Education, like family, marriage, religion, law and politics is one of the most important institutions of society which plays a pivotal role in maintaining and developing the social system.

Gandhi used to say: ‘We will know what type of education to provide if we know what type of society we want.’ Education is a vital sub-system of the social system because it improves personal lives and helps society to run smoothly.

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Mahatma Gandhi’s ideal society of the first order is a completely rural society in a state of pure anarchy, in which there is a more or less complete absence not only of the state, government, parliament and political parties, but also of all complicated machinery, advanced science and technology, modern education, labour-capital and peasant-landlord conflict, and of such social evils as casteism, untouchability and communalism.

The horizontal organization of the society rests on oceanic circles of independent and interdependent villages, and the vertical organisation on varna or the four-fold hereditary occupational division without any social, or for that matter, economic inequality involved.

Economic relations in this society are harmonized and equalized through the institution of Trusteeship. Gandhi’s conception of the ultimate values of non-violence, freedom and equality shall also be realized. The society that he visualized was named as Sarvodaya (equal and full development of all), or Poorna Swaraj (complete independence for all) or Ram Raj (The Kingdom of Heaven).

The first-order ideal society, as a rule, is to be approached through the practical or second order ideal society by a process of successive approximation. Gandhi’s conception of practical or second-order ideal society was based on his Constructive Programme.

The programme had been developed by him since 1922 when, after suspension of the Non-cooperation movement, he retired from active politics for about eight years and devoted himself to the organisation and implementation of a programme of constructive work. He wrote regularly in Young India and Harijan on constructive works.

However, in 1941, Gandhi first presented his concrete programme for the benefit of the members of the Congress in the form of a booklet entitled Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place. He revised it in 1945, and in the following year he added one more item to it, namely, ‘improvement of cattle’.

In the Gandhian constructive programme, the most important element was his scheme of education, which in the words of Acharya Kriplani, ‘… is the coping stone of Gandhi’s social and political edifice.’ Gandhi wrote extensively about education.

His writings include hundreds of pages of critiques of the evils and deficiencies of British and other modern educational models. His contribution to education is unique in the sense that he made the first attempt to develop an indigenous scheme of education in British India. Although he never wrote a lengthy book, most of his important writings on education have been compiled and edited by Bharatan Kumarappa in two books., Basic Education (1951) and Towards New Education (1953).

Gandhi was a moral idealist. His philosophy of education is a harmonious blending of Idealism, Naturalism and Pragmatism. Idealism is the base of Gandhi’s philosophy whereas Naturalism and Pragmatism facilitated the translation of philosophy into practice. If one asks about the purpose of education, the question could be answered appropriately in the words of Gandhi: ‘… Education for life, education through life, and education throughout life.’

In various formulations, he presented the goal of education as character-building that focuses on the development of courage, strength, fearlessness, virtue, and the ability to engage in selfless work directed at moral and spiritual aims.

As Gandhi was more a moral idealist than an academician so his reflection on education did not emphasise intellectual development, but rather primacy and goal of developed human beings as moral beings. He emphasised on the centrality of work, vocational training, productive manual labour, the focus on real needs and simple living, development of non-violent relations, greater emphasis on moral development and a holistic approach that involved the integrated training of body, mind, and spirit.

In his words: ‘I hold that true education of the intellectual can only come through a proper exercise and training of the bodily organs, e,g, hands, feet, eyes, ears, nose etc.’ Throughout his adult life, Gandhi was involved in innovative and sometimes controversial educational experiments and he learnt from their successes and failures.

His quest for a truly sensible education system dates back to 1904 when he set up the Tolstoy Farm in South Africa’s Phoenix Settlement. He gradually tried to give a comprehensive education to students there by means of simple physical work. He did not send his own sons to college; he had to be very patient with his wife and other members of the family who were not happy with his experiment. But like a courageous scientist, he was bent on implementing his ideas of basic education and bringing about a revolution in educational methods.

However, most of his many experiments and reflections finally led to his Wardha Scheme of Education, formulated at the educational conference held on October 22-23, 1937 at Wardha. And this became known as the Nai Talim or New Education of Gandhi. The most emphasized part of New Education is Gandhi’s Basic Education that focus on the eight years of elementary education.

New Education is an essential component of Gandhi’s famous Constructive Programme that presents his positive moral and spiritual vision for an independent India. Indeed, Gandhi’s Nai Talim killed three birds with one stone. First, the pupil would learn and then use his knowledge to pay for his education.

Secondly, the pupil would be employable as soon as he finished the first level of education, and he would not find himself unfit for employment like boys and girls of the present age. Thirdly, the pupil would acquire a meaningful education and knowledge, which would remain with him throughout his life and enrich his life in all respects.

However, the basic principles of Nai Talim are: * From seven to fourteen years of age, education of each child should be free, compulsory and universal. It is limited to primary and junior stages only. * The medium of instruction should be mother-tongue.

* Mere literacy cannot be equated with education. Education should employ some craft as a medium of education so that the child gains economic self–reliance for life.

* Education should develop human values in the child. * Education should create useful, responsible and dynamic citizens. By education all the hidden powers of child should develop according to the community of which he is an integral part.

* Education should achieve the harmonious development of child’s body, mind. heart and soul. *

All education should be imparted through some productive craft or industry and a useful correlation should be established with industry. The industry should be such that the child is able to achieve gainful work experience through practical work. *

Education should be made self-supporting thorough productive work. Education should lead to economic independence and self–reliance for livelihood. Bapu’s Nai Talim seems to be job-centered, value-based and mass-oriented.

He firmly believed that separation of learning from labour results in social injustice. So besides learning of three R’s: Reading, writing and (A)’rithmetic in school, Gandhi insisted on the development and proficiency of three H’s: Hand, Heart and Head.

The scheme of New Education would also include ‘the elementary principles of sanitation, hygiene, nutrition,’ besides ‘compulsory physical training through musical drill.’ The aim of Nai Talim was to develop the integrated personality of the child. His educational scheme was nationalistic in setting, idealistic in nature; pragmatic on the one hand while social in purpose and spiritual in intent on the other. It was also an essential instrument for materializing his dream of Sarvodaya Samaj in which the vertical and horizontal distance between people is reduced to a minimum.

However, there is a feeling that Gandhi was against research, higher education, etc. But Gandhi had specific ideas about research, higher education and the accumulation of knowledge. In Gandhi’s scheme, higher education performs the essential function of providing training and properly motivating human power for national needs and there was an urgent need for purposive expansion of such education.

Gandhi was not the first in the matter of Nai Tamil model education, for many others before him had thought along similar lines though they had not gone as far as him in experimenting with it. In the past, many wise men applied their minds to the subject of education of the body and of the heart and this significant education was through labour.

For example, Karl Marx, in his book Das Kapital, indicated education through the medium of work as the only system of education of the future.

Even earlier, Robert Owen had said the same thing. However, in the words of a 19th Century English writer, James Froude: ‘The knowledge which a man can use is the only real knowledge, the only knowledge which has life and growth in it and converts itself into practical power. The rest hangs like dust about the brain, and dies like rain-drop off the stone.’

The writer is a retired IAS officer