To me, the only solution for all these challenges seemed to be the ‘Jeevan Vidya Shivir’ (Life Education workshop), which is based on the ‘Madhyastha Darshan’ (coexistence) model inspired by education-philosopher, A. Nagraj. As soon as I was sworn in as the education minister on 14 February 2015, I contacted my old friend Som Tyagi who had been working on the ‘Madhyastha Darshan’ based education system in Chhattisgarh and many other states and asked him for help. Owing to health problems, Som Tyagi had been confined to Raipur for some time. He had also not organized any workshops in this time. However, he couldn’t turn down my request, and on 14 March 2015, we invited all the education department officials, university chancellors, etc., for a day to the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) headquarters in Defence Colony, Delhi. This was done to understand our aim vis-à-vis education—our aspirations, the purpose we had in mind and to pinpoint the gaps. We also had to understand how far behind in practice we were even from the half-baked aspirations that were set earlier. The aim of this day-long workshop was not just to summarize but to present these aspirations in a meaningful way and examine the shortcomings of the current system. We had a long discussion on these subjects. Organizing a day-long workshop on such a vast topic and with so many high-ranking officials was no mean feat. During the course of the discussion, we realized that all the attendees had noticed the shortcomings in the traditional way of imparting education. I was present throughout and suggested that they participate in an eight-day Jeevan Vidya Workshop for further discussions. A residential workshop outside Delhi seemed like a good option. The entire education department landed at Abhyuday Sansthan in Achoti village, 24 km from Raipur, in the very first week of April. Including me, we were a total of fifty people—the education secretary, education director, regional director, deputy director, zonal director, SCERT officials, university vice chancellors, directors and officers of the Department of Higher Education and Department of Technical Education.
This was a unique experiment in governance—a newly appointed education minister with his team members from the education department on an eight-day workshop away from the daily rigmarole, in a village away from their city, discussing how education could and through education, the country and society could progress along the path of development. It was a new experience for the officials and especially for those from the education department whose entire teams, branches, departments, junior to senior, stayed together for eight days. The discussion was only around education—from the time they woke up, had breakfast, all day long and then at the dinner table, till they slept. They had no other work for those eight days. Freed from their everyday chores, they were present at the workshop not just physically but mentally too.
I am sure you’d want to know what the discussion was on. If I were to put it in one sentence, I would say it was a discussion on the model of education that would inculcate the concept of coexistence among students. What is this model? To understand that, you will have to participate in the workshop at Jeevan Vidya Shivir. I cannot explain it in a few words but to quell your curiosity, all I can say is that the current model of education is competitive, where every student is taught that the biggest proof of their learning is their ability to race ahead, leaving all their classmates behind. On paper, we are giving education in classrooms but in reality, these are war rooms. This is the reason why every child is put in the rat race to leave the others behind. And after school, he/she is stuck in this race. In this model, either every person is working under someone or trying to get someone else to work under them. Here the basis for progress is conflict or exploitation. There is no scope to make it wholesome or to coexist. This is a model to raise children for the market to develop human resource. That is probably the reason why in our country we do not have an education ministry but education is looked after by the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The other state education departments in the country also suffer from the same malady. There too, in the name of education, men and women are being raised as resources.
Resource being used as a tool: The problem with tools is that they don’t have a vision of their own. They can only be of use to someone. They don’t have an understanding of good or bad. Tools can be put to any use. They can’t express themselves. They can only be used. This in spite of the fact that expression is what makes us human. To express is to be human. What I am trying to say here is that being a tool or being skilled is just a part of their personality but being human who can live with reason and sensitivity is a greater virtue. A child wants to grow up to become a human being but we think our job is to just turn him into a tool in the name of education.
In the coexistence model, it is important to develop a child’s thought processes. Being a resource is just a part of his personality. The element of competition is there in this model too but it is not about leaving others behind to make a name for self. That is because the competition is not with others but with the self. In the coexistence model, competition means increasing the usefulness of oneself: ‘We knew a lot yesterday but we will know more today. We will do better than yesterday.’ This means you compete with yourself and be inspired to better yourself, which is the basis for progress. The purpose of competition in the coexistence model is for our continued well-being, while the ‘HRD-based progress’ model is based on deriving happiness from being more successful compared to others or getting sad if others do better than you. The latter one is based on a matrix of exploitation and mistreating others around you as resources. On the other hand, the coexistence model is based on working in tandem with people around you and utilizing resources. This explanation might sound a bit philosophical but is important to understand to reimagine the aim of education. It is important to understand the aim. The eight-day stay and discussions at Raipur were based on this. The discussion was anecdotal and informal. The main point of the discussion was: ‘A child enters the realm of education when he/she is three to four years of age and stays in that realm for another twenty years. During this time, their parents, teachers, the education system and society surround them from all sides. And what we need from him/her at the end of this twenty-year-long journey needs to be decided.’ In the education model of coexistence, there is a detailed discussion on the minimum that one can expect from a person after almost twenty years of education:
That he/she has self-confidence
That he/she stays healthy
That he/she lives with family with prosperity (overall satisfaction in the family)
That he/she has amicability in relationships (a family without complaints)
That he/she contributes to society, so that there is no terror, violence, fear and instability on earth.
