All over India, there is a vague feeling of discontent in the air about our prevalent system of education. Signs have lately been numerous of a desire for a change - there seems to be an urgent of life in the subsoil of our national mind, sending forth new institutions and giving rise to new experiments. But it often happens that because man's wish is so immediate to him, and so strong, it becomes difficult accurately to locate the exciting cause, to make sure of the object towards which it aspires.
The mind of our educated community has been brought up within the enclosure of the modern Indian educational system. It has grown as familiar to us as our own physical body, unconsciously giving rise in our mind to the belief that it can never be changed. Our imagination dare not soar beyond its limits; we are unable to see it and judge it from outside. We neither have the courage nor the heart to say that it has replaced by something else, because our own intellectual life has been its special product, for which we have a natural partiality and admiration.
And yet there lurks, in some depth of our self-satisfaction, a thorn, which does not let us sleep in comfort. When the secret pricking goes on for some time, we, in our fretfulness, try to ascribe the cause of our irritation to some outside intrusion. We say that the only thing wrong in our education is that it is not in our absolute control; that the boat is sea-worthy, only the helm has to be in our own hands to save it from wreckage. Lately, most of our attempts to establish national schools and universities were made with the idea that it was external independence which was needed. We forget that the same weakness in our character, or in our circumstances, which inevitably draws us on to the slippery slope of imitation, will pursue us when our independence is merely of the outside. For then our freedom will become the freedom to imitate the foreign institutions, thus bringing our evil fortune under the influence of the conjunction of two malignant planets - those of imitation and the badness of imitation - producing a machine-made University, which is made with a bad machine.
As it often happens with the party which has been beaten in a game, for the partners of the same side to ascribe the failure to one another's stupidity, so, in our discredited system of education, we two partners - our foreign authorities and ourselves - are following the same course of mutual recrimination. It is very likely that the blame can be justly apportioned between both of us; yet I always think it is more a matter of academic interest than anything else to wrangle with the other fellow about his share of the futility when we ourselves were also deeply involved. What is of real practical importance is for us to know what was our own contribution to the deficiency we complain of.
Those who feel pity for the Sudras may say that only the Brahmins were responsible for placing the former in a degraded condition. But, without discussing the merit of such an assertion, it has to be admitted that it would be of real benefit to the Sudras to be told that it was they who were responsible for weakly allowing the helpless Brahmins to humiliate them.
So let us forget the other party in this concern. Let us blame our own weakness in being obsessed with the idea that we must have some artificial wooden legs of an education of foreign-make simply because we imagine that we have no legs of our own unfortunate man who got drowned in shallow water because he imagined that he had gone out of his depth.
The mischief is that as soon as the idea of a University enters our mind, the idea of a Cambridge University, Oxford University, and a host of other European Universities, rushes in at the same time and fills the whole space. We then imagine that our salvation lies in a selection of the best points of each patched together in an eclectic perfection. We forget that the European Universities are living organic parts of the life of Europe, where each found its natural birth. Patching up noses, and other small missing fractions of our features, with skins from foreign limbs is allowed in modern surgery; but to build up a whole man by piecing together foreign fragments is beyond the resources of science, not only for the present time, but let us fervently hope, for all time to come.
The European University comes before our vision, full-grown. That is why we cannot think of a University except as a fully developed institution. The sight of my neighbour, with a sturdy son to help and support him, may naturally provoke in my mind an envious wish to have a son myself. But if my wish be to have a full-grown son all at once, then, in my hurry, I may stumble upon somebody who is fully grown up, but who is no son to me at all. An impatient craving for result and an unfortunate weakness for imitation have led us to cherish just such an unnatural desire for a National University, full-fledged from its very birth. So that most of our endeavours become fruitless, or else the only fruit they produce is of the class of lacquer-ware fruit, which may rival the real thing in size and shape and colouring, but which one has to beware of biting, much more of taking into the stomach. These solidly complete Universities, over which our country is brooding, are like hard- boiled eggs from which you cannot expect chickens to come out.
Not only ourselves, but our European school-master himself seems to have forgotten that his University has grown with the growth of the nation he belongs to, and that its material magnificence was not in its beginning and does not belong to its essential truth. No doubt the time has come when he can comfortably afford to forget, in his own case, that it was the indigent monks who were the source of his educational proficiency in the first instance, and that most of the students at one time were poor. But when he affects to ignore the fact that, in a poor country like India, the material features of our University must not assume more importance than we can bear, when he cruelly forgets that the insufficiency of our schools and colleges must not be made still narrower in scope by cutting down space and increasing furniture, then it becomes disastrous for our people.
I quite understand that food and the utensils to eat it out of are both needful to man. But where there is a shortage of food, a parsimony in regard to utensils also becomes necessary. To make the paraphernalia of our Education so expensive that Education itself becomes difficult of attainment would be like squandering all one's money in buying money-bags.
We in the East have had to arrive at our own solution of the problem of life. We have, as far as possible, made our food and clothing unburdensome; and this our very climate has taught us to do. We require openings in the walls more than the walls themselves. Light and air have more to do with our wearing apparel than the weavers' loom. The sun makes for us the heat- producing factors which elsewhere are required from food-stuffs. All these natural advantages have moulded our life to a particular shape, which I cannot believe it will be profitable to ignore in the case of our education.
I do not seek to glorify poverty. But simplicity is of greater price than the appendages of luxury. The simplicity of which I speak is not merely the effect of a lack of superfluity: it is one of the signs of perfection. When this dawns on mankind, the unhealthy fog which now besmirches civilization will be lifted. It is for lack of this simplicity that the necessaries of life have become so rare and costly.
Most things in the civilized world, such as eating and merry-making, education and culture, administration and litigation, occupy more than their legitimate space. Much of their burden is needless; and in bearing it civilized man may be showing great strength, but little skill. To the gods, viewing this from on high, it must seem like the flounderings of a giant who has got out of his depth and knows not how to swim; who, as he keeps muddying the whole pool by his needlessly powerful efforts, cannot get rid of the idea that there must be some virtue in this display of strength.
When the simplicity of fulness awakens in the West, then work, enjoyment, and education alike, will find their true strength in becoming easy. When this will happen I have no idea, but till then we must, with bowed heads, continue to listen to lectures telling us that the highest education is to be had only in the tallest edifices.
To the extent that forms and appendages are the outgrowth of the soul, to ignore them is to be impoverished - this I know. But though Europe has been trying, she has not yet discovered the golden mean. Why, then, should obstacles be placed in the way of our attempting to find it out for ourselves? To be simple without becoming poorer is the problem which each must solve according to his temperament. But while we are ever ready to accept the subject-matter of education from outside, it is too bad to thrust on us the temperament as well.
This attitude of our teacher has affected the minds of his disciple and in our pursuit of magnitude we are becoming careless of reality.
The mind of our educated community has been brought up within the enclosure of the modern Indian educational system. It has grown as familiar to us as our own physical body, unconsciously giving rise in our mind to the belief that it can never be changed. Our imagination dare not soar beyond its limits; we are unable to see it and judge it from outside. We neither have the courage nor the heart to say that it has replaced by something else, because our own intellectual life has been its special product, for which we have a natural partiality and admiration.
And yet there lurks, in some depth of our self-satisfaction, a thorn, which does not let us sleep in comfort. When the secret pricking goes on for some time, we, in our fretfulness, try to ascribe the cause of our irritation to some outside intrusion. We say that the only thing wrong in our education is that it is not in our absolute control; that the boat is sea-worthy, only the helm has to be in our own hands to save it from wreckage. Lately, most of our attempts to establish national schools and universities were made with the idea that it was external independence which was needed. We forget that the same weakness in our character, or in our circumstances, which inevitably draws us on to the slippery slope of imitation, will pursue us when our independence is merely of the outside. For then our freedom will become the freedom to imitate the foreign institutions, thus bringing our evil fortune under the influence of the conjunction of two malignant planets - those of imitation and the badness of imitation - producing a machine-made University, which is made with a bad machine.
As it often happens with the party which has been beaten in a game, for the partners of the same side to ascribe the failure to one another's stupidity, so, in our discredited system of education, we two partners - our foreign authorities and ourselves - are following the same course of mutual recrimination. It is very likely that the blame can be justly apportioned between both of us; yet I always think it is more a matter of academic interest than anything else to wrangle with the other fellow about his share of the futility when we ourselves were also deeply involved. What is of real practical importance is for us to know what was our own contribution to the deficiency we complain of.
Those who feel pity for the Sudras may say that only the Brahmins were responsible for placing the former in a degraded condition. But, without discussing the merit of such an assertion, it has to be admitted that it would be of real benefit to the Sudras to be told that it was they who were responsible for weakly allowing the helpless Brahmins to humiliate them.
So let us forget the other party in this concern. Let us blame our own weakness in being obsessed with the idea that we must have some artificial wooden legs of an education of foreign-make simply because we imagine that we have no legs of our own unfortunate man who got drowned in shallow water because he imagined that he had gone out of his depth.
The mischief is that as soon as the idea of a University enters our mind, the idea of a Cambridge University, Oxford University, and a host of other European Universities, rushes in at the same time and fills the whole space. We then imagine that our salvation lies in a selection of the best points of each patched together in an eclectic perfection. We forget that the European Universities are living organic parts of the life of Europe, where each found its natural birth. Patching up noses, and other small missing fractions of our features, with skins from foreign limbs is allowed in modern surgery; but to build up a whole man by piecing together foreign fragments is beyond the resources of science, not only for the present time, but let us fervently hope, for all time to come.
The European University comes before our vision, full-grown. That is why we cannot think of a University except as a fully developed institution. The sight of my neighbour, with a sturdy son to help and support him, may naturally provoke in my mind an envious wish to have a son myself. But if my wish be to have a full-grown son all at once, then, in my hurry, I may stumble upon somebody who is fully grown up, but who is no son to me at all. An impatient craving for result and an unfortunate weakness for imitation have led us to cherish just such an unnatural desire for a National University, full-fledged from its very birth. So that most of our endeavours become fruitless, or else the only fruit they produce is of the class of lacquer-ware fruit, which may rival the real thing in size and shape and colouring, but which one has to beware of biting, much more of taking into the stomach. These solidly complete Universities, over which our country is brooding, are like hard- boiled eggs from which you cannot expect chickens to come out.
Not only ourselves, but our European school-master himself seems to have forgotten that his University has grown with the growth of the nation he belongs to, and that its material magnificence was not in its beginning and does not belong to its essential truth. No doubt the time has come when he can comfortably afford to forget, in his own case, that it was the indigent monks who were the source of his educational proficiency in the first instance, and that most of the students at one time were poor. But when he affects to ignore the fact that, in a poor country like India, the material features of our University must not assume more importance than we can bear, when he cruelly forgets that the insufficiency of our schools and colleges must not be made still narrower in scope by cutting down space and increasing furniture, then it becomes disastrous for our people.
I quite understand that food and the utensils to eat it out of are both needful to man. But where there is a shortage of food, a parsimony in regard to utensils also becomes necessary. To make the paraphernalia of our Education so expensive that Education itself becomes difficult of attainment would be like squandering all one's money in buying money-bags.
We in the East have had to arrive at our own solution of the problem of life. We have, as far as possible, made our food and clothing unburdensome; and this our very climate has taught us to do. We require openings in the walls more than the walls themselves. Light and air have more to do with our wearing apparel than the weavers' loom. The sun makes for us the heat- producing factors which elsewhere are required from food-stuffs. All these natural advantages have moulded our life to a particular shape, which I cannot believe it will be profitable to ignore in the case of our education.
I do not seek to glorify poverty. But simplicity is of greater price than the appendages of luxury. The simplicity of which I speak is not merely the effect of a lack of superfluity: it is one of the signs of perfection. When this dawns on mankind, the unhealthy fog which now besmirches civilization will be lifted. It is for lack of this simplicity that the necessaries of life have become so rare and costly.
Most things in the civilized world, such as eating and merry-making, education and culture, administration and litigation, occupy more than their legitimate space. Much of their burden is needless; and in bearing it civilized man may be showing great strength, but little skill. To the gods, viewing this from on high, it must seem like the flounderings of a giant who has got out of his depth and knows not how to swim; who, as he keeps muddying the whole pool by his needlessly powerful efforts, cannot get rid of the idea that there must be some virtue in this display of strength.
When the simplicity of fulness awakens in the West, then work, enjoyment, and education alike, will find their true strength in becoming easy. When this will happen I have no idea, but till then we must, with bowed heads, continue to listen to lectures telling us that the highest education is to be had only in the tallest edifices.
To the extent that forms and appendages are the outgrowth of the soul, to ignore them is to be impoverished - this I know. But though Europe has been trying, she has not yet discovered the golden mean. Why, then, should obstacles be placed in the way of our attempting to find it out for ourselves? To be simple without becoming poorer is the problem which each must solve according to his temperament. But while we are ever ready to accept the subject-matter of education from outside, it is too bad to thrust on us the temperament as well.
This attitude of our teacher has affected the minds of his disciple and in our pursuit of magnitude we are becoming careless of reality.
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