OTHER ADDRESSES ADDRESS BY SMT.
 INDIRA GANDHI PRIME MINISTER OF
 INDIA
 

SMT. INDIRA GANDHI

Prime Minister of India

I came here not with the intention of speaking to you but of listening to what you have to say. At the same time, I can claim that I am familiar with points which you are going to raise, because I know the points which have been made on other educational forums, and have been ventilated from time to time in the press. Some of these are included in the resolutions which are before you. I came here mainly because Prof. Nurul Hasan said that my not coming would give an impression that I was not interested in education. But nothing can be farther from the truth. I am passionately interested in education, and education has been one of my major interests ever since I myself was a student.

I can say I was dissatisfied with the educational system not only in India but also in Switzerland and France or in England where I was educated. Dissatisfaction with the educational system is not confined to our country. The reason is that society and the world have been changing very fast, and the educational changes and experiments that are being carried out in different parts have not been able to catch up with the changing needs, particularly of the young people, or even to project before young people what is expected of them. That does not mean we have to give up the effort. There is no doubt that drastic change is necessary and I am glad to see that the Education Ministry here and the Education Departments in the States have been giving earnest attention to this problem. am glad about some of the programmes which have been started and other programmes which are planned. I do not think that all of you, or I, or the students, will be satisfied with the changes which you have proposed. At the same time, we must take cognizance of the fact that you cannot have a major dislocation of the existing situation straightway. You have to proceed in such a way that whatever you do has some effect but does

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not dislocate the whole educational system. Teachers, students, parents and we ourselves know that even when there is a small dislocation it becomes an occasion for agitation on a small or big scale, and I do not think that education can afford any more agitations.

I have not come here-and may disappoint you in this-for making any announcement about funds, or restoration of cuts! I see on the dais Shri V. C. Shukla and Prof. Chakravarty from the Planning Commission and I have no doubt they will have made a note of the points that you have suggested. Prof. Nurul Hasan knows that I am one of the staunchest champions of his programmes in the Cabinet. But we do have difficulties and the nation today is faced with an extremely tight financial position. But nobody can say that a pro- gramme is less important because it receives less money. When it comes to the question of priorities, the first priority is to meet the food shortage and scarcity of essential commodities. Therefore, agriculture, and industry which goes to help agriculture, will have to have first priority. I know that this is somewhat at the cost of the future. Nobody should want to sacrifice the future, but you cannot build the future unless you have a solid present. You have to build your foundation, raise the walls, and have the first, storey, and then build a palatial building which you have dreamt of. But I do agree that the Planning Commission and the Finance Ministry should make every effort possible to get whatever money is available or can be saved from other items and to put it into education. Only the other day I was meeting people from Health. We cannot say that health is less important, because if you do not have health, you cannot have education, and people cannot derive any benefit from education. There are so many problems which are interlinked and which are extremely important to our present and future. We are trying to solve them through a balancing act-balancing between A of these-and we request your co-operation and understanding in helping us to get out of this period. It is not a long period but, while it lasts, it is certainly going to impose hardships on us all.

I shall not go into the details of the cuts but I was told that the Education sector is receiving more or less what it got in the last year of the Fourth Five-Year Plan. It may not be adequate. I am not arguing that point. But material inputs are only a very small part of any educational activity. There is considerable scope for originality, or creativity and for fresh thinking. We need to improve our teaching materials and our

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training techniques. The courses which are prevalent in many places as I said earlier are out of date and need revision and there are many other improvements which can be made. Material shortages which exist today should make us more conscious of the genuine need for qualitative improvement in education. Some of the ideas which we heard just now and which I find in your Resolutions are very good and I should like to tend them my full support. For instance, the co- existence, of the formal and non-formal education, creating different points of entry is important. It is perhaps a self-evident statement that education is a life-long training. What education we give at the primary or elementary or secondary or higher levels of education is really a preparation for what we shall learn when we leave these institutions and what we are capable of learning when we leave them.

