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A SYSTEM OF
NATIONAL EDUCATION
Some
Preliminary Ideas
ONE
The Human
Mind
THE true basis of education is the study of the human mind, infant,
adolescent and adult. Any system of education founded on theories of academic
perfection, which ignores the instrument of study, is more likely to hamper and
impair intellectual growth than to produce a perfect and perfectly equipped mind. For
the educationist has to do, not with dead material like the artist or sculptor,
but with an infinitely subtle and sensitive organism. He cannot shape an
educational masterpiece out of human wood or stone; he has to work in the
elusive substance of mind and respect the limits imposed by the fragile human
body.
There can be no doubt that the current educational system of Europe is a great
advance on many of the methods of antiquity, but its defects are also palpable.
It is based on an insufficient knowledge of human psychology, and it is only
safeguarded in Europe from disastrous results by the refusal of the ordinary
student to subject himself to the processes it involves, his habit of studying
only so much as he must to avoid punishment or to pass an immediate test, his
resort to active habits and vigorous physical exercise. In India the
disastrous effects of the system on body, mind and character are only too
apparent. The first problem in a national system of education is to give an
education as comprehensive as the European and more thorough, without the
evils of strain and cramming. This can only be done by studying the instruments
of knowledge and finding a system of teaching which shall be natural, easy and
effective. It is only by strengthening and sharpening these instruments to their
utmost capacity that they can be made effective for the increased work which
modern conditions require. The muscles of the mind must be thoroughly trained by
simple and easy means; then, and not till then, great feats of intellectual
strength can be required of them.
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The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher
is not an instructor or task-master, he is a helper and a guide. His business is
to suggest and not to impose. He does not actually train the pupil’s mind, he
only shows him how to perfect his instruments of knowledge and helps and encourages
him in the process. He does not impart knowledge to him, he shows him how to
acquire knowledge for himself. He does not call forth the knowledge that is
within; he only shows him where it lies and how it can be habituated to rise to
the surface. The distinction that reserves this principle for the teaching
of adolescent and adult minds and denies its application to the child, is a
conservative and unintelligent doctrine. Child or man, boy or girl, there is
only one sound principle of good teaching. Difference of age only serves to
diminish or increase the amount of help and guidance necessary; it does not
change its nature.
The second principle is that the mind has to be consulted in its own growth. The
idea of hammering the child into the shape desired by the parent or teacher is a
barbarous and ignorant superstition. It is he himself who must be induced to
expand in accordance with his own nature. There can be no greater error than for
the parent to arrange beforehand that his son shall develop particular
qualities, capacities, ideas, virtues, or be prepared for a prearranged career.
To force the nature to abandon its own dharma is to do it permanent harm,
mutilate its growth and deface its perfection. It is a selfish tyranny over a
human soul and a wound to the nation, which loses the benefit of the best that a
man could have given it and is forced to accept instead some- thing imperfect
and artificial, second-rate, perfunctory and common. Every one has in him
something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in
however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to
find it, develop it and use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the
growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a
noble use.
The third principle of education is to work from the near to the far, from that
which is to that which shall be. The basis of a man’s nature is almost always,
in addition to his soul’s past, his heredity, his surroundings, his nationality,
his country, the soil
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from which he draws sustenance, the air which he breathes, the sights, sounds,
habits to which he is accustomed. They mould him not the less powerfully because
insensibly, and from that then we must begin. We must not take up the nature by
the roots from the earth in which it must grow or surround the mind with images
and ideas of a life which is alien to that in which it must physically move. If
anything has to be brought in from outside, it must be offered, not forced on
the mind. A free and natural growth is the condition of genuine development.
There are souls which naturally revolt from their surroundings and seem to
belong to another age and clime. Let them be free to follow their bent; but the
majority languish, become empty, become artificial, if artificially moulded into
an alien form. It is God’s arrangement that they should belong to a particular
nation, age, society, that they should be children of the past, possessors of
the present, creators of the future. The past is our foundation, the present our
material, the future our aim and summit. Each must have its due and natural
place in a national system of education.
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