SOC 215: Sociology of Education

Discuss M.K. Gandhi’s philosophy of education with respect to its social implications.

INTRODUCTION

The debate on the role and nature of education has arrested our imagination since the days of
Socrates. M.K. Gandhi’s philosophy of education is considered as one of the most
extraordinary contributions in the field of education. The main focus of this essay is to
concentrate upon Gandhi’s philosophy of education which has had an influential if not
dramatic effect on our society. My aim is to understand different interpretations of his
philosophy, assess its social implications, and evaluate its possible future contribution in the
development of our education system.

WHAT IS EDUCATION?

Education is considered as a strategic factor in sustaining and augmenting the process of

social, cultural, moral, economic, and intellectual development. It is striking how often the
masters of sociology of education repeated each other’s discoveries to ignite more light in the
discourse.

In practice, the pedagogies around the world were different in character but their motivation
was generally to maximise the human progress. In last one hundred years particularly we have
made astonishing scientific discoveries and great achievements in technological advancement,
which have created unimaginable wealth. However we are appallingly poor in cultural and
moral standards because more people than ever are captured by economic inequality, social
injustice, and illiteracy. The unparalleled greed and competition damaged environment and
world’s natural resources beyond repair. Wealthy nations have used weapon of “education” to
rob the poorer nations for their own personal gain. The success of such “self-interest” and
“individualism” which has produced glaring inequality was critiqued by Gandhi in his
philosophy of Hind Swaraj (Kumar, 2011).

HIND SWARAJ

Between 13 and 22 November 1909, Gandhi took a heroic and ambitious mission to write his
seminal work Hind Swaraj on the ship sailing from England to South Africa. If Lenin drew
relation between colonialism to capitalism, Gandhi went one step further and connected
colonialism to modernity itself (ibid). He felt the technology can make a positive contribution
but only if it is informed by a moral vision of humanity. For this the vision, he advocated
dharma (duty) and satya (truth).

GANDHIAN PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

Education, to Gandhi, was something more than literacy. His motivation is to develop both the
moral sensibilities among children as well as their commitment to social change. His
philosophy of what he called “Basic Education” can be divided in six main features-
elementary education in regional languages, promotion of handicraft skills, inclusion of
oppressed and traditionally excluded groups, making education self-supporting, focus on
experiential learning, and moral and civic learning.

Gandhi’s critique of English language was part of his critique of Western civilization as a
whole. He became so opposed to English education that he could write about “the rottenness
of this education and that to give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them… By
receiving English education, we have enslaved the nation” (Gandhi, 1997, p.103). He
rhetorically asked if the need to require translation of his own mother tongue was itself a sign
of slavery (ibid). He advocated elementary education in regional languages, so children can
relate with subject matter without a feeling of alienation and much difficulty.

Within this context of his opposition to capitalism and modern machinery, he attached much
importance to introduction of handicrafts in the school curriculum (Kumar, 1991). Handicrafts
learning aimed to promote spinning, weaving, leather-work, pottery, wooden work and so on.
It was a radical suggestion to break upper class and upper caste monopoly on education
system because handicrafts were associated with oppressed and marginalised groups.

The secondary motivation of Gandhi’s emphasis on vocational aspect in school system is to

make education self-supporting. According to him, small and decentralized communities or
villages should establish their own local social system. To accommodate this view in
education, he advocated that children should use their vocational skills to generate revenue for
running the schools; hence liberating education from political and state interventions.

Craft-centre teaching, according to Gandhi, would help children relating the knowledge of
each subject to their own day to day experience. He was against the idea teaching only
“knowledge of letters”- reading, writing and arithmetic (Gandhi, 1997, p.101). He suggested
experiential learning as best way of education, done through arts and crafts, work and play,
and voluntary activity and self-chosen activity.
Gandhi intensively focused on introducing moral and social education in school curriculum;
he believed that achieving moral refinement can be done by the study of the Geeta and the
sacred books of all other religions (ibid). He felt that it will help in character and moral
development of the child through learning teachings of self-restraint, service of humanity, and
commitment to truth (Kumar, 1991). Gandhi also focused on importance of liberal values,
physical development and ecological consciousness in school system to promote peace,
tolerance and harmony for maximising overall human happiness.

To evaluate Gandhi’s view on education and its social implication further, first we must look
at historical evolution of sociology of education, contemporary education practices, and how
pedagogic encounters take place in everyday life in school.

SINCE INDEPENDENCE

After independence, Indian state focused more on technical and higher education. The setting
up of National Planning Committee (NCP) was aimed to provide a plan for India’s
industrialisation and economic advancement. National council of Research and Training
(NCERT) was set up for research, training, and formulate school curriculum. However there
was a significant neglect for elementary education and expansion of technical education was
the main thrust of NCP. They considered Gandhi’s idea of education as “obsolete and
conservative” (Kumar, 1991, p. 188). Therefore the state apparatus failed to allocate sufficient
resources to provide every Indian child an opportunity of primary education.

Under the hegemony of this kind, education became more accessible to wealthy Indians.
Private corporations has now begun investing in education which has further increased the
inequality of educational opportunities between the haves and the have nots. A charming
Aristotelian idea of “merit” is now repeatedly invoked to justify the structural shutdown in
education system for poor people. In other words, schooling system through hierarchical
stratification became a part of, what Bourdieu called, “cultural capital”.

SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF GANDHIAN PHILOSOPHY // OPTION TO READ

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Gandhi’s importance on the role and nature of education is quite extraordinary but the then
colonised Indian society at his time was quite different from present society. So we have go
into deep whether his views and works are relevant or not to the present education system.

Basic Education was not adopted by Indian state after independence. Today's education
system is alienating people from their own villages, ancestral occupations and cultures,
preparing students mostly for examinations and urban-based white-collar and blue-collar jobs
without teaching social and ethical values in national interest. There are no easy solutions to
such complicated social realities but Gandhi does provide a reