Education

The children of today are different in the sense that they are,-future-oriented; they tend to be more and more comprehensive, global and universal. They attach a great value to the virtues of friendship and commitment to the relations that are rooted in impartiality, team spirit and freedom from rigidities of conventions, dogmas and all the conflicts of ideologies that prevent free inquiry leading up to discoveries and inventions that will sub-serve the ideals of mutuality and harmony. Correspondingly the teachers of today and tomorrow have to be different; their roles have to be more stringent and multisided, devoted to the development of integral personality, wide vision of the future of nationalism and internationalism. Teachers of today and tomorrow need to have new programmes of training, which will take care of new roles of the teachers and new trends of the synthesis of East and the West, and as agents of change from old to the new.

The twentieth century has been an unquiet age of ferment, chaos of ideas and inventions, clash of enormous forces, creation, catastrophe and dissolution amid the formidable agony and tension of the body and soul of humankind. In the 21st century we need to turn to a new orientation that we require in the field of education.

The contemporary scene of India compels everyone to turn to education as the central key to the road to regeneration. Unfortunately, our educational system is suffering from long-standing negligence and maladies and unless drastic steps are taken to bring radical and revolutionary changes, it would be futile to expect education to perform any miracle.

After centuries of experiments, materialism is giving way to the pressures of new discoveries which require exploration of the physical and spiritual domains. It has now become clear that the knowledge of the Spirit and knowledge of Matter need to be blended and synthesized, and in doing so, all that is intermediate between Spirit and Matter has all to be perfected and brought into unity in complete integration. All this has to be done both at the collective level and at the individual level, and in doing so; we shall find necessary steps to develop Integral Education.

The present crisis is a crisis of character, and unless we radically change objectives, contents and methods of education, we cannot bring about regeneration of India. It is, however, necessary to have greater clarity as to how education for character development can be implemented and what hope we can foster to help our children to develop the latent powers of illumination, courage, fearlessness, humanism, dedication and universality.

The country needs a kind of education that is not yet being conceived, although greatest pioneers of the freedom struggle have already given us the glimpses of that education.If education has to reflect the soul of India. If India has to be protected from dogmatic or agnostic or sceptical Materialism and its barbaric invasion,- then India has to be revitalized, and refashioned. We have to redesign our Education System during the next ten years.