The only and best course of action would have been and still is to have a uniform educational policy throughout the country to leave no chance for any one to make harmful experiments with it as is being done now.
Education sans dharma is reduced into mere worldly knowledge which cannot be a means of building a pupil’s moral character. As the Constitution has banned the teaching of dharma in educational institutions, wholly maintained by state funds, the children are being deprived of spiritual learning.
Lala Lajpat Rai, the immortal son of Mother India had said: “No scheme of national education in India could be complete without including the active teaching of patriotism and nationalism as a regular subject of study.” Referring to the French nation and French Government, he had further said that Gambetta placed national education even above compulsory military service and more rigorous application of the principle of national sovereignty. THOUGH while adopting a new policy on education in 1986 the Parliament named it as National Policy on Education (NPE), it did absolutely nothing to change the alien educational system imposed on our country by the British Government. It remained “national” only in name. Experiments after experiments were made after the transfer of power in 1947 but none among the political leaders and policy makers who came to power and had indepth knowledge of Hindu scriptures, the guts to throw out the rotten educational system introduced by arrogant and ignorant British stooge Macaulay who had the sole and sordid aim of facilitating and perpetuating British rule in our country.
When the Constitution was on the anvil, no one entrusted with the task of framing it, gave education any priority. It is evident from the fact that this extremely important subject did not find a place as a separate subject in any of the three Lists enumerated in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution.
The Government at the centre as well as the members of Parliament slept over this matter not for one or two days but for full twenty-seven years! It was in 1976 that the Constitution was amended to place education in the Concurrent List, but the remedy proved worse than the malady. By making education a subject for the Union as well as the State, a chaos was created in the sacred field of learning. The only and best course of action would have been and still is to have a uniform educational policy throughout the country to leave no chance for any one to make harmful experiments with it as is being done now.
After Independence, a number of commissions including the Secondary Education Commission (1952-53) and the Education Commission (1964-66) were constituted in the erroneous belief that anybody and everybody could give advice on what kind of education ought to be provided at schools and centres of higher learning. The recommendations made by these Commissions could not bring any drastic change in the alien educational system.
The NCERT came with a Curriculum Framework in 1975 which too ended in a fiasco. Subsequently in 1986, the alleged National Policy on Education envisaged the evolution of a common educational system in the country. This scheme also could not bring uniformity in the field of education because the states had already been empowered to legislate in this field.
As pointed out earlier, meaningless experiments in the field of education have not come to an end. When the Congress-led UPA came to power, it directed the NCERT to review the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) 2000 as it had resulted in an increase of curricular load on school-going children. The revised National Curriculum Framework 2005 drawn on the guidelines of the ruling Party has not shown any improvement. In fact, it has made the situation worse by adding more fuel to the devastating fire which has engulfed the entire academic world in India.
Instead of drawing inspiration form India’s own educational ideals which have been universally praised for their excellence, the NCERT sought guidance form a Constitution which is mainly based on foreign laws and from the writings of few writers and the writings of Rabindranath Tagore, which do not show any relevance for a ‘national’ education.
Any scheme of national education in India can succeed only when it’s based on Dharma as defined in the Holy Scriptures of Hinduism which is often unjustly linked with mazhab or faith which is primarily based on the views of a particular individual and unlike religion, is sectarian in nature.
Education sans Dharma is reduced into mere worldly knowledge which can not be a means of building a pupil’s moral character. As the Constitution has banned the teaching of Dharma in educational institutions, wholly maintained by state funds, the children are being deprived of spiritual learning.
Like the Constitution based on foreign laws, the perverted views of Rabindranath Tagore can not be made a ground for framing an anti-national educational system. Comparing patriotism with worthless glass and humanity with valuable diamonds, Tagore has said: “I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.”
(Political Theory for class XI at page 108)
Whatever may have been the intension of the Nobel Laureate Tagore, the NCERT is certainly guilty of drilling wrong ideas in the minds of growing children through such undesirable excerpts.
Lala Lajpat Rai, the immortal son of Mother India had said:
“No scheme of national education in India could be complete without including the active teaching of patriotism and nationalism as a regular subject of study.”
Referring to the French nation and French Government, he had further said that Gambetta placed national education even above compulsory military service and more rigorous application of the principle of national sovereignty.
Teaching morals and Brahmacharya have been the core components of education in our country since time immemorial, but the NCERT prefers to teach sexuality, singing and dancing to children of primary schools. See what the National Curriculum Framework 2005 requires the teachers to do;
“They must be able to win the trust of parents in matters like allowing children to use home language in school, or teaching about sexuality and reproduction or play-way methods in primary school or encouraging boys to sing and dance.”(At page 33)
The situation is alarming. Those who do not want their children to be spoilt by a perverted system of education in schools introduced by the UPA-led government at the centre, must do their best to get the so-called National Curriculum Framework 2005 scrapped at the earliest.
(The writer can be contacted at A-207, Kalyani apartments, Sector-06, Vasundhara, Ghaziabad (UP))
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