{"id":42,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=42"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:31","slug":"19-education-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03\/19-education-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-19_Education.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nEducation<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nINTELLECTUAL<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nW<\/font>E NOW <\/font>
\n<\/b>come to the intellectual part
\nof education, which is certainly a larger and more difficult, although not more important than physical training and edification of character. The Indian University system has confined
\nitself entirely to this branch and it might have been thought
\nthat this limitation and concentration of energy ought to have
\nbeen attended by special efficiency and thoroughness in the
\nsingle branch it had chosen. But unfortunately this is not the
\ncase. If the physical training it provides is contemptible and
\nthe moral training nil, the mental training is also meagre in quantity and worthless in quality. People commonly say that it is
\nbecause the services and professions are made the object of education that this state of things exists. This I believe to be a great
\nmistake. A degree is necessary for service and therefore people
\ntry to get a degree. Good! let it remain so. But in order for a
\nstudent to get a degree let us make it absolutely necessary that
\nhe shall have a good education. If a worthless education is sufficient in order to secure this object and a good education quite
\nunessential, it is obvious that the student will not incur great
\ntrouble and diversion of energy in order to acquire what he feels
\nto be unnecessary. But change this state of things, make culture
\nand true science essential and the same interested motive which
\nnow makes him content with a bad education will then compel
\nhim to strive after culture and true science. As practical men we
\nmust recognise that the pure enthusiasm of knowledge for
\nknowledge’s sake operates only in exceptional minds or in exceptional eras. In civilised countries a general desire for knowledge
\nas a motive for education does exist but it is largely accompanied
\nwith the earthier feeling that knowledge is necessary to keep up
\none’s position in society or to succeed in certain lucrative or
\nrespectable pursuits or professions. We in India have become so
\nbarbarous that we send our children to school with the grossest<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nutilitarian motive unmixed with any disinterested desire for
\nknowledge; but the education we receive is itself responsible for
\nthis. Nobody can cherish disinterested enthusiasm for a bad
\neducation; it can only be regarded as a means to some practical
\nend. But make the education good, thorough and interesting
\nand the love of knowledge will of itself awake in the mind and so
\nmingle with and modify more selfish objects.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe source of the evil we complain of is therefore something
\ndifferent; it is a fundamental and deplorable error by which we
\nin this country have confused education with the acquisition of
\nknowledge and interpreted knowledge itself in a singularly
\nnarrow and illiberal sense. To give the student knowledge is necessary, but it is still more necessary to build up in him the power
\nof knowledge. It would hardly be a good technical education for
\na carpenter to be taught how to fell trees so as to provide himself
\nwith wood and never to learn how to prepare tables and chairs
\nand cabinets or even what tools were necessary for his craft. Yet
\nthis is precisely what our system of education does. It trains the
\nmemory and provides the student with a store of facts and secondhand ideas. The memory is the woodcutter’s axe and the store
\nhe acquires is the wood he has cut down in his course of tree-felling. When he has done this, the University says to him, "We
\nnow declare you a Bachelor of Carpentry, we have given you a
\ngood and sharp axe and a fair nucleus of wood to begin with.
\nGo on, my son, the world is full of forests and, provided the
\nForest Officer does not object, you can cut down trees and provide yourself with wood to your heart’s content." Now the
\nstudent who goes forth thus equipped, may become a great timber
\nmerchant but, unless he is an exceptional genius, he will never
\nbe even a moderate carpenter. Or to return from the simile to
\nthe facts, the graduate from our colleges may be a good clerk, a
\ndecent vakil or a tolerable medical practitioner, but unless he is an
\nexceptional genius, he will never be a great administrator or a
\ngreat lawyer or an eminent medical specialist. These eminences
\nhave to be filled up mainly by Europeans. If an Indian wishes
\nto rise to them, he has to travel thousands of miles over the sea
\nin order to breathe an atmosphere of liberal knowledge, original
\nscience and sound culture. And even then he seldom succeeds,<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nbecause his lungs are too debilitated to take in a good long breath
\nof that atmosphere.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe first fundamental mistake has been, therefore, to confine ourselves to the training of the storing faculty memory and
\nthe storage of facts and to neglect the training of the three great
\nusing (manipulating) faculties, viz. the power of reasoning, the power of
\ncomparison and differentiation and the power of expression. These powers are present to a certain extent in all men
\nabove the state of the savage and even in a rudimentary state in
\nthe savage himself; but they exist especially developed in the
\nhigher classes of civilised nations, wherever these higher classes
\nhave long centuries of education behind them. But however highly developed by
\nnature these powers demand cultivation, they demand that bringing out of natural abilities which is the real
\nessence of education. If not brought out in youth, they become
\nrusted and stopped with dirt, so that they cease to act except in
\na feeble, narrow and partial manner. Exceptional genius does
\nindeed assert itself in spite of neglect and discouragement, but
\neven genius self-developed does not achieve as happy results
\nand as free and large a working as the same genius properly
\nequipped and trained. Amount of knowledge is in itself not of
\nfirst importance, but to make the best use of what we know. The
\neasy assumption of our educationists that we have only to supply
\nthe mind with a smattering of facts in each department of knowledge and the mind can be trusted to develop itself and take its
\nown suitable road is contrary to science, contrary to human
\nexperience and contrary to the universal opinion of civilised
\ncountries. Indeed, the history of intellectual degeneration in
\ngifted races always begins with the arrest of these three mental
\npowers by the excessive cultivation of mere knowledge at their
\nexpense. Much as we have lost as a nation, we have always
\npreserved our intellectual alertness, quickness and originality; but even this last gift is threatened by our University system, and
\nif it goes, it will be the beginning of irretrievable degradation and
\nfinal extinction.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe very first step in reform must therefore be to revolutionise the whole aim and method of our education. We must
\naccustom teachers to devote nine-tenths of their energy to the<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\neducation of the active mental faculties while the passive
\nand retaining faculty, which we call the memory, should occupy a recognised and
\nwell-defined but subordinate place and we must
\ndirect our school and university examinations to the testing of
\nthese active faculties and not of the memory. For this is an object which cannot be affected by the mere change or
\nrearrangement of the curriculum. It is true that certain subjects are more
\napt to develop certain faculties than others; the power of accurate reasoning is powerfully assisted by Geometry, Logic
\nand
\nPolitical Economy; one of the most important results of languages is to refine and train the power of expression and
\nnothing
\nmore enlarges the power of comparison and differentiation than
\nan intelligent study of history. But no particular subject except
\nlanguage is essential, still less exclusively appropriate to any
\ngiven faculty. There are types of intellect, for instance, which are
\nconstitutionally incapable of dealing with geometrical problems
\nor even with the formal machinery of Logic, and are yet profound, brilliant and correct reasoners in other intellectual
\nspheres. There is in fact hardly any subject, the sciences of calculation
\nexcepted, which in the hands of a capable teacher does
\nnot give room for the development of all the general faculties
\nof the mind. The first thing needed therefore is the entire and unsparing rejection of the present methods of teaching in
\nfavour
\nof those which are now being universally adopted in the more
\nadvanced countries of Europe.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut even in this narrower sphere of knowledge acquisition
\nto which our system has confined itself, it has been guilty of other blunders
\nquite as serious. Apart from pure mathematics, which stands on a footing of its
\nown, knowledge may be divided
\ninto two great heads, the knowledge of things and the knowledge of men, that is to say, of human thought, human
\nactions,
\nhuman nature and human creations as recorded, preserved or
\npictured in literature, history, philosophy and art. The
\ncovered is covered in the term humanities or humane letters and the idea of a liberal
\neducation was formerly confined to these, though it was
\nsubsequently widened to include mathematics and has again been
\nwidened in modern times to include a modicum of science. The humanities, mathematics and science are therefore
\nthe t<\/font>hree<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 128<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsisters in the family of knowledge and any self-respecting system
\nof education must in these days provide facilities for mastery in
\nany one of these as well as for a modicum of all. The first great
\nerror of our system comes in here. While we insist on passing our
\nstudents through a rigid and cast-iron course of knowledge in
\neverything, we give them real knowledge in nothing. Mathematics, for instance, is a subject in which it ought not to be
\ndifficult to give thorough knowledge, most of the paths are well
\nbeaten and, being a precise and definite subject, it does not in
\nitself demand such serious powers of original thought and appreciation as literature and history; yet it is the invariable experience
\nof the most brilliant mathematical students  who go from Calcutta to Bombay to Cambridge that after the first year they have
\nexhausted all they have already learned and have to enter on
\nentirely new and unfamiliar result. It is surely a deplorable
\nthing that it should be impossible to acquire a thorough mathematical education in India, that one should have to go thousands
\nof miles and spend thousands of rupees to get it. Again, if we
\nlook at science, what is the result of the pitiful modicum of
\nscience acquired under our system ? At the best it turns out good
\nteachers who can turn others through the same mill in which
\nthey themselves have been ground…<\/font><\/p>\n

\n(Incomplete<\/i>)<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nNOTE: There seem to have been other articles in this series but only this one has come<\/font>
\n<\/font>to light.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 129<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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