India of My Dreams

Chapter 46: The New Education

Whatever may be true of other countries, in India at any rate where more than eighty percent of the population is agricultural and another ten percent industrial, it is crime to make education merely literacy, and to unfit boys and girls for manual work in after-life. Indeed I hold that as the larger part of our time is devoted to labour for earning our bread, our children must from their infancy be taught the dignity of such labour. Our children should not be so taught as to despise having gone to school should become useless, as he does become, as an agricultural labourer. It is a sad thing that our schoolboys look upon manual labour with disfavour, if not contempt.

Young India, 1-9-'21

In my opinion, intelligent labour is for the time being the only primary and adult education in this land of starving millions... Literacy education should follow the education of the hand-the one gift that visibly distinguishes man from beast. It is a superstition to think that the fullest development of man is impossible without a knowledge of the art of reading and writing. That knowledge undoubtedly adds grace to life, but it is in no way indispensable for man's moral, physical, or material growth.

Harijan, 8-3-'35

I hold that true education of the intellect can only come through a proper exercise and training of the bodily organs, e.g. hands, feet, eyes, ears, nose, etc. In other words, an intelligent use of the bodily organs in a child provides the best and quickest way of developing his intellect. But unless the development of the mind and body goes hand in had with a corresponding awakening of the soul, the former alone would prove to be a poor lop-sided affair. By spiritual training I mean education of the heart. A proper and all-round development f the mind, therefore, can take place only when it proceeds pari passu with the education of the physical and spiritual faculties of the child. They constitute and indivisible whole. According to this theory, therefore, it would be a gross fallacy to suppose that they can be developed piecemeal or independently of one another.

Harijan, 8-5-'37

The baneful effects of absence of proper coordination and harmony among the various faculties of body, mind and soul respectively are obvious. They are all around us; only we have lost perception of them owing to our present perverse associations.

Harijan, 8-5-'37

Man is neither mere intellect, nor the gross animal body, nor the heart or soul alone. A proper and harmonious combination of all the three is required for the making of the whole man and constitutes the true economics of education.

Harijan, 8-5-'37

By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in child and man-body, mind and spirit, Literacy is not the end of education or even the beginning. It is only of the means where by man and woman can be educated. Literacy in itself is no education. I would therefore begin the child's education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins its training. I hold the highest development of the mind and the soul is possible under such a system of education. Only every handicraft has to be taught not merely mechanically as is done today but scientifically, i.e. the child should know the why and the wherefore of every process.

Harijan, 31-7-'37

In my scheme of things the hand will handle tools before it draws or traces the writings. The eyes will read the pictures of letters and words as they will know other things in life, the ears will catch the names and meanings of things and sentences. The whole training will be natural, responsive and, therefore, the quickest and the cheapest in the world.

Harijan, 28-8-'37

Manual work will have to be the very centre of the whole thing... The manual training will not consist in producing articles for a school museum, or toys which have no value. It should produce marketable articles. The children will not do this as children used to do under the whip in the early days of the factories. They will do it because it entertains them and stimulates their intellect.

Harijan, 11-9-'37

I am a firm believer in the principle of free and compulsory Primary Education for India. I also hold that we shall realize this only by teaching the children a useful vocation and utilizing it as a means for cultivating their mental, physical and spiritual faculties. It will check the progressive decay of our villages and lay the foundation of a juster social order in which there is no unnatural division between the 'haves' and the 'havenots' and everybody is assured of a living wage and the rights to freedom.

Harijan, 9-10-'37

My plan to impart Primary Education through the medium of village handicrafts like spinning and carding etc. is thus conceived as the spearhead of a silent social revolution fraught with the most far-reaching consequences. It will provide a healthy and moral basis of relationship between the city and the village and thus go a long way to eradicating some of the worst evils of the present social insecurity and poisoned relationship between the classes.

Harijan, 9-10-'37