GANDHI'S CONCEPT OF EDUCATION
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Transcript of GANDHI'S CONCEPT OF EDUCATION
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BASIC EDUCATION SCHEME OF
MAHATMA GANDHI
Mahatma Gandhi was very much aware of the needs of
the country illiteracy and poverty was plaguing India and
steps needed to be taken to ensure that the situation was not
the same in independent India. According to him, a proper of
system of basic education is the way out to the vices that was
gripping India and that would eventually come in the way of
its development. The series of article written in the Harijan on
education formed a basis of education that he had complete
faith in. He realised that to have a proper system of education,
the nation had to have a strong monetary and fiscal condition.
In other words, education was dependent on money. To find a
constructive way out of this, he suggested that education to beself-sufficient. Thus, education would be a two-fold policy. It
would not only provide literacy but also a self sufficiency that
would be helpful to the education system and also to the
literate individual.
In 1937, at the national conference at Wardha, under
Gandhis leadership and in consideration of his ideas, thefollowing ideas were passed:
Free and compulsory education must be provided for
seven years on a nation-wide scale.
The medium of instruction should be in the mother-
tongue
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Some sort of technical training should be provided so
that the students would be able to become self-sufficient
in their future. The same craft practised ion the school
would also help in the sustaining of the school.
Through a gradual but steady policy, this system would
also be able to cover the remuneration of the teachers.
This scheme of education also came to be known as the
Nai Talim or the basic education. Nai pointed out that it is
the new way of education and talim stands forapprenticeship. The students would be an apprentice and
would master a craft that would help the student to establish
his own livelihood. Basic would also stand for fundamentals.
Thus this scheme of education was based on the national
culture and civilization of India.
Mahatma Gandhi believed that education should be able
to bring out the best of the child and the man in the Body, the
Mind and the Spirit. Literacy is not the end of education but
rather it is the way to which a sustainable way of education is
taken up the road just begun and it continues as a person
gets to know more about oneself.
Education should help the citizens of India to be self-
sufficient. It should enable a boy or a girl to develop a certain
amount of self-reliance which would help in the earning of a
livelihood. This was the reason why Gandhiji placed so much
stress on the industrial training of the child so that he becomes
acquainted with the real life. He wanted the education to
become the means of producing ideal citizens. Seeing the
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epidemic of poverty that was plaguing India, he suggested that
education should be based on industrial training and the
development of manual skill and handicrafts.
Gandhiji believed that education centres round the child.
He impressed upon people that the cultural aspect of
education is more important than the literary aspect, because it
is through the cultural aspect that the child learns to develop
his character and ideals. He was a supporter of the ancient
Indian ideals of education. Gandhiji addressed the importance
of thought, word and deed, non-violence and truth.
It is clear from the foregoing account that Gandhijis
viewed education from a comprehensive or broadminded
standpoint. Any education that develops only one aspect of
the child can be dubbed as narrow and one-sided. Thus,
Gandhiji states that education must make the individual to liveand earn his daily bread, to be the means of his sustenance. In
a way Gandhiji synthesized the individual and social aims of
education. Like Vivekananda, Gandhiji maintained that
character formation and manual skill were equally important.
Gandhijis plan of education laid stress on all types of
education physical, mental, moral, aesthetic and religious.
The scheme of the basic education clarifies the means of
education. According to Gandhiji, the most important means
of education in basic scheme was craft. About this means of
education, Gandhiji said The principle idea is to impart the
whole education of the body and the mind and the soul
through the handicraft that I taught to the children. You have
to draw out all that is in the child through teaching all the
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processes of handicraft and all your lessons in history
geography, arithmetic will be related to the craft. Thus,
some handicraft was necessary to be the centre of childs
education. Besides other craft recommended were: weaving,
carpentry agriculture gardening and other handicrafts and
other rural crafts. It was pointed out that the following criteria
should be followed in deciding about the basic craft:
Craft fulfilling individual and social means.
Craft based upon local requirement.
Craft in tune with local conditions
Craft favourable to the interest, aptitude and the
ability of the child
Less expensive and simple craft
Craft leading to all round development of
personality.
But Gandhis revolutionary educational policy has
been criticized as being medieval and impractical. One of the
first criticisms that faced this Nai talim was that there was a
dearth of teachers teachers who were artisans and artisans
who were also teachers. And to create a new pedigree of
teachers for India would be extraordinarily difficult. Professor
K.T. Shah who was a part of the Wardha conference and the
only member to oppose it made it quite clear that this scheme
would require huge amount business acumen of management
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of goods and their sale. An embargo against foreign goods
would be in keeping with the nationalistic feelings but it this
policy would also harm the existing professional artisans and
give them competition. In an article inHarijan an anonymous
reader pointed out that this would legalize child labour and
schools and colleges should be places where the young minds
should be taught about the values rather than the prices.
Rabindranath Tagore pointed out that this teaching does not
promote the childs aesthetic and creative powers and
assume that material utility, rather than development ofpersonality, is the end of education.
The kind of social transformation that Gandhi was
calling for was primarily an inner moral transformation, one
which placed as paramount the need for a conscioussimplicity and self-imposed limitation. This limitation
Gandhis scheme on the intellectual, scientific, economic and
even social spheres were therefore clearly unacceptable to the
modernist mindset. The question that was asked: who would
seriously want to give up the manifold benefits of modern life
and take up a hard life of manual work? In contrast to
Gandhis radical policy of change, his detractors of the
educational policy would see it to be medieval and
conservative. But the dominant nationalistic feelings and to
some extent the politics of the dominant elite political class
would combat the Gandhian opponents and create a middle
path for the basic education. But by the very act of negating
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the voice of the Other, by trying to efface it, they contributed
to its recognition.
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