Primary Education in Cities

I HAVE no hesitation in recommending the adoption of a vocational basis for primary education for cities. I am a firm believer in the principle of free and compulsory primary education for India. I also hold that we shall realize this only by teaching the children a useful vocation, and utilizing it as a means for cultivating their mental, physical and spiritual faculties. Let no one consider these economic calculations in connection with education as sordid or out of place. There is nothing essentially sordid about economic calculations. True economics never militates against the highest ethical standard, just as all true ethics, to be worth its name, must at the same time be also good economics. An economics that inculcates Mammon worship and enables the strong to amass wealth at the expense of the weak, is a false and dismal science. It spells death. True economics, on the other hand, stands for social justice, it promotes the good of all equally, including the weakest, and is indispensable for decent life.

A Gross Superstition

It is a gross superstition to think that this sort of vocational exercise will make education dull, or cramp the child's mind. Some of my happiest recollections are of the bright and joyful faces of children while they were receiving vocational instruction under competent teachers. As against this, I have also known the most fascinating of subjects boring children, when taught in the wrong way by an incompetent instructor. But, it may be asked, wherefrom are we going to get capable instructors of the kind that we require ? My reply is that necessity is the mother of invention. Once we realize the necessity for reorientation of our educational policy, the means for giving effects to it will be found without much difficulty. I am sure that, for a fraction of the time and expense incurred on the present educational system, and the staff to man it, we could easily train all the manual instructors that we should require for our work. It ought to be possible for a committee of educational experts, if they are in earnest, to draw up a scheme of primary education on the lines suggested by me and to put it into operation without loss of time. Only they must have a living faith in it as I have. Such faith can only grow from within ; it cannot be acquired vicariously. Nothing great in this world was ever accomplished without a living faith.

Vocations for Urban Schools

What kinds of vocations are the fittest for being taught to children in urban schools ? There is no hard and fast rule about it. But my reply is clear. I want to resuscitate the villages of India. To-day, our villages have become a mere appendage to the cities. They exist, as it were, to be exploited by the latter and depend on the latter's sufferance. This is unnatural. It is only when the cities realize the duty of making an adequate return to the villages for the strength and sustenance which they derive from them, instead of selfishly exploiting them, that a healthy and moral relationship between the two will spring up. And if the city children are to play their part in this great and noble work of social reconstruction, the vocations through which they are to receive their education ought to be directly related to the requirements of the villages.

Advantages of My Plan

My plan to impart primary education through the medium of village handicrafts, like spinning and carding etc., is thus conceived as the spearhead of a silent social revolution fraught with the most far-reaching consequences. It will provide a healthy and moral basis of relationship between the city and the village, and thus go a long way towards eradicating some of the worst evils of the present social insecurity and poisoned relationship between the classes. It will check the progressive decay of our villages and lay the foundation of a juster social order in which there is no unnatural division between the 'haves' and have-nots' and everybody is assured of a living wage and the right to freedom. And all this would be accomplished without the horrors of a bloody class-war or a colossal capital expenditure, such as would be involved in the mechanization of a vast continent like India. Nor would it entail a helpless dependence on foreign imported machinery on technical skill. Lastly, by obviating the necessity for highly specialized talent, it would place the destiny of the masses, as it were, in their own hands. But who will bell the cat ? Will the city-folk listen to me at all ? Or, will mine remain a mere cry in the wilderness ? Replies to these and similar questions will depend more on lovers of education living in cities than on me.

— Harijan : Oct. 9, 1937