SELF-SUPPORTING EDUCATION

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

 

We are progressing very fast in all field of our life. We want to have calculations of every moment. In Indian education system we have a lot of time for spending. We can utilize of it by learning of usable things which will be means of our livelihood. The education system given by Mahatma Gandhi to world that was a such type education.

In his meeting he always addressed which narrated the story of how it educated the children under its charge, and it’s very laudable attempt to instruct the boys in wool-spinning and weaving, prompted me to repeat with greater emphasis than hitherto the opinion expressed before by me that education should be self-supporting. The opinion has gathered force during my wanderings. If the State has to bear the cost of education of millions of children, it will never be able to raise enough money by any conceivable measure of taxation. That it is the primary duty of the State to bring to its schools every boy and girl and give them proper, not perfunctory (as now), education is an axiomatic truth. But in a country like India such education must largely if not wholly pay itself. And if we could but shed the hypnotic spell which our English tutors have cast over us, we should not find any difficulty in discovering ways and means of achieving the end. With the best motives in the world, the English tutors could not wholly

Understand the difference between English and Indian requirements. Our climate does not require the buildings which they need. Nor do our children brought up in predominantly rural environment need the type of education the English children brought up in surroundings predominantly urban need.

When our children are admitted to schools, they need, not slate and pencils and books, but simple village tools which they can handle freely and remuneratively. This means a revolution in educational methods. But nothing short of a revolution can put education within reach of every child of school-going age. It is admitted that the so-called knowledge of the three R’s that is at present given in Government schools, is of little use to the boys and girls in after life. Most of it is forgotten inside of one year, if only for want of use. It is not required in their village surroundings. But if a vocational training in keeping with their surroundings was given to the children, they would not only repay the expenses incurred in the schools but would turn that training to use in after life.

I can imagine a school entirely self-supporting, if it became say a spinning and weaving institution with perhaps a cotton field attached to it.

The scheme I am adumbrating does not exclude literary training. No course of primary instruction would be considered complete that did not include reading, writing and arithmetic. Only, reading and writing would come during the last year when really the boy or girl is the readiest for learning the alphabet correctly.

 

 

Handwriting is an art. Every letter must be correctly drawn, as an artist would draw his figures. This can only be done if the boys and girls are first taught elementary drawing. Thus side by side with vocational training which would occupy most of the day at school, they would be receiving vocal instruction in elementary history, geography and arithmetic. They would learn manners, have object-lessons in practical sanitation and hygiene, all of which they would take to their homes in which they would become silent revolutionists.

The District Boards of India or abroad and any other such Board which is unhampered by restrictions and which has a clear nationalist majority may try the experiment if it has faith and some members who will make it their business to see it through. Above all, it is a question national educational institutions must tackle if they would justify their existence. They have to conduct original researches, not reproduce clumsy imitations of those which they condemn and seek to replace. No originality is claimed for the method advocated here. Booker T. Washington tried it with considerable success. If I recollect rightly, even the higher education he gave was self-supporting. In America, it is the most usual thing for even college boys to pay fully for their education by engaging in some kind of remunerative work. The plan is different but the idea underlying is not.