A young man came to Euclid and expressed his desire to learn Geometry. Having learnt the First Proposition he asked the Master “But what do I gain from it?” The Master took out a coin and said rather brusquely, “Take it and go thy way; Knowledge is not for like of thee.”
Most of us are like this gain-seeking visitor. In every thing we do we look only for $ s.d. About Mammon, Milton writes: “Even in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific.”
We are Mammon-worshippers. Students go to college or university only to improve their prospects. A degree means a better grade and more increments. No wonder they sometimes adopt unfair and unscrupulous methods to ensure these diplomas and degrees.
Not only students, but even some teachers, who should have known better, hanker after more and more money. They write cribs, guides and bazaar notes. If any time is left over, they take up and even manipulate tuitions. Research, they plead, would not bring them even so much as to buy their shoelaces. The angels above must be shedding tears that talent is being prostituted and learning minted into gold coins. We are looking for leeches in ponds where we should cast our net in open seas.
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True education is a different matter. Its function is to build an integrated personality. There should be a simultaneous and harmonious growth of our body and mind, senses and spirit. When a boy goes out of his college, he should be full of life, full of vigour, full of energy and full of delight in his young life to take up the burden of the work of he world. We have therefore to pause and ponder: to what end,
Education? The function of a university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.
Education, therefore, is not mere accumulation of facts and figures, as if the students’ brain is a passive bucket into which water is to be pumped. Facts are to be cohered and co-ordinated so that the mind should learn to discern and discriminate, to think and to infer. If he learns that, he is mentally equipped for life.
The aim of the college, for the individual student, is to eliminate the need in his life for the college; the task is to help him become a self-educating man. Education becomes a continuing process. Beattie has rightly said “The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think than what to think, rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.”
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The destiny of a nation is folded within its budding youth, as is the flower within the close embrace of the petals. That what our youths think today, the nation will think tomorrow. It is, therefore, highly imperative that our youth be imbued with the highest educational ideals.
“Give me the children of a nation” said a philosopher” and I do not care what happens to the rest.” Schools and colleges will have to be training ground;, where bodies will be cared for, where knowledge will be imparted, where faculties will be sharpened, where character will be moulded and where reverence will have to be inculcated for higher values of life. Only then can we hope to lead the world on the path of peace and harmony—a leadership which is our right and due.