durjanaùparihartavyovidyayälaìkåto ‘pi san
maëinäbhüñitaùsarpaùkimasaunabhayaìkaraù
An evil man should be avoided, even though he may be decorated with great knowledge. He is just like a venomous serpent adorned with a jewel on his hood. Is not such a snake fearful?
During the Vedic times the expertise in different fields of human activities was expected to be accompanied by impeccable character. This was not simply a coincidence; rather it was the core concept of the Vedic educational system. In the traditional schools of ancient India the students were taught not only the skills they will need later to earn their livelihood; above that they were educated in the eternal transcendental knowledge revealed in the Vedas regarding the relationship between man, the Universe and God, the ultimate goal of human existence and the means for achieving it. When applied in practice this type of knowledge culminates in excellent character. Virtues like humility, nonviolence, tolerance, simplicity, cleanliness, steadiness, self-control, detachment, even-mindedness amid pleasant and unpleasant events, and devotion to God were imparted by qualified teachers not only in theory but by personal example.
This is how real education works. Our schools and colleges are supposed to train students as wholesome personalities who are very qualified in their respective field and at the same time have a good character. This will ensure that they will use their knowledge and skills in service of humanity instead of pursuing selfish goals at the expense of others. Otherwise, when amazing skills and huge amount of knowledge are accompanied by moral deprivation the result is compared to a poisonous snake adorned with a jewel on her hood. The snake is attractive to the innocent public but the beauty of its jewel does not diminish its poison, in fact it makes it even more dangerous.
Our modern civilization is very advanced in technology and there is no scarcity of intelligent people in the human society. The problem is that many of these people lack good character, at least according to the high Vedic standards. This is a logical consequence of our western educational paradigm where developing skills and acquiring knowledge are radically divorced from training in decency. As a result, the most ingenious inventions in human history were and are used in by the military for producing weapons of mass destruction and control, or by the corporations for amassing enormous wealth on the cost of the common men.
In his book “The end of Education” Neil Postman defines the problem with contemporary schooling in a similar way:
At its best schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living. Such an enterprise is not easy to pursue, since our politicians rarely speak of it, our technology is indifferent to it, and our commerce despises it. Nonetheless, it is the weightiest and most important thing to write about.
Not everyone agrees, of course. In tracking what people have to say about schooling, I notice that most of the conversation is about means, rarely about ends. Should we privatize our schools? Should we have national standards of assessment? How should we use computers? What use can we make of television? How shall we teach reading? And so on. Some of these questions are interesting and some are not. But what they have in common is that they evade the issue of what schools are for. It is as if we are a nation of technicians, consumed by our expertise in how something should be done, afraid or incapable of thinking about why. I write this book in the hope of altering, a little bit, the definition of the “school problem”, from means to ends…I mean to suggest that without a transcendent and honorable purpose schooling must reach its finish, and the sooner we are done with it, the better…
In considering how to conduct the schooling of our young, adults have two problems to solve. One is the engineering problem; the other, a metaphysical one. The engineering problem, as all such problems are, is essentially technical. It is the problem of the means by which the young will be become learned. It addresses the issues of where and when things will be done, and, of course, how learning is supposed to occur. The problem is not a simple one and any self-respecting book on schooling must offer some solutions to it. But it is important to keep in mind that the engineering of learning is very often puffed up, assigned an importance it does not deserve…[T]o become a different person because of something you have learned– to appropriate an insight, a conception, a vision, so that your world is altered – that is a different matter. For that to happen, you need a reason. And this is the metaphysical problem I speak of.
Further in his book the author clarifies what he means by a “reason”:
This kind of reason is somewhat abstract, not always present in one’s consciousness, not at all easy to describe. And yet for all that, without it schooling does not work. For school to make sense, the young, their parents, and their teachers must have a god to serve…If they have none, school is pointless. Nietzsche’s famous aphorism is relevant here: “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” To put it simply, there is no surer way to bring an end of schooling than for it to have no end.
In other words education and schooling should have a higher purpose than an annual supply of qualified workers on the job market for the benefit of the corporations; in its ultimate sense, real education means to learn about our relationship with God and the Universe, the ultimate goal of human life, and how to attain it. Education implies not only theoretical understanding on these matters but practical application as well.
