Elenchus – Reviving Education to Reform Society

“Education is the kindling of a flame and not filling of a vessel”- Socrates. However, the paradox here is that the flame is doused and the vessel is filled as a child completes his or her primary education.  Humans are born inquisitive but a few sustain that till their graves.  Rigorous training and rote learning have produced million plus literate beings but a few educated ones in the real sense and purpose of education. Multifarious permutations and combinations of circumstances and conditioning shape our views and attitudes towards life. The raison d’être of education should be to normalize the influence of conditioning and circumstances, and subject the inner sense of the individual to objectivity and critical thinking.  As Dr.S. Radhakrishnan said, “The end product of education should be a free and creative man who can battle against historical circumstances and adversities of nature.”  Education should be such that it not only moulds the individual to be brave and confident but also sustains the child-like inquisitiveness so inborn and intrinsic within him.

Water douses fire, but it is the same fire that makes water warm if contained in a vessel. Herein lay the magnitude of constructive use and the medium of such constructive use. Education should act as a catalyst for the finest evolution of human civilization, and this catalyst should be nurtured by visionaries who firmly believe in humanity sans any parochial and primordial instincts. Could we have a Vivekananda if Narendranath Dutta had not been a disciple under the stewardship of Ramkrishna Paramhansa? Behind every brilliant student, there is a successful, dedicated and humanist teacher. Hence, training teachers to mould the best is also an equally important aspect of education.

Rabindranath Tagore himself did not like to go to school for he found no joy in rote learning and knowing facts before the mind could actually grow up to it. His brainchild of creating Shantiniketan vidyalaya was to make education a happy business for its subscribers- the students to realize their creative best and to make learning a sort of fun activity. On similar lines, Vivekananda gave his viewpoint on education as not the amount of information one puts into their brains but assimilation of ideas and character making. According to him, if a person has assimilated five ideas and made them his/her life and character, then that person ought to have more education than any man/woman who has got by heart a whole library. They say great ideas on humanism are universal.  Here, Jean Piaget, a Swiss philosopher and a great educationist of the 20^th century, known for his theory of Constructivism had similar views on education like some of the great minds from India. He expounded that the underlying meaning of education is to make creators, inventors and innovators but not conformists.

Human beings have witnessed many natural and unnatural catastrophes but still came over those by marking their indefatigable natural instincts of survival. But, is there no difference between survival and living? Can we make the world a better place to live in? In the words of Piaget, “Only Education is capable of saving our societies from collapse, whether violent or gradual.”