Man-making Education promotes a double efficiency

The only means to this achievement (not just democracy in form but democracy in content) is education, conceived, as I said earlier, as man-making education. And for the first time in our long history, we can not only hope for, but are also in a position to realize, this all round development of our people, thanks to modern world conditions and the efficient technology of the modern age. To realize this, what we need is to capture the intellectual and moral energy to take full advantage of these favourable conditions, and to effect a double efficiency in our people through our educational process, namely, thought and personality – efficiency, within, and work and productive-efficiency, without. This double efficiency is the essence of a man-making education. As Vivekananda pointed out, it is only when we have restored our sunken millions to human dignity and worth that we can claim to be men; till then we shall have to treat ourselves as candidates to that high estate; and Vivekananda conceived education, and also religion, as the training to equip us to claim and to realize that high estate. So he always placed stress on a man-making education and a man-making religion. Every claim needs to stand the test of life and experience. Our claim to be a mature civilized people has today to face the challenge of the widespread human backwardness of our society. Human intelligence develops the power to identify and solve human problems through the training of that intelligence in purposive thinking and social feeling and social action. The product of such training is personality-energy and character-efficiency. It is this energy that is capable of mobilizing all types of physical and social energy resources and investing them in the social field and to make society grow in health and vigour. This is the energy that we have to develop in our people today, so that we cease to be passive spectators of human suffering, so that we cease to throw our hands up in despair and resignation, but become not only adequate, but more than adequate, to our mounting problems, so that these problems yield to the sure touch of our trained mind and hand.

EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 15 – The Philosophy of Man-Making Education (Pg:230-231; ed. 1995)
This was the convocation address at the Kanpur University on December 13, 1970.

Character: The Fruit of a Socially Oriented Will

Today, we have in our youths the manifestation of high emotional energy. This is the essential raw material of all character. But it is only the raw material. It needs processing to produce character. This rich emotional energy, disciplined and controlled by a socially oriented moral will, and directed to socially useful channels of action, is character-efficiency, according to Vivekananda. Where that emotional energy resource is less, the resulting character will be of a lower order. Where that energy is more, the resulting character will also be of a higher order. Herein lies the significance of education for human growth and fulfilment, individual and collective.

That high educational possibility is before us all today. Let our universities be the centres from which these energies will emerge and radiate throughout the nation. To play this vital role, they need to convert themselves into dynamic and dedicated centres of constructive and creative thinking. Let us, students and teachers and managements in our educational institutions, learn to sit and discuss across the table, calmly and purposefully, the problems that affect and afflict our nation as well as our education. We shall thus release a new energy into the bloodsteam and nervous system of our nation, and then witness joyfully its march, with steady steps, to all-round prosperity and progress.

EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 14 – Education and Human Development (Pg:200-201; ed. 1995)
This was the convocation address at the Gauhati University on March 28, 1972.

Education as ‘Learning to Do’ and ‘Learning to Be’

Learning to Be and Learning to Do have to become two inseparable aspects of any education designed to help the human child to achieve life fulfillment. Modern education all over the world has so far concentrated only on the Learning to Do aspect. The high efficiency achieved by modern Western man, and the Japanese, in this field is the product of the discipline of physical science and its technological fruits. Our own country, though backward in this field at the beginning of the modern period, is steadily catching up since our political independence. When all our children, from the primary to the school final levels, apart from the few that go up to the university levels, will receive the blessings of education in modern science, reinforced by a wide range of technical training courses, we can expect to see a high level of practical efficiency in our nation. That will mark a tremendous augmentation of the human energy resources in our country, unprecedented in our long history. We have to take all steps to orient our current educational processes in the direction of motivating and guiding our students to acquire the energy resources available from knowledge, organization, and self-discipline. ‘The nation must acquire scientific pluck and genius’, said Swami Vivekananda even at the close of the last century. Our philosophy assures us that vast energy resources are present in every child; education is the tapas, the discipline, that helps in making them manifest, like the striking that manifests the fire already present in a matchstick.

Widen scope of education from "doing" to "being"
But, learning to do, if carried too far without a corresponding stress on learning to be, will result in distortions in the human psyche and in the human social situation. These distortions, and the consequent human unfulfilments, constitute the dismal shadow on the otherwise bright human horizon of the modern scientific age. Practical efficiency, resulting from the training of the intellect and the will, in a context of physical health and vitality and yoked to an endless pursuit of organic satisfactions, may lead to the stifling of the imagination and of the spirit of creativity, and a general sagging of spirit. This is already afflicting modern civilization, including the stifling of the roots of pure science by the charms of the fruits of applied science. It reveals the age-old truth that the pursuit of profit, power, and pleasure can be only counter-productive, can only lead man to alienation, sorrow, and unfulfilment, if carried too far and without the guidance of a deeper philosophy of man. Training of the imagination is necessary to foster creativity; it is the energy behind pure science, art, ethics, and religion. Referring to the importance of this faculty, Lenin said (V. I. Lenin, Complete Works, Vol.45, 5th Edition):