If you are short of something, there are two ways of handling the situation: either we say we do not have it and there is nothing we can do, or look around and see what we can use. At our end, we can certainly see that rupees or even paise can be diverted from other programmes, but at your end, at the district level, at the village level, you can see what can be used. I spoke about materials. We sometimes think of materials in terms of particular things which are laid down in known international system, ignoring what is available and what is familiar to the child in his environment. At the school which I attended, when we were learning mathematics, we were learning it not in rupees and annas but in pounds and pence. Arithmetic becomes very much more difficult if we learn it through unfamiliar things. Had it been through rupees and annas and pies, which we saw everyday, it would not have been difficult. Everything in education whether mathematics or any other subject, should be based on the child's surroundings. This is the approach in Basic Education, where you bring in local crafts. But unfortunately, it became narrow and stilted and confined to a few crafts, not necessarily taking into account the whole of the community which surrounded the school. But some thing like Basic Education is essential.

I want to tell you something from my own experience in my Swiss school. It was an exceedingly expensive one; it was not a school for ordinary people. But the school had a large farm attached to it and all of us had to work on the farm. Depending on the season, something or other was done outside school hours. It was not playing around with some thing, but

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exceedingly hard work from early in the morning. If there was an unexpected frost we had to get up at two o'clock in the morning and put small stoves in the middle of trees in the orchard to keep the temperature high so that frost would not affect our apples. We did not think it any hardship. We were proud of it. Outside of our area there were vineyards. They did not belong to the school. But when it was the season to pick the grapes, the farmers did not get sufficient labour. So all the institutions round about were given holidays for about a week and we worked in the vineyards from six in the morning to six in the evening without coming home. We were given two or three sandwiches packed from the school, and of course we were given as many grapes as we could possibly cat, and we helped the farmers out. And this was from the age-group 6 upwards. The enjoyment was great and I can tell you that we looked forward to the work and we enjoyed it particularly because we were so closely involved with the community. And while we were there, we learnt a lot of things. Sometimes we decided that on a particular day everybody was going to learn German and conversed in that language. That way we learnt an extra language. I do not think it is bard to learn another language. Suppose in a non-Hindi State, people speak in Hindi. You may not become experts in grammar, but you can have a working knowledge. This should in fact be the way in which languages are learnt. Everybody should not aim at becoming an expert. Later on, you may learn the grammar. In my school days, we did not take extra time to learn a language, but we learnt it while we did something else.

One of the points made here was about curtailment of higher education. Every foreign adviser who has conic here has advised us to curtail higher education and we all agree. But education has become a status symbol and whether you can bypass the problem merely by giving scholarships. I do not know. It is for each State to judge the situation. The people of the weaker sections will say the higher classes who could afford it have had higher education for many years and now when opportunity comes for other people to get it. you shut the door. A way out has to be found. I do agree it does not help every student to go to the university but then it must be on the basis of non-discrimination.

Then there was a suggestion about compulsory national service. I might tell you that some years ago when I met

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students of Delhi University, a fairly representative group from different colleges, most of them supported this idea. There were only one or two who said they would not, support it. When I mooted this idea, which was long before I became Prime Minister, I was told it had been tried out in one State and was found to be very expensive. Why should it be expensive? Can you not have a scheme where certain people go to rural areas and some help is given to them by those in the rural population who can afford? There are large parts of the country where some rural people can afford to pay for services rendered. Apart from work on the farm, students may do teaching work and so many other social service tasks. They can undertake other things which are necessary services and not in order to kill time but because it is something which is needed by society.

The Education Minister of U.P. spoke about involving small children in doing things. I have read that in China the smallest children do something which is needed in the nearby farms or factories. Either they will cut square pieces of card-board or something which immediately goes straight from the school to the factory nearby. I am sure we can link up the needs of the field and of the industry which may be situated roundabout. Again, I may go back to the memories of my Swiss school. Although it was a school for rich people, we were not allowed to throw away even a bit of string or any paper any-where. If you got a parcel, you bad to open the string and the parcel paper or cloth without cutting it, and everything that came out from it bad some use. The habit of not wasting anything was inculcated in the students. I find that the poorest countries seem to waste more than countries which could perhaps afford it. This habit of mind must be worked into the system. Even today when there is so much paper shortage, we find we are wasting so much paper. The Prime Minister of Sri Lanka was here a few days ago. They had paper short- age and they declared that there should be no loss of paper and they began paying 35 Ceylonese cents per kilogram of waste paper. The whole place became clean. Earlier there were pieces of paper all over the beaches but today there is hardly any work for the Municipality, because children are collecting paper from all over. So we must see how we can get over the difficulties and shortages.

