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One of the children studying at Tolstoy Farm in South Africa was very unruly, aggressive and undisciplined. He was given to lying and Gandhi ji often used to get annoyed with him. One day Gandhi ji was forced to hit him with a stick. Later he wrote that while hitting that child he was shaken to the core. He wrote that he immediately realized that he had hit the child not with the intention of ‘correcting’ him, but only to give vent to his anger. Gandhi ji writes that that child became my teacher because he taught me how and why I get angry.
This statement can be cited as one of the most profound insights on education shared by any thinker. It tells us a great deal about corporal punishment too. This has been described by Gandhi ji’s the French biographer Louis Fischer. Tolstoy Farm was a result of Gandhiji’s experiment in the field of education. Punishment is often given to express one’s anger, not to teach or correct the child. At its root lies a self-centred feeling.
The basis of traditional education has always been punishment and reward. Education has been imparted to children on this basis in homes as well as in schools. This is more applicable to the students in higher classes. For a long time, threats, coercion, physical punishment and greed have been used to control students, without knowing and thinking about its impact on the tender mind of the child and how through these methods, we are knowingly or unknowingly contributing to the creation of a corrupt and violent society.
The child who studies for reward will grow up and do his work only for the greed of reward and this is what corruption is in the basic sense. A child who studies out of fear will express his fear in different ways in many spheres of life. He will accept that he needs something extra to perform his duty. When he becomes a government officer, he will expect this reward. ‘Give us something, something extra, only then we will do this work’. This is the fundamental, actual definition of corruption.
It is important to know the difference between scolding, punishing and teaching. When any danger comes, it is necessary to scream, scold and scold. Animals and birds also warn their children about danger. It’s not violent to admonish a human child in a loud voice while she is going near an electric socket or fire, nor is it cruelty to forcibly remove him from there and ignore her crying. A child or student can be controlled once by beating or scolding, but in this process education is lost sight of. The other aspect of this is that if the teacher does not punish, then the students create chaos in the entire class and teaching becomes difficult. Therefore, this problem has to be understood very carefully, sensitively and patiently.
It is important to understand that we, teachers and parents, can also learn along with the child and both can move forward solving the puzzles of life. We adults don’t have anything very special that we need to teach the child except for technical education. When we look at a child just before school-going age, the question that arises is what is it that we can teach him? Compared to his or her innocence, all our knowledge is not only meaningless but also dangerous!
Can we take care that our unexamined values, fears, habits and patterns do not get transmitted to him? We just have some more technical information, information related to a particular topic which we should keep giving it, in an appropriate manner. But this information does not make us better than a child. Education is a journey in which the student and the teacher walk together, in which one should learn together about any subject, career and life. This learning is needed by both the teacher and the student.
Most of the teachers are ignorant about the methods of teaching, child psychology and the research being done in this field. They choose teaching as a means of livelihood, but they have little understanding of teaching and also lack enthusiasm for their work. If we look at the education system prevalent in the country, even today the same old, rotten methods are being used in it.
It’s the same old methods of teaching and studying; memorize what’s in the books, or what the teachers teach, and spit it out in the exam. If you have a good memory, you get good marks but it does not matter how much you learn, how much you know, how inspired you feel to do something new. In some places, memorizing information is education, while in other places, flattery, manipulation and imitation of the teacher is the biggest education and a short cut way to success. No effort is made to ensure that students truly discover their interests and talents.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.