 INAUGURAL ADDRESS

I feel privileged that I have been asked to be amongst you this morning. There have been several conferences on education involving people at different levels. Some have been regular features of our lives, such as the conference of Vice-Chancellors and so on, and some have been new and very welcome ideas, such as the meeting of the teachers of primary education which we had very recently in Delhi. All these meetings have generated a climate of serious thought and a more significant search for new solutions which are urgently needed to make, our education more relevant to contemporary needs and to build up a new, a more harmonious and a more vibrant society.

You have referred to difficulties, Mr. Minister. Difficulties, as I have often said, arc part of life itself-human and animal. I do'nt think that there ever is going to be a time when you will have no difficulties. Our task is to see how to overcome the difficulties and to see what can be done in spite of the difficulties. Funds are a real problem. They are a problem to you as well as to all the other Ministries in the Centre and all the Governments of the States. I entirely agree that education should be given a far higher priority. But I would not like you to think that we give it a low priority merely because from time to time funds are dashed. It does, in our mind and in our, planning, have a very high, priority. But I must confess that welfare programmes

such as education, health, or social services are items which are the easiest to cut when a question of cut comes. And, unfortunately, this attitude or compulsion is not confined to our country, but it is found everywhere else also. This does not mean that it is desirable. But what I am stressing is that while we must try to mobilize more resources in whatever way possible, we should not let the lack of resources stand in our way in making the necessary changes or the necessary improvements. To my mind, many changes and improvements do not need funds at all. In fact, they may well save you a lot of money which you are spending on what I consider entirely unnecessary items. I won't say it is entirely unnecessary for all parts of India but certainly for a large part of India, a building is not essential. It is essential for laboratory purposes. It is essential when it is raining, but the rainy season is not a long one. But education does not have to be confined to a building. It can take place out in the open. It can take place on verandahs, under the trees, or any other hall or anything available in the vicinity. I am saying this from my own experience because the school at which I was the longest and the college at which I was the longest, both functioned almost entirely in the open air. First was in Poona and the second in Gurudev's Visva Bharati.

So we have to think of our priorities and the priority is the quality of the teacher, the quality of the training you give to the teacher and the resourcefulness of the teacher. Everything else is secondary. Equipment is important, specially in the field of science : it is not something that you can just make do. But for a lot of classes, given imagination and resourcefulness, the necessary equipment can be found locally with the use of local materials and with the help of local artisans. Even the children can be encouraged to manufacture it and this would have greater relevance to their lives and give them a greater interest in their education. I presume that the purpose of this Board is to guide the basic direction and pace of education in the entire country. So it should reflect the current educational contemporary thinking. It should also crystalise the trends of implementation and research into practical propositions for urgent implementation.

But as we all know, the Centre's role is necessarily limited to coordination and broad general direction. And a question will arise about the extent to which the States will be willing to conform to whatever decisions you take here. We have had experience that even a programme which is accepted by the Chief Ministers is implemented in such, a changed form that it does not serve the purpose for which it had come into being. However we remain strongly committed to a massive education programme which must reach every citizen in time. This is a task of the highest national importance.

We have also, in examining our priorities, to consider the pers- pective that is given to the children and the perspective the teacher himself has of national problems, local problems, and regional problems. And in perspective I would add, the attitude to life. You may have a very good plan of education. But if, along with it, you have an attitude of narrow-mindedness, whether based on casteism of religion or language or any other aspect of life which, as Gandhiji used to say, created an artificial wall between man and man, then the best educational plan cannot succeed in creating the sort of citizen which this country and this world need. So education and every other problem has to be seen in the larger perspective of the nation's future and the sort of society which we are planning to build. And I would like to say just one word : whatever plan you make it cannot be a rigid plan.

You have spoken about experimentation. I am glad that we have many experimentations taking place now in our country. I have been specially impressed by the report of UNESCO so aptly entitled "Learning to Be" which is a daring attempt to restructure the entire system of education. In our own country, a great deal of valuable work has been done in the past by many social reformers, a person, like Swami Vivekananda put many objectives before us and many other institutions are undertaking interesting experiments. We must learn from all these new experiments. The Indian experiment should try to absorb the influences of western trends and at the same time take care to

integrate them with the mature concepts of our own culture and philosophy. The pace of experimentation has often been slow and yet its results-I am talking about India now-are valuable and they are certainly relevant to the Indian needs. Although the scope of Indian experiments has often been universal, they have drawn their fundamental inspiration from the great values which have given a distinctiveness to Indian culture. Indian culture is a very composite one and we have to pay special regard to the cultures of the tribal people, hill people, and many other units in such a way that we keep these people in the mainstream of national life, in the mainstream of human advancement without their feeling alienated from their own roots, without their thinking the less of their own past achievements and talents. We are, of course, committed to giving a better chance to the so-called backward sections of our society. But by so doing, let us not create new areas or new castes of backwardness. This is a complaint which I am receiving from some places that communities which were once advanced have less and less opportunities at present and are gradually slipping into a stage where they would like to announce that they also are backward communities. So let us not, in our earnestness to help some communities who are urgently in need of help that has to be recognized and appreciated, create new areas of backwardness.

In attempting to foster man's search of himself and his world, the educationist assumes great responsibilities for the present age and for the future. Science has mitigated much of man's drudgery and tedium. On the one hand, it has opened out new vistas. Knowledge has expanded tremendously and it seems there is no end to it. But it has also shown up our inability to cope with knowledge in a humane manner. This has made life more complex and today, the Inner Man is in a critical turmoil. In spite of many who oppose new educational, ideas or who are committed to the old, rigid and formal pattern, there is a groping for a new social order which will bring in greater fellowship and cooperation amongst all people and specially young people.

I have referred earlier to some of the new experimentation. Apart from the many Commissions which have been set up and which have given their reports, long before them we had Gandhiji's and Dr. Zakir Hussain's concept of basic education, Tagore's experiment in Visva Bharati and many other such examples. The question is how to assimilate these and allied proposals, how to adapt them to our immediate needs. It is unfortunate that we have clung rather tenaciously to the old formal system. Perhaps we thought in the beginning that this was necessary for the expansion of education. However, as the Education Minister pointed out, we have not been able to realize our aim of educating all our children upto fourteen. I would like to say though that the number of children who go to schools today is over 90 million, which is an impressive figure by any count.

We do realize now that large numbers can be reached only by changing the rigid methods and adopting new and more flexible ones. Education cannot be confined to institutions and must be replaced by a programme of part-time education supplemented by non-formal education, some form of work and self-study. Education is a life-long process and we must make our society a learning one which will nourish the highest aspirations of our young people. But can this be done without the infusion of a new spirit and without providing new inspiration to our people ? I have spoken just now of some form of work and this morning perhaps all of us have seen some of the statements made in a Seminar on child labour. I do not know how my views fit in with this, but I was one of those who initially felt very strongly on the question of children not working. But the experience of my own childhood, the experience with my children and children of many others has shown me that work by itself is not something that harms the child because the child does not regard it as work. What is work and drudgery to the parent is exciting to the child, for the child regards it as a part of his growing up. Of course, I don't include in this something like bard factory work or a sort of hard manual labour which will overtax a child's strength,

where hours are too long or nourishment is inadequate, but we have to see how this fits in with the condition here.

With regard to poor children, for instance, I knew personally some harijan boys who were employed in a factory. But this, is against the law and therefore, the management was asked to remove them and they were removed. Now some months later, some of these returned to Delhi, and said to me: "While we are employed in the factory, we had fixed hours, we had a good pay and we were looked after in every way. Now we are not. We still have to cam our living. Therefore we have to pick up jobs and sometimes we are paid, sometimes we are not paid, sometimes we are ill-treated and we have no way out. In no way can we meet this situation and therefore, you should do something about these laws and make them flexible enough so that people like us do not suffer". Now, these boys, they themselves didn't know their age really, were in the age-group of 13, 14 and so on. But apart from them, and talking even about the other class of people who are not forced to work, I think that children learn much more through work than they might learn in, formal education. This is not to say that we should not have any formal education. Involvement in work must not be for the sake of making an institution self-sufficient, or for the sake merely of giving respectability to manual labour. But even from the point of view of the growth of the intelligence resourcefulness and coordination, it is essential that some sort of work should be included in education.

Many teachers have unfortunately regarded education as rather a mechanical process. But to be worthwhile it must be a living process which develops the person, integrates him with his environment, gives him total perspective and a global outlook. From the earlier stage children and young people must be made conscious of the oneness of this universe and of the great privilege they have merely by being part of it. Moreover, the attitude of demanding from the world must change into one of what we can do to conserve, to preserve, and to renew the world in, which we are. We must free young minds from all

types of selfishness, narrow-mindedness and dogmatism, whether as I said earlier it was communalism, casteism or any other such division. Theirs must be a spirit of unity and of freedom.

The future is not an exercise of imagination or prediction. It must be the object of serious and scientific study that can be used as a tool for current planning of education as well as other aspects of national life.

There is much talk of vocational training and it is essential not only for work experience about which I spoke earlier but also to enable our young people to get employment. But education cannot be merely job-oriented. It can help the person, to get a job and to keep a job only if it is life-oriented. Our aim should be not merely to inform young people of the great things that are happening in the world. Unfortunately, in India, they have been kept ignorant of the freedom struggle and of the many other struggles and trends which are taking place in our country and in, other countries. And this is as important to education as knowing certain basic facts and information which is changing anyhow. Most of us here will know that what we learnt in school and college is very largely out-of-date--even a thing which was regarded as solid as geography. We have to cultivate in, young people motivation to undertake national tasks, to think for themselves and to have the capacity to become participants in, the shaping of a new humanity.

There is a shortage of material and equipment. Where a piece of equipment has to be obtained from outside, we should naturally try and get it. But a great deal is manufactured in India and a great deal, specially for the smaller child, can, be made in homes and in villages. Most of our methods of teaching are still taken from abroad. Books on sociology, books on economics, books on other subjects-all these, even though written by Indians are largely based on Western concepts, on Western theories with no consideration for the realities of life in India, not just the reality of poverty or economic backwardness, but the whole development of the race, the

question of our diversity, of our unity and of the direction which we want to take. Now, obviously, we cannot expect the child to have these values if the teacher's whole training has been along a different direction. So this is what points to the necessity of preparing educational material ourselves-both source material and educational material-and this should be suited to the new methods which we are called up-on to adopt and It must also be relevant to local availability and way of life.

I am glad to bear that text books have somewhat improved. But I have seen only a few of them and I must say that they still need great, great improvement. We still have not learnt to integrate matters. For instance, if there is a book on language,, while it is teaching the language, it can also deal with a number of subjects- health, sanitation, environment, attitude towards human beings, animals, cooperation, national tasks. These are, not separate subjects. This should come as part of learning something else.

I have spoken elsewhere also of the standard of language. The standard of our language is not improving. I find that people use words and phrases in a very loose manner now, there is not that exactness, of trying to say exactly what you mean and this is specially noticeable in our use of the English language. Now I believe very strongly that a national link language is essential for national unity, for closer communication between different parts of the country and this, in no way, takes away the importance of the mother-tongue or the regional language. This is an, extra besides it. But at the same time I do believe in the importance of international languages. I would like our children to know more than one international language as most children in Europe and other countries know. But if it is not possible to do that, then we must have one international language and the standard of that language must be high enough to allow us to perform adequately in international gatherings. We started off with an initial advantage, but in those years we have lost it, and today we find that the countries of Africa, the other countries of Asia, all who did not start off with this advantage,

have improved in their knowledge, in the pronunciation, in their general use of these languages and this is harming our delegations when they attend certain important functions and conferences.

I am sure that this Conference will be a useful, one. All of you are experienced, and you will bring to bear your personal experiences on how to make education more integrated with our life.

Some of the facts which the Education Minister was giving, us themselves pointed to the very close connection between education and the economic situation. Now I believe in experimentation and I believe in education being left free, that is for people to be able to develop it. I don't believe in its regimentation or nationalisation, but I do think that consideration should be given, to what is happening in some private schools because today it has become a lucrative business. It is not a question of giving education, but anybody who sets up a school has no trouble whatsoever in attracting a large number of students, however extravagant the fees or the extra charges. This is a matter which must be given consideration. If, with all this expenditure, some special type of human being was produced, one would say "well, it does not matter". But this is not the case. The education is no higher than is available in many other schools. And one harmful effect, of course, is the mentality that grows of going to a very special place, very expensive school for instance. Part of the student facilities can be in common, common playgrounds for instance. As cities grow, as population grows in spite of all our effort to curb it, this is one matter to which you will have to direct your attention. It is something we should start telling our people straightaway : there will be less and less available ground. We must encourage those sports which need less area and specially the old Indian sports. I am not decrying the other sports because they are important for team spirit and for competition abroad and so on. But if there is no room for games which need a lot of ground, that should not be made an excuse that there is no other type

of physical activity. There are many types of physical training which can be done in very small space and I think this must be compulsory for all educational institutions. I hope that it will be taken up by teachers themselves because unless they give an example, it is no use expecting the rest of the community to take it up. Physical fitness is a very important ancillary to mental fitness as well as to our capacity for work.

Educationists must give consideration to correcting past mistakes. But they must also give time to anticipate future challenges-not merely the requirements of manpower, although that is important in many fields, but the new relationship between man, community and technology and between nations and the world.

I have great pleasure in inaugurating this conference and I hope that all your ideas put together will produce something concrete, something that is feasible and something that will be translated into action and reality.