I am one of the foremost critics of the education system. But I must say that in spite of all its shortcomings, it is produc-

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ing some very fine young men and women. We are producing some of the top scientists of the world for whom there is great demand. In fact, we are trying desperately that they do not leave the country. We are producing good engineers, we are producing good scientists and we are producing people who are good in every sphere. So we cannot say that the system is entirely bad. But some people are able to take advantage of it and others are not and we should try to find out how we can alter the situation by making the necessary changes. There is also the question of mobile schools. I hope you are paying attention to it. Most of our tribes are settling down but some of them are still nomadic and they do need some education. We are now on the verge, not only of the changes which you are suggesting and new ideas which may come as a result of this meeting, but we are on the verge of experiments such as the use of satellite communication. This can be useful only if the thinking at the local level is updated to meet it. Otherwise, if you have to give the same old education through the satellite, it is not going to take us very much forward. It it a question of creating an attitude of mind where young people become more self-reliant, more involved with what is happening not only in their district, their State, their country but, I would say, what is happening to mankind as a whole, because that link is also one which is strengthening now. This is a revoluntionary change. It is very expensive. I do not know how much we can do as that will make obsolete many of our traditional methods of instruction.

But when I talk of outdated methods, not all old methods are outdated. We find there were many things in the, old Ashram system or traditional system which have good points and I think that our education should always be a blend of whatever is good in any system anywhere in the world and which is relevant to our country and to our needs.

Somebody made the point, and I fully support it, that when we think of money for education we do not usually think of more teachers, better teachers, but we think of more buildings which use concrete, steel and cement. As I am never tired of saying to the Education Minister, most of the schools I went to were in the open air, especially those in Poona and Santiniketan. If by chance there was rain, we moved to the verandah and studies continued there. I do not think it made any difference to the teaching. I am not saying we should not have buildings but we must try to find out how to do without

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certain things. Secondly, we should see how local materials can be used and whether other institutions can rent the rooms for classes. All the time we should have a spirit of resourcefulness and find out what can be used that is not being used, A lot of buildings and entertainment places that may not have a performance more than once a month, can be utilised for the purpose. I think there is need for a certain amount of coordination which must be worked out so that no place is wasted.

We need to take a positive outlook so that we can give students an opportunity of meaningful participation in the affairs of our education. Some of the youth programmes seem to have a rather negative attitude and are keeping them out. Youth programmes must have a content of nation building. There is no shortage of programmes to which attention of the young people can be attracted in an organised manner and where they can make useful contribution. We must give them a more meaningful role in a manner which will encourage them to respond. This changing of pattern to 10+2+3, or whatever it is, may have relevance to you sitting here. But the students are not enthused by this kind of change. It appears to them only superficial. It is important how you do these new things. But how you put them to young people is more important still. Change must be clothed with some purpose.

I do believe that any new approach to education should appeal to students. I cannot agree with the growing tendency of considering young people to be the best authorities on education. More students today like vocational bias given to education, and a certain kind of. vocational training is absolutely necessary. Job orientation must be there, devised on the basis of furture needs, so that it helps them to get jobs. At the same time, education is something wider than merely enabling a person to earn his livelihood. Today one job is available, but after five years it may not be available. So there must be some sort of basic training which should enable a person to adapt to the changing needs. The real purpose of education is to enlarge the intellectual horizon and emotional activities so that we have not only better workers, but also better human beings who are mature and who can face the growing challenges.

And I may tell you that these challenges are not going to de- crease, but are going to increase. Constantly, new problems are

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coming up and new difficulties have got to be faced. Education, as was rightly said by one of our friends, is not only preparation for life but very much a part of life. So, students today cannot be isolated nor can they be deprived of learning. If you keep all these things in mind, you will give them something which will enthuse our young people and also those who teach them. Not only that, but it will create an opportunity for other people who would like to come and learn because we must not reduce education to young students. It is also meant for adults and adult literacy programmes are very important. There is genuine need for adult education, that is, helping people to know about problems; about local problems, their own problems, as well as national and international problems. Recently, an educationist from another country, who is working out some such scheme, told me of his experiences how they mix a class of illiterate people and the professors. This helps to bring out fresh ideas. Those who are uneducated and who have no knowledge are also able to express an entirely fresh outlook. It comes from and it helps the professor.

Education is not a narrow field. It relates to everything that we are doing or hope to do in our country and education is meant for building the furture India. In this task I wish you all good success.