FOUNDATION OF EDUCATION :: INDIAN THINKERS ON EDUCATION - PART II

 MOHAN DAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI:
Mohan Das Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 at Porbandar in Gujarat. After passing his matriculation in 1887, Gandhiji sailed for England on September 4, 1887 for studying Law. Gandhiji went to South Africa in 1893 to work as an assistant Lawyer in an important case. He does not claim any 'ism' of his own. He believed on the fact that God could be realized only through truth. He regards truth as whole and unchangeable and immortal. He believed in social service in order to reach God. He encouraged cottage and rural industries. 
 He believed on few facts like:

• Dignity of Labour.
• All should have equal wages or equality.
• Ahimsa: Non-violence and non-injury even by thought, deed or words.
• A Satyagrahi: A fighter of truth. A life of hard discipline.
• Role of female and male are complementary to each other. 
• Too much industrialization will make man slave of machine.

The Tolstoy Farm: 

It was founded in 1910 and it proved to be an ideal laboratory for Gandhiji's educational experiments. Gandhiji's concept was one step further at Tolstoy by introducing vocational training to give "all-round development to the boys and girls". Although at this stage there was no attempt to educate the children through the medium of a specific handicraft, Gandhiji enabled each child to become self-supporting by supplementing their education with vocational training. An added dimension of the Tolstoy Farm was the decision to hold co-educational classes, and indeed to encourage the boys and girls to do everything together. The ages of children ranging from six to sixteen years, the children had on an average eight hours of manual training per day, and one or two hours of book learning.

The activities at Tolstoy Farm included general labouring, cooking, scavenging, sandal- making, simple carpentry and messenger work. In addition to productive crafts, manual work of a purely constructive nature was also essential for the maintenance and development of community life. This included work such as sweeping, scavenging and water fetching. Gandhiji's objective in this context was to inculcate the ideals of social service and citizenship through all the activities of children from the earlier formative years.

PHILOSOPHY:

1. Education is necessary for the social, political, moral and economic growth.
2. He believes in vocational art and to educate the body and the mind.
3. School should be activity centered and teaching should be in Mother tongue. The state should provide free education.
4. He gave to the world  a new scheme of education- Basic education called as Wardha Scheme of education and Nai Talim.
5. He desired to establish Sarvodaya Samaj. 
6. As per him, Teacher should possess all  the values desirable by the society. Instead of being a talker, he has to be a doer, a thinker and a planner. Teacher should be a person with sincerity, honesty with love and affection.
7. He believed that children must not be equipped with too much of textbooks.
8. He stressed upon Adult education as an important aspect of National Reconstruction.
9. He believed in the fact that aims of education should be to inculcate self-reliance in students.
10. Gandhiji rejected bookish knowledge. He believed in "Learning by doing" and "Learning by living".

Death:
On January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi fell to his assassin Nathuram Vinayak Godse's bullets during an evening prayer ceremony at Birla House in Delhi.