BOT P3 Ch 32

Three classes of people – Essence of education: man-making –Dedication to ideal – Teacher, the pivot – Right home atmosphere – Eschew wrong political leadership – For healthy unions – Role of press and publicity – A thorough reorientation needed.

IT does not seem right to regard the students as community different from the rest of the society. The qualities of the people in general manifest in the younger folk, that only due to the immaturity, inexperience and preponderance of emotions in them; such qualities manifest themselves as an uncontrolled outburst. The general lack of training in codes of good behaviour, sense of uncertainty and insecurity in life resulting in a sort of frustration, want of any ideal to strive for and the none-too-edifying example of those who are projected as leaders and guides of the people, the crumbling down of the institution known as “home” are some of the causes contributing to the “ferment”, the disquietude and unbridled behaviour, which we name as indiscipline in the young folk, who constitute our students.

(a) Those who for generations have been ground down by penury, want of education and what is worst, social disabilities. Fortunately the Government has taken up the work of spreading education, at least of the primary stage, and the students from this segment are getting the advantage. These students need careful and loving attention conducive to inculcating good qualities and awakening their dormant abilities, for they have little background of proper bringing up. In a way theirs is a clean slate with the inevitable scratches dug into them by their hard life – deprived of the light of knowledge, of the happiness of wealth and of the sense of being equal partners in the building up of our national life. These are the hope of the future and have to be nurtured with special solicitude.

(b) The people in average circumstances. These have always been the backbone of the people’s life in all its aspects. Due to queer but natural desire to appear respectable, they take to a way of life not commensurate with their means. The present economic conditions have hit them hard. Peace of mind and household peace have disappeared. They see no hope in the future for themselves or their children. This condition can produce all types of perversities. The young folk from this class form the bulk of our student population and this life of no hope but of only despair, mars their otherwise good mental make-up. Out of such desperation any kind of irresponsible activity can attract the youth.

(c) Those who enjoy affluence and respectability. An overdose of wealth, the position and power accompanying it, is sufficient to turn anyone’s head, more especially in the unripe youth who have little experience, little knowledge and in whom the quality of discrimination is still in the embryonic stage. These conditions can completely wreck the moral fabric of the young folks' life, as has been aptly expressed in the Sanskrit verse:

Life of frugality, austerity during the formative student days, giving no opportunity for the mind to indulge in unhealthy enjoyments and vicious habits - such precautions may help keep them away from undesirable activities and behaviour.

To convert this great mass of our youth into virtuous citizens devoted to building up of potential on right lines, is the real problem. It cannot be solved by superficial thinking and superficial remedies.

For example, the questions about the educational institutions, the teacher-student ratio and relationship, hostel arrangements, etc., cannot be said to go to the root of the problem. Rather than the way the institutions run, thought has to be devoted in the first instance to the aim and content of education, to the standard of quality of the teachers, of the wardens of the hostels, to the general environment in the country, and a serious attempt made to remedy them.

Our education is merely informative and not formative. The emphasis is on somehow equipping oneself to earn a living and not on drawing out the personality of the youth. The ideal of improving "the standard of living" relates only to material well-being, multiplication of wants and means of satisfying the carnal and lower mental cravings of the animal in man. It does not relate to developing the mental, intellectual and the higher aspects of the human being. The natural result is the production of an inordinate desire for amassing the aids to such enjoyments by whatever means possible. The expression "cultural activities" has come to denote singing, dancing and such other activities which easily rouse the baser instincts of man; its real significance of activities conducive to evolving and developing the higher qualities of the head and heart, qualities which inculcate the correct sense of values and restraint upon one's emotions and impulses, seems to have been completely ignored or considered unnecessary or unworthy of being imbibed.