If you look at the words above, you’ll find them to be simple. All of us feel that the current education model is working just fine but if we dig deeper into each and every word and try to understand it, discuss it, then slowly and gradually we understand that in some ways, we are moving in the opposite direction.
Let’s take the example of self-confidence. When we talk about it, we find that we have faith in others but not in the self, meaning it is comparative. I study and there is only one way to assess how much I have understood—by giving exams and seeing how well I have scored in comparison to others. We might understand something well and very deeply but the assessment of our understanding doesn’t come from us but is derived as a reaction from others. The kind of house we live in, the kind of jobs we do, the kind of clothes we wear, the kind of food we eat, the locality we live in, the luxuries we have. We don’t derive happiness from these things but from comparing them with what our friends, relatives and neighbours have. Is this self-confidence or belief in others or lack of faith in the self?
Our behaviour, restlessness, anger, fear are all dependent on the behaviour of others, which decides whether we are calm or unsettled. Others’ success or failure decides the parameters of our success and failure. The material well-being of others decides the basis of
our material wealth. Nothing of ours depends on us. Then how will we become self-reliant? Behaviour, responsibility and demeanour based on that of others is a sign of low self-confidence. Twenty years of education does not make us capable of living a happy life on the strength of our knowledge, our understanding, our skills. This creates a lack of self-confidence. Confidence born out of competition with others can never give you confidence.
Children have to have faith in themselves. Faith in self means understanding the usefulness of oneself to have faith in life.
In the same way, twenty years of education does not equip one to live a healthy life. It only equips us to barely keep the body functioning through medical treatment. We have left the questions such as what we eat, how much we drink, how we use our body and where to the market. The more educated one is, the more dependent they are on the market. People in the market decide what we eat, where we live, and when there are diseases owing to what we eat or where we live, how we seek medical attention to treat them depending on how profitable each option is for them. If you don’t believe, then look at the educated people around you and decide whether they are equipped to live a healthy life or not. Are they successful in maintaining a healthy lifestyle on the strength of the twenty years of education? You might come across one among hundreds or thousands but if it is because of education, it will be true only if every educated person is able to live thus. Every educated person, unless having met with an accident, should be healthy.
Living with family in prosperity: We have to understand the sentiment behind the word ‘prosperity’. It needs to be understood in the context of three other words:
Poverty
Wealth
Prosperity
Poverty: Poverty means being without facilities; a deprived and poor person.
Wealth: Being wealthy means having facilities. A wealthy person has money, facilities, even luxuries, but he/she is not at peace and is fearful. This lack of peace doesn’t let one enjoy the luxuries around them. In the Jeevan Vidya Shivir, much stress is laid upon one line, ‘A man can become as rich as he wants but the neighbour’s car and clothes will always make him poor.’
Prosperity: Prosperity means just one thing—the one who has all the means and is living happily too; the one who lives with the feeling that he/she isn’t lacking in anything. He/she lacks only lack. We look around us and find very few people who even after twenty years of education, in spite of being surrounded by all kinds of amenities, are in lack of lack.
Living amicably with relatives: The current education system doesn’t teach us to appreciate relationships, it rather teaches one to evaluate them. How profitable a relative is. That is the reason why instead of living amicably with relatives, there is only dissatisfaction. ‘Amicability’ makes both the giver and the recipient happy. As of now, the giver fills up with pride while the recipient gets poorer. This equation of pride and poverty creates a clash at some point or the other.
Contributing to society: A healthy body, a self-confident mind and amicability in relationships settle the self and enable one to contribute to the larger order in terms of family, society, nation, world and nature. However, if we look around, we find that educated people are unsettled and spread disharmony. One man makes arms for profit; another uses those arms to exploit others. The one getting exploited in return exploits someone else. The aim of an educated person, in the current model of education, is to get ahead in life. But they don’t have the ability to participate in society in a meaningful way. They only participate in creating disharmony because they don’t have an understanding of amicability or responsibility. The knowledge of an educated person is based on the ability to exploit others. The ability of senior managers is assessed on the basis of how many people they can replace with computers or on their skills to increase the company’s profits.
