Page 80 - Acharya Vinoba Bhave in 21st Century ISBN

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through occasional writings and speeches. In the process he commented on Gandhian thoughts on
education and its relevance for India then standing at the threshold of political, economic, social and

cultural transformation. Vinoba commented on Nai Talim comprehensively and a summary of it is
attempted in this paper. In first section evolution of Gandhiji’s ideas on education is presented in brief.

Vinoba’s contribution on Gandhi’s ideals on education is discussed in the following section.

I
Evolution of Gandhiji’s Thoughts on Education

Gandhiji’s tryst with education began in 1897 when he landed with his two sons and a nephew
in South Africa. He was not sure where to educate them. European schools would have admitted his

children under obligation and Mission schools would have taught in incorrect Tamil or Hindi. By then
Gandhiji had become firm that formal English education was not to be imparted to his children. The

prevalent education system was mostly literary and it was imparted in classrooms. His position was, “it
was far better to remain unlettered and break stones for the sake of liberty than to go for a literary
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education…” However, he conceded, “But as I fully appreciated the necessity of a literary education
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in addition, I started some classes with help of Mr. Kallenbach and Sjt. Pragji Desai”. In Phoenix
settlement some elders took up the task of teaching languages, geography, history and arithmetic.
Gandhi’s observation was that it was laborious for them to remember what they learnt from books, but

what I imparted to them by word of mouth they could repeat with greatest ease.
Primary aim of education for Gandhiji was character building. All through his involvement in

educating children in South Africa he had maintained that even if child did not gain anything else from
education, his or her character had to be impeccable. Later in 1909 when he wrote Hind Swaraj he

devoted a chapter on education and quoted Aldous Huxley on character building as central to education
of children. Gandhiji also wanted to educate children in some vocation. He said, “It was my intention to

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teach every one of the youngsters some useful manual vocation”. Gardening, scavenging, fruit tree
rearing, carpentry and leather footwear making were taught to the students in Phoenix. Students showed

great interest in doing things. Interestingly, this remained his insistence all through Gandhi’s life when it
came to teaching people. It needs to be noted that for Gandhiji training a child in some productive

vocation was not stand alone proposition, but in his understanding and view education was to be
imparted through vocations.

Gandhiji’s Efforts in Education in India and Birth of Nai Talim

In his speech on 20 October 1917 in Ahmedabad Second Gujarat Educational Conference he
said that the three R’s were his last priority and he wanted the schools to be self-supporting. It could be

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