Vidya: Re-Rooting the Beautiful Tree (The Core Meaning and Purpose of Education)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The greatness of Bharata's past was due to her knowledge-driven society which lifted her to the top of the world in every known field. The kind of education that could provide this was defined and designed by seers who made such knowledge the basis of the way of social life.

It is time to revive the society which has since become diluted due to the imposition of the western education system. Work for change to take place in the desired direction is required. Where must we start? Do we still have our Bharatiya Knowledge traditions? What have we lost? How can we to replace the existing 'mainstream" education system? These areas are explored in this book in much depth.

Relying on 'The Beautiful Tree' by Sri Dharampal and the references obtained therefrom, actual records of the education system that existed before the systematic imposition of the Macaulayan System have been made use of to re-construct a framework that is likely to support such a knowledge-driven society.

The suggestions made, if practically implemented, will apart from creating high quality career professionals, strengthen the integration of man with society, with nature, with all of creation and, ultimately, with one's own true self.

Born and brought up in Chennai, Yamuna obtained a degree in Chemical Engineering and practiced in the field for a few years. Eventually, she moved to her area of passion education. And, in addition to teaching 'mainstream' children, she is also trained in managing learning disorders in children. For several years, she has been writing on education in her blog, 'Harmony in Education'.

She is also keen on studying itihasas and puranas and has authored a book of 51 short stories from the Mahabharata titled Once Upon a Time Thousands of Years Ago. A paper on Dravidianism that she presented at an international conference was published earlier. These apart, she writes on education and nationalism for electronic media both in English and in Tamil and has a presence on social media. She is actively engaged with Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal.

Life took her to Bengaluru, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore before bringing her back to Chennai where she lives with her husband and their two sons.

This is a much-needed study and seems to have been carried forth with lot of passion, mission and vision.

Normally, people cry over a problem. Here, in this case, the author, Yamuna Harshavardhana has analysed the problem of education in present day India but has not stopped with it. She has given practical solutions to the same from her extensive teaching experience across foreign lands as well as in India, which place her as an earnest, forward looking author and educator.

The way Yamuna has segmented the sections of the book is practical and commendable. It clearly compartmentalizes thought and discussions into the What? How? Why? When? and What next? Which makes it easy to navigate through the book and the thought process.

Starting with an introspection on what education really is, why it is needed and how it had been approached by the Bharatiya civilization in days by gone, she has gone on to present and analyze what caused it to change in the last couple of centuries; what are the changes; their impacts; what needs to be turned around and how.

The selection of quotes and writings printed at the end of the book in Notes will reveal a glimpse of all that took place about two centuries ago, to fell the Indian system of education, literacy, intellect, knowledge, history, culture and self-pride.

She has beautifully, through simple pictures, highlighted the predicament of students of today and their expectation from the education system. Her analogy of using the story from Srimad Bhagavtam of Prthu is quite interesting, for, it steers one's thought with regards to education towards that which inculcates responsibilities and concern for a sustainable environment.

Her handling of the subject of education from the four corners of Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha further shapes the discourses around the changes needed in the process of imparting education.

As a teacher, as a parent and previously as a student, in each of these life roles and stages, I had always been uncomfortable with the education system with which we are most familiar in our country. The stress filled student's life, the meaningless scoring systems, the high-pressure syllabus-oriented life of a teacher, and the frustration of a parent for having to provide wholesome childhood to my children while simultaneously having to meet up to the expectations of schooling were all extremely enervating experiences. These convinced me that it was more a bane than a blessing for a human being to ever have to go to school at least in the form that we are talking about. This cannot be pushed aside as an individual's personal feeling as I am yet to come across someone who is sincerely happy with the education system that we presently follow. Even the society which the students step into at the end of the educating process is mostly unhappy with what is handed to them, with more and more 'unemployable or under-employable 'products' being generated from this education machinery at the end of nearly two decades of 'education'.

Through the years, I read the works of Swami Vivekananda, Swami Ramakrishnananda, Sister Nivedita, Śri Aurobindo, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Cardinal Newman, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and several others - whose articles I came by in various publications and academic journals and realised that, while their - view of education was one that could take an individual towards liberation, none of this is seen much in our education system. It seemed as if the one which is hitherto implemented was impossible to be changed or modified to become the other which was truly needed. The views of one of the greatest educationists of contemporary times, the late Sir Ken Robinson, indicates to a system that focusses on inherent individual abilities and despite his decades of dedicated work in this direction with several governments in the west, we have seen little that can be called true change. Showing how children are educated by the batch with children moving from one grade to the next based on age and with all of them expected to fulfil the same set standards in academics, Sir Robinson indicated how the factory model - where products are produced as per specifications batch after batch has been used to design the education system.

Gathering all these from so many wise and experienced sources made me feel like a well-read theoretical philosopher who wished for things that could never be realised in practice. Most people, a majority of who were parents, while they converged upon most of the views that I held and expressed, confined these to discussions alone and woke up to a totally different life of education in reality. A form of rigidity primarily based on fear of what career and its associated monetary benefits the child would reap in the future has set in the minds of parents which they seem unable to overcome despite openly admitting that the present education system is severely flawed. Schools play along with the current pattern as it is not just easier but also profitable to run a school that is quite machine-like.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages