What Children do to understand – 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

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

E-mail- [e-mail];

[e-mail]

Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

 

 

What Children do to understand – Mahatma Gandhi  

 

I have been unable to go through the articles from which extracts have been given in this letter. It is not always possible to interpret rightly a passage taken from an article without reference to the context. Nevertheless, it is not difficult for me to reply to the question without reading the original article, as the idea in the passages quoted above is based on my own experience. In this context, the reader should understand a child to mean not a child of two but a child of the age at which he or she is normally admitted to school. From the fact that children fall asleep when I read the Gita, it cannot be concluded that their understanding is deficient. It may be said that I am unable to create interest in my reading the Gita; it may even be the case that the child is tired at that time. I have often seen children asleep while they are being taught arithmetic, told amusing stories or when taken to see a play. I have also seen adults dozing while the Gita or other scriptures are being read. Hence, when considering the question posed above, we should leave out of account the fact of children falling asleep or displaying lack of interest.

These doubts should not arise in the mind of anyone to whom it is as clear as daylight that the child’s soul existed before he or she was born, that the soul has no beginning and knows no such states as childhood, youth and old age. It is because of our connection with the physical form, because of the current trends of thought and because of our disinclination to go deep into the matter that we conclude that the child knows only how to play or, at the most can write the alphabet and, going further, can memorize the tongue-twisting names of the rivers, etc., of Europe and America and understand the history and learn the names, although difficult to pronounce, of the kings, plunderers and killers of various countries. My own experience is the very opposite of this. The ideal of soul, truth and love can easily be put before children in language which they can understand. I have heard not one but many children, who have no knowledge of the world, ask about a dead person: This letter is not translated here. The correspondent had stated that Gandhiji’s writings showed that he expected too much from children. “Where has this man’s soul gone?” A child who asks this question can easily be taught about the soul. Crores of illiterate Indian children realize the distinction between truth and falsehood, between love and hate, from the very age that they begin to understand things. Is there a child who would not recognize the nectar-like stream of love or, the embers of wrath glowing or blazing from his parents’ eyes?

The student who has put the question seems to have forgotten his own childhood. I therefore wish to remind him of the fact that he had experience of parental love before he acquired knowledge of the alphabet. Love, truth and the soul would have been forgotten long ago had these required language in order to reveal themselves. The passages quoted by the correspondent do not advise putting abstract truth before children. But explain that we should exhibit before them immortal virtues like truth and prove to them that they, too, have them. In brief, formation of character should have priority over knowledge of the alphabet. If this order is reversed, the attempt would be like putting the cart before the horse and making it push the cart with its nose, and would meet with the same success as the latter course. It is because he realized the truth of this that Darwin’s contemporary, the scientist Wallace, said at the age of ninety that in basic moral standards he saw in the so-called educated and reformed nations no progress over the Negroes who are regarded as uncivilized. If we were not under the spell of the various external temptations that exist today, we would realize the truth of Wallace’s statement and plan and frame our educational curriculum in a different manner. I will ask a counter-question in reply to the question regarding the ten-headed Ravana. Which of the two ideas can be more readily explained to a child? Is it easier to convince him that a ten-headed creature which could never have been created existed in the form of Ravana, or is it easier to make him aware of the ten-headed Ravana who lives secretly like a thief in the heart of each one of us? In believing that the child is devoid of imagination and intellectual powers, we do him grave injustice and belittle ourselves. To say that a child does understand does not imply that he understands things without our explaining them to him.

Despite every effort to convince a child to that effect, he will not accept the idea that a human being with ten heads can actually exist, whereas he will understand the idea of the ten headed Ravana who has entered our hearts as soon as it is explained to him. I hope now that the student will not ask me why I do not feel ashamed to read Tulsidas’s Ramayana and Vyasa’s Gita before children. I do not wish to teach the children the philosophical implications of the idea of karma, tyaga or sthitaprajna I do not believe that I myself have acquired such knowledge or rather I know I have not. Perhaps I would not understand books which are full of philosophical discussions about karma, etc., and, even if I do understand them with difficulty, I would certainly be bored. And when one is bored one may even fall asleep. However, when I think of spinning or doing work as sacrifice for the benefit of the millions and giving up self-indulgence so that I might do that, sweet slumber would seem like poison to me and I would wake up. It is my unshakable faith, based on experience, that if the Gita and such other works are explained in a simple manner to children, the effort will certainly benefit them in later years.

 

Reference

Navajivan, 9-9-1928