Without dilating upon this aspect, suffice it to say the whole system of education seems to need a complete change. Every student must be taught the basic principles of Dharma, the life history of great ancestors who lived and demonstrated those high principles, the correct and true history of our people with the story of our national heritage in its noblest aspect. He must also be given some preliminary training in the science of mind-control through simple yogic exercises. The rest of the education has necessarily to relate to the surroundings, facts of day-to-day life, to each individual's aptitudes so as to equip him to successfully face the trials and tribulations in life. From the very beginning the emphasis should be on duty in all relationships. Absolute sense of duty is most desirable but if in the present atmosphere of pampering the self it seems impracticable, the truth that duty is supreme and the individual's or group's rights are only co-related to it and must be considered as subordinate to it, must be persistently impressed upon the minds of the young in their formative years.

To achieve this end of inculcating a correct sense of duty, our system of education needs to be ideal-oriented. The word 'ideal' is likely to give rise to differences and disputations and there may be experienced disagreement and divergence about its meaning. But I hope all will agree on certain broad fundamentals. The human being is a wayfarer on the path to the ultimate Supreme Reality (how it is conceived of and what is chosen as the path is immaterial in this context). That reality can be attained by devoted and selfless service. It is through service to Man that we can serve the Reality. Service to man has to begin with service to the people with whom we have a natural bond of affinity of ancestry, heritage, tradition, national entity and grateful devotion to the holy motherland which fosters us all and common devotion to which unites us all in one National Personality. These are our basic ideas or aspects of our Common Ideal. A firm grounding in dedication to this one Ideal is calculated to induce community of will, of mental and intellectual co-ordination. When coupled with this co-ordinated will, co-ordinated and controlled physical activity makes what is known as discipline. Military training can produce co-ordinated action on the physical plane. It is good so far as it goes and to that extent is a necessary complement to education. From the impressionable school-going age graded military training needs to be imparted culminating in advanced courses in college days. Naturally such training need not be up to the standard necessary for the armed personnel. But mere military training cannot by itself inculcate the real spirit of discipline unless concerted efforts are made to instil the discipline of will which is born out of common devotion to one great Ideal.

All amenities granted in the educational institutions and hostels have to be directed towards this goal. The amenities available today are to the nature of relaxation and pleasure hunting. These also have a place in student life. But the whole atmosphere needs to be charged with the spirit of learning, of making one's contribution to knowledge, of the pious ambition to making one's mark in the service of the ideal. I think that suitable extra-curricular activities have to be provided in the form of sports and physical exercises, in the form of arts, of pictures, of trips and outings, of participation in physical labour needed in actual life for following the various professions, in the form of service rendered to society presently living in less favourable conditions.

This will need constant guidance and supervision by teachers and wardens of hostels. Naturally the teachers have to be competent, well-versed in the subjects they teach, of unimpeachable character and of a disposition loving and also capable of establishing homely relationship with the youth. A teacher constantly haunted by the fear of penury, constantly afflicted by the necessity of augmenting his slender means to feed the members of his family and maintain an appearance of respectability, overloaded with work and burdened with the responsibility of looking after a crowd of young folk, cannot be expected to come up to the required standard. His economic condition has to be improved and he should have a limited number of students to look after. Our experience is that one person can conveniently and efficiently take care of between 16-24 wards. This ratio has to be established to achieve the desired results. The same is true about the wardens of the hostels also.

Under the stress and strain of economic conditions and with the growth of industrialization, the institution of the "home" has broken down. The parents and guardians have little time or energy to look after their wards. Much cannot be expected out of them. Yet their maintaining a peaceful, loving family life, following virtuous religious life, performing with proper decorum their traditional rites at least in some minimum degree and training the children to participate in those with faith, devotion and a sense of duty, will go a long way towards inculcating good conduct and discipline in them. Other individuals such as neighbours may also be helpful by setting up a standard of good behaviour in their own lives.

Children learn by imitation. The lives of the teachers, wardens, parents and neighbours have their impact upon their impressionable minds. They have to realise this and mould their life properly.

