s duties where called upon to do so in later life. Schools and colleges are but laboratories for life work, and they must be suited to provide the young, not with more knowledge, but also with enough practice to work towards the means of attaining the desired goal set before oneself or the people.
In the early stages, man as a hunter, was highly individualistic. The young ones were trained in the use of bows and arrows to acquire their everyday needs by foraging for themselves from Nature’s abounding stores with their own prowess. At this stage, archery formed an important factor in their syllabus for their economic life. Their group life was limited to families and near blood relations. Dances, songs and simple instruments of music played an important part in their lives.
As society became more complex, it became obvious that division of labour had to be resorted to supply all its needs. Different families concentrated in supplying particular demands. This naturally led to specialisation and exchange. With this change numerous customs, traditions and usages grew up and found their way into the syllabus of youth training. These changes became more and more complicated and demanded closely organised teaching and training under the expert guidance of Gurus and religious leaders. The system of Gurukulam education was evolved to teach, not merely by precepts, but by living with the Guru. This contact with the Guru became essential. Society began to assume control over the individual and the smaller groups. Economic and social consideration had to modify and mould individual and group desires. Discipline became highly important in safeguarding the interests of society. This led to the development of education through universities of the present type. Group loyalties became the order of the day. Language, specialisation and narrow national divisions separated the people. There was an organised competition for supremacy among nations, and the function of education became to supply and train leaders who would sustain their group power. The individual had to be crushed, and the needs of his personality were ignored in the presumed interests of society. The youth was taught to do and die and not question the leaders.
With the growth of industrialisation, this tendency was augmented by the need to develop centralised industries and meet their requirements of the supply of raw materials from the four corners of the globe. This necessitated keeping other nations in an undeveloped condition to tone down possible competition. To enable some of the pioneers to accomplish their ends, they had to resort to the enforcement of their brand of organisation by developing physical force in an organised way. This led nations to adjust their educational syllabus to meet the demands of centralised exploitative industries.
Such a syllabus encourages, in the majority of students, the acquirement of knowledge from the past which has been proved safe for the existence of an acquisitive society based on standardised and centralised production. This kind of education denied the majority opportunities for individual development.
Today we find ourselves in the position where individual thought and action have no value attached to them excepting where they are found to be of use to the small exploiting group. This system cultivates implicit obedience and development of the memory rather than individual action and original thinking. Hence, we find lawyers and newspaper men flourishing, while there is little or nothing done to encourage ingenuity and originality. If we want our youth to contribute in large measure to the fullest extent of their ability, we must introduce them while they are pliable to the values and practices of subjects that will call for their attention in later life.
When we aim at Sarvodaya, everyone should be trained to contribute to the well-being of society by being acquainted with the problems of life at first-hand. This course demands that the children must face life while yet malleable and be taught to make their own decision and not merely carry out orders. All the spheres of life should be covered whether it is personal cleanliness, household work, community service or production and consumption. Such work will be distributed according to children’s age and capacity.
While we were under foreign yoke, we restricted the type of work to be followed in the new system of education termed “Basic education” to Khadi production, but now that we are in a position to regulate and control our circumstances, we should extend the field of studies to all other spheres.
The Sarvodaya programme covers the whole of life to uplift everybody. Hence, our children have to be in contact with all that makes for the total life in our country. Everybody has to be uplifted by producing all we need in our own country. We have to be self-sufficient and self-controlled. So beginning with the nursery schools we have to start such training. Small children may not be taught to plough but they can start with cultivating flower gardens, uses of the takli or modelling houses from clay. From that the sphere of work will be widened to simple industries like spinning and weaving, card-board work, paddy husking, then to flower-grinding, bee keeping, carpentry and blacksmithy and from there on to simple hut building, paper making from waste, pottery and oil pressing. This will bring the teenagers to all other work and allied sciences, the elements of which they would have been acquainted in the earliest years, coordinating their simple work to the respective subjects.
The acid test: The present day education has divorced pleasure from work. ...the acid test of true education is whether work constitutes an unwelcome attribute of an unwanted and unavoidable sphere of existence or whether it brings a feeling of fulfilment of life to the worker. Proper education will develop an attitude of devotion to work. This then is the object of Basic education. It should enable man to find joy in his daily activities and give meaning to his existence. The pay cheque is not an end; nor can it open the door to pleasure.
This Sarvodaya system is widely different from any other such as the project or unit methods and other activities based education. Apart from the fact that this system is based on life and its activities it is also intended to work towards the formation of a non-violent society based on truth. This last factor makes it unique, and marks it out as the field of preparation for a world where wars will be a thing of man’s primitive past.