Had there been an understanding of society, as the number of literates increased, the attacks on the natural world would not have increased. Today, all courts are bursting at the seams with cases, and the number of discord-creators is increasing as compared to peacekeepers.
It would be wrong to draw the conclusion from the above statements that the current education system has no benefits. A lot of benefits have been reaped from it. Modern technological work, the study of atoms, elements and protons, the study of their relation with each other and their use to the exchange of information in the cyberspace, invention of mobile phones and modern aeroplanes—such marvels have been possible only because of education. It has also altered a lot of beliefs and systems, such as the change in the society’s perception of women, access to facilities, such as technology, for certain castes and religions. Rules about caste-based access and use of facilities have been done away with only because of education. Wherever these customs are still followed, there is a possibility that education will put an end to them in the near future. Evil practices such as bonded labour have been scrapped because of the current education model, and today, slavery has no place in society. That is what the education system has given us. The analysis of all that has been said above is that the need of the hour is to understand the aims and shortcomings of the current education system and address them. That is the reason I say that in spite of all its faults, the education system has contributed a lot to our society and the world, but there are many problems that have cropped up because of this model as well. If we have to understand them, we have to start by understanding the true aim of education and try to put the country on the path it should be on.
Let’s discuss the three big problems with the current education model. One big and important point that was brought up during the coexistence-based workshop (Jeevan Vidya Shivir), and even in our later discussions, was that the three big shortcomings in education have come up because of an incorrect interpretation of certain threads in economics, sociology and psychology. Because of this misinterpretation, the meaning has been twisted and the twenty years of education, instead of being positive, has only had a negative impact on family, society, country and environment.
In economics, Adam Smith’s words—limited resources and unlimited wants—have proven lethal. Regardless of the context, these words have left an everlasting impression on the mind of an average literate person, someone who has had twenty years of regular education. Even if we have not studied economics formally, this thought can create doubts in the mind of any person. It then becomes valid for this person to gather unlimited resources for his/her unlimited wants.
In the course of one’s education, at no level is this question asked: Are wants really unlimited? There has not even been an attempt to draw up a list of wants to understand them in any college or school. That is the reason why every person is convinced that their wants are unlimited. To fulfil these unlimited wants, he gets into the rat race to collect unlimited wealth. It is a proven fact that nobody can collect unlimited resources or wealth just through hard work or honesty. For that, he has to adopt dishonest ways—cheat and exploit people. It is certain that when this happens, the person on whom this dishonesty is unleashed, who is cheated on, who is exploited, will not stay quiet. As a reaction, he will either exploit someone else or will protest. In both situations, there will be discord, tension, war and natural disasters. So, if Adam Smith’s words are true then we have to accept that exploitation, discord and war are the way forward. But we are not willing to accept that.
To understand this thought of Adam Smith’s, we need to examine each and every aspect of it and we have to see whether wants are really unlimited. Are some wants limited and some unlimited? Can man’s wants of food, clothing, house, car, mobile phone, TV, etc., not be counted? How much bread, how much clothing, how many houses, how many TVs, how many mobiles would one need in 100 years? Are they unlimited? Are there any boundaries to it and if there are any, then how are they unlimited? Is it our emotional needs that are unlimited? That we understand in terms of words such as respect, security, love. These are also not unlimited but continuous wants. Then
, why does this illusion exist? Is it because we usually look for happiness in respect and facilities. Is it possible to identify your needs, understand and get the ability to fulfil them through education? Is it possible to fulfil countable needs through the available means and understand unlimited or continuous needs and fulfil them through education? If not, then what is the use of this education? Is it not important to fix this economic structure to end atrocities and war?
The principle of evolutionary studies: The father of evolutionary studies, Darwin propounded the idea of, ‘survival of the fittest.’ This principle gives rise to a never-ending competition. It creates fear and apprehension. And the fearful person gets busy hoarding everything, person or facility at hand. This is because he fears that if he has to survive, he has to be the fittest. To be the fittest, he can either start working towards becoming the fittest or ensure that nobody else is.
In the same vein, the father of psychology, Freud said that desire was the motive behind all of man’s actions. This also creates an illusion. It makes people consciously or unconsciously slaves of their desires. And then all of society knowingly or unknowingly starts working around this theory. Today, all market practices are based on this theory of desire. No advertisement is complete without a dash of desire, be it to sell a bottle of mango juice, undergarments or perfume.
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