‘This is an extremely precious faculty. To think that it is only indispensable to poets is a mistake and foolish prejudice, It is even needed in mathematics, for without imagination neither differential or integral calculus would have been invented.’
The scope of current higher education in India and the world outside is thus severely restricted, due to its undue stress on learning to do; it has to be widened to include also learning to be. This is the only way by which the current situation of ‘human skill as the means’ accompanied by ‘human folly as to ends’, as remarked by the late Bertrand Russell (Impact of Science on Society, p. 120-21), can be transformed into human wisdom as to ends; and ‘it follows that’, he concluded by warning, ‘unless men increase in wisdom as much as in knowledge, increase of knowledge will be increase of sorrow’.

EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 12 – Education, Science and Spirituality (Pg:144-145; ed. 1995)
This was the convocation address at the Burdwan University West Bengal on February 20, 1976.

Purpose in work brings enthusiasm and joy

Now, when we turn to our own country, one of the things that strikes us is a lack of this sense of purpose, this sense of direction, this sense of enthusiasm in the work that we do. Swami Vivekananda had told us that national work should be suffused with national vision and enthusiasm and a spirit of joy. Otherwise, all work, he said, would become static, stereotyped, and meaningless, and a source not of freedom but of bondage. Whether it is teaching or learning, whether it is the simple household duties or the larger duties of government and administration, what we need to capture in every sphere of life is this national purpose and enthusiasm. Our country has become free after centuries of political and social immobilization; it has now got the opportunity to build the structure of an enduring society on the basis of justice and equality, human dignity and unity, inspired by the vision of general human happiness and welfare. Swami Vivekananda exhorted the youth of the country to be up and doing to achieve this goal. It was not the time to sleep he said, nor to waste time in idle talk, but to work intelligently, moved by the spirit of love of man; for ‘on our work depends the India of the future’, said he.

I would request you to keep this idea constantly in your minds. Inspired by this vision and idea, whatever work you do, little or big, in any nook or corner of India, will have telling effect on the march of India to prosperity and progress. It is the cumulative result of such work by millions of dedicated men and women that creates a nation. Swamiji gave us this national vision – this vision which imparts a sense of urgency, a sense of sacredness, to a mission, a sense of faith to the work we do. Every citizen must be imbued with the sense of a mission, a sense of faith in his own work. The work that is done with faith, the work that is done with an awareness of the worth of one’s contribution to the making of the nation, that work becomes most effective. In our Chhandogya Upanisad, written nearly three or four thousand years ago, we find this definition of work efficiency (I.1.10). Yadeva vidyaya, vidyaya karoti, sraddhaya, upanisada, tadeva virayavattaram bhavati – ‘Whatever work is done with vidya, knowledge, through sraddha, faith, and backed by upanisad, meditation, that alone becomes most effective.’

Vidya, knowledge, is necessary, knowledge of the methods and techniques of work, of the theoretical and practical aspects of a subject. But this knowledge will remain static until it is energized by sraddha. And that energy needs to be disciplined and properly directed by upanisad, calm meditation. Any work which has these three sources of strength behind it will be most efficient. It alone will have world-moving power. Our country needs work of this type today in every department of national activity.

EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 3 – Education for Man-Making (Pg:50-51; ed. 1995)
This was an address to the trainees of the Senior Basic School of the Ramakrishna Mission Boys Home, Rahara, on January 9, 1962.

Assimilation of Knowledge is the aim of Education

Such is the Indian society that is waiting to receive each and every one of our youths who complete their university education today. It is a society of bubbling hopes and mounting problems, with an impressive past and a glorious future. Every youthful generation of modern India owes it to itself and to the nation at large to strive to become strong and dynamic. Such strength is the product of faith in oneself and in one’s country’s heritage, reinforced by the assimilation of all available knowledge, national and international. This is the aim of all true education. Vivekananda defined the scope of our national education as the assimilation of the spirit of Vedanta and modern science. The Chandogya Upanisad in a memorable passage (I.1.10) refers to the energy of character generated by education:Yadeva vidyaya karoti, sraddhaya, upanisada, tadeva viryavataram bhavati – ‘Whatever is done through mastery of the know-how, through faith (in oneself and one’s cause) and through inner meditation – that alone becomes charged with the highest energy’.

EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 1 – India's Educational Vision (Pg:16-17; ed. 1995)
This was the address delivered at the Calcutta University Convocation on February 15, 1966.