Gandhiji on Education

Some of Gandhijis most strongly and unambiguously

expressed views are on education, and this is to be viewed in
the immediate context of English medium education that the
British induced in India, and the larger context of foreign
language education at the cost of vernaculars. Gandhiji has
emphatically said that he has nothing against English language
and its noble literature, but he is against education in English in
India.
This form of education was a systematic psychological assault,
in which being educated in English and being able to speak in
English with the English was considered the ultimate badge of
honour. Gandhiji was against this form of psychological
servitude. He termed English medium as foreign medium, and
held a firm view that this foreign medium has made us
foreigners in our own land. This, he considered the greatest
tragedy amongst all others that the British had inflicted on the
collective Indian psyche.
Language apart, Gandhiji also found the piecemeal approach
towards education in India and the world wanting. It was
incomprehensible for Gandhiji that any education system could
impart learning that only benefited the mind or the intellect, in
total disregard of physical and moral development. He viewed
education as an integrated approach to allround personality
development that emphasised on physical training and high
moral ground along with intellectual and cognitive
development. Gandhiji distinctly divided between learning and
education, knowledge and wisdom, literacy and lessons of life.
He has said, Literacy in itself is no education.
Gandhiji also closely aligned morality with education. He
believed that knowledge without is evil, it can erode the society
like a malicious worm. Also incorporating Platos conception in
this theme, Gandhiji opined that education should be the
stepping stone to knowledge and wisdom that ultimately help
the seeker on the spiritual path. Education was not a narrow
means of making careers and achieving social status, but also
seeking a larger role for self and society. Thus, it transpired
that education should not only produce learned minds, but
enlightened souls too. Gandhiji also adhered to Hindu
scriptures which propagated strict discipline and self restraint,
including observance of celibacy during student life.

Gandhijis education was to be essentially generative, which

can be passed on from an educated person to the uneducated
one in a selfless spirit. Herein came the inevitability of
vernacular education, because it was only through local
mediums that education could become more penetrative in a
multilayered, impoverished and vastly deprived society. An
educated youth could teach his illiterate parents or siblings in
the family only if his education was in local medium. Likewise,
community level formal or informal education could also be
facilitated in villages through vernacular medium only. It is in
this broad context that Gandhiji was opposed to foreign
medium education in India. He thought that such elitist
education did not meet the requirements of the country, there
was no connect between education and home life, or village
life.
As regards the youth falling prey to vices small and big during
student life, Gandhiji simply found it an unnecessary and
avoidable nuisance. How can a single student foul his mouth by
converting it into a chimney, he said of the smoking habit.

Nai Talim
The above loose structure of thoughts on education, Gandhiji
conceptualised in his revolutionary Nai Talim or Basic Education
for All, in 1937. Marjorie Sykes, an educationist devoted for life
to Gandhiji and Nai Talim pedagogy, writes in her book The
Story of Nai Talim, that in Gandhijis perception, this curriculum
aimed at preparing a good society, not just a literate and/or
educated one. Seen from the context of an education system
specially developed for a newly born democratic nation, it can
be said that Nai Talim aimed to fructify education that gave
freedom; freedom from ignorance, illiteracy, superstition,
psyche of servitude, and many more taboos that inhibited free
thinking of a free India. In Gandhijis words and vision, Nai Talim
was aimed at becoming the spearhead of a silent social
revolution.
The range of teaching tools that Gandhiji prescribed to
actualise Nai Talim were as revolutionary and unconventional
as the concept itself.
For holistic development of body, mind and soul, he firstly
emphasised on useful and purposeful physical labour. Mind is a
part of our body, and so are hands, legs, torso, spine. If the
mind develops at the cost of the rest of the body, it would be
so callous! Moreover, it would result in uncoordinated growth,
and that is not what Gandhiji wanted India to become, a nation
of strong minds and weak bodies, or vice versa. With the
addition of heart or soul, the mindbodysoul combine completes

Gandhijis vision of inclusive, coordinated education.

Handicrafts, art and drawing are the most fundamental
teaching tools in Nai Talim pedagogy. Herein, their function is
not visualised too literally as a cottage industry vocation, but
as a means of engaging young minds in a learning technique
that is timeproven, informal, unstressed, and full of ageless
wisdom. Spinning and weaving, which can be aptly deduced to
spinning khadi, were Gandhijis favourite techniques for
implementing Nai Talim.
Gandhiji was so confident about the efficacy of this method
that he professed teaching through art and craft even before
teaching alphabets. He deduced that it was easier for a child to
distinguish between wheat and chaff, than between A and Z.
Moreover, it facilitated faster learning, One imparts ten times
as much in this manner as by reading or writing. Lastly, it was
much more economical to impart learning through handicrafts
than through classroom lessons.
The Nai Talim pedagogy thus sought to create free and
enlightened individuals, who would then constitute a good
society, not just a free country.