The general atmosphere in the country has also to be taken into consideration. The whole atmosphere is vitiated by an inordinate emphasis on the political and economic aspects of life. Persons in these fields are projected as the leaders and ideals of society. It will be difficult to say that their character and conduct is worthy of emulation, barring some rare exceptions. Day in and day out a ferment is on, agitations fanning people's emotions - often not very noble - are launched and persons of not a very commendable moral calibre are thrown up as leaders and ideals. It is unnatural to expect that agitations where passions are roused will leave the impressionable, emotional youth with abundance of energy, cold and unaffected. The promoters of agitations, desirous of strengthening their movements by adding to the number of participants to make them effective, cannot but be tempted to exploit this volatile youthful force.

It will be seen that most of the students' unions are working under the guidance or patronage of one or other of the many political parties, because the political agitations can, through such unions, have this force ready at hand to follow their behests. This state of affairs must change. Politics and political parties may be studied by the elder students from an impartial and academic point of view, but they should not allow parties or party leaders to interfere in their union activities. In the country's general political atmosphere also a change is called for; the agitational approach to problems must give way to a constructive one born out of discussions, mutual understanding and readiness to accommodate one another's view and finding out a peaceful solution to them. The role of those in charge of the Government in this context is of prime importance. If they do not pay proper respect and consideration to opinions other than their own and remain stubbornly averse to making reasonable concessions to such opinions, agitations will go on and with them student indiscipline, in ever-increasing proportions.

The unions have, therefore to be wholly divorced from political or other agitational parties and their activities guided into healthy channels for developing knowledge, spirit of service, dignity of physical labour, spirit of camaraderie and of community life. Closing down unions is no remedy. Unions have to be encouraged especially at the college stage (at the school stage the students are too unripe to understand and operate union activities), for they give an opening to the excess of energy which the young posses. The channels into which their activities can be diverted with benefit have already been indicated elsewhere.

The press is merely a reflection of the life of the people. All evils in the society readily find expression through the papers. The emphasis upon politics and upon the material aspect of life, which is today eating into our vitals, finds pointed and magnified expression there. Sensationalism and gloating over stories of sin and crime also find a place of pride in them. A complete change in this attitude is called for. Instead of giving excessive importance to politico-economic aspects and instead of projecting only such persons as indulge in this as ideal personalities to be emulated, the press will do a great service to the country, if they give due importance to those devoted to the service of God and humanity, whose lives, though not possessed of glamour, are spotlessly pure and tirelessly engaged in selfless action and hold these forth as really worthy of being imitated and followed. I think, however, that it is periodicals and magazines, which can do this properly. Form daily newspapers it is too much to expect.

Audio-visual methods of education have been acclaimed and rightly as efficacious in imparting instructions and moulding character. But the power of these methods is abused by advertisers in the papers, on walls, kiosks and places which easily catch the eye, abused by dinning into the ears of the public unseemly songs over the loud-speakers, through the radios and transistors. Voluptuous pictures and songs meet the eye and ear at every step. How these must be corroding the moral fabric of the youth can easily be imagined.

But in the name of progress all this goes on without let or hindrance. The result of all this inordinate emphasis on material, political and sensual propensities is seen in the shattering of all moral and ethical values. The present-day leadership, the atmosphere built up by them and the false notion that satisfaction of animal appetites is the end-all and be-all of modernism, of progressiveness and development, have contributed to make the people and more especially the growing generation amoral. Morality is good; immorality though bad has one good quality - the understanding of moral values and realisation of having deviated from them. But non-morality is positively a danger, for there is callous disregard for both the moral and the immoral. The immoral, the sinful have a chance of turning over a new leaf, but the amoral become impervious to all sense of right and wrong; as such theirs is an irretrievable case. Such persons are extremely dangerous to the right evolution of the society.

A thorough reorientation in the processes of thinking, in establishing values of life and proper apportioning of importance to the various aspects which together go to make a full life for the individual and consequently for the nation, is the need of the hour. Want of this is at the root of all our social evils including student indiscipline. It will serve no useful purpose to separate this one question from the lager context and try to remedy it. If this reorientation is not immediately taken in hand seriously, other remedies will remain merely superficial and ineffective.