Some Reflections on Education- Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

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Some Reflections on Education- Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

John Ruskin was a great writer, teacher and religious thinker. He died about 1880.3 I suppose most inmates of the Ashram know that one book of his had a great effect on me and that it was this book which inspired me to introduce an important change in my life practically on the instant. He started in 1871 writing monthly letters addressed to factory workers. I had read praise of these letters in some article of Tolstoy, but I had not been able to secure them till now. I had brought with me [from England] a book about Ruskin’s work and his efforts in the field of constructive activities. I read it here. This book also mentioned the letters referred to above. So I wrote to a woman disciple of Ruskin in England, who was none else but the author of that book. Being a poor woman, she could not send me the volumes of these letters. Through foolishness or false courtesy, I had not asked her to write to the Ashram for the money. This good woman sent my letter to a friend of hers who was comparatively in better circumstances. This friend was the editor of the spectator. I had even met him while in England. He sent me the four volumes in which these letters had been published.

I have been reading the first part. The thoughts expressed in these letters are beautiful and resemble some of our own ideas, so much so that an outsider would think that the ideas which I have set forth in my writings and which we try to put into practice in the Ashram, I had stolen from these letters of Ruskin. I hope readers will understand what is meant by ‘stolen’. If an idea or ideal of life is borrowed from somebody but is presented as one’s own conception, it is said to be stolen. Ruskin has discussed many matters. Here I will mention only a few of his ideas. He says that it is a sheer error to suppose, as is generally done, that some education however little or however faulty is better than no literary education at all. It is his view that we should strive for real education alone. And then he says that every human being requires three things and three virtues. Anyone who fails to cultivate them does not know the secret of life. These six things should therefore form the basis of education. Every child, whether boy or girl, should learn the properties of pure air, clean water and clean earth, and should also learn how to keep air, water and earth pure or clean and know their benefits. Likewise, he has mentioned gratitude, hope and charity as the three virtues.

Anybody who does not love truth and cannot recognize goodness or beauty lives in his own self conceit and remains ignorant of spiritual joy. Similarly, he who has no hope, who has, in other words, no faith in divine justice, will never be cheerful in heart. And he who is without love, that is, lacks the spirit of ahimsa, who cannot look upon all living things as his kith and kin, will never know the secret of living. Ruskin has explained these ideas at great length in his wonderful language. I hope I shall be able to write about them some time in a language which all the inmates of the Ashram can understand. Today I rest content with the brief précis given above. But I will say one thing, that what Ruskin has explained in his finished and cultivated prose with English readers in view, is practically the same ideas which we discuss in our rustic language and which we have been trying to put into practice. I am comparing here not two languages, but two writers. I cannot hope to equal Ruskin’s mastery of language. But a time will certainly come when the love of our language will have become universal and we shall have writers like Ruskin who will have dedicated themselves heart and soul to it and will write as powerful Gujarati as the English of Ruskin. 

 

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March 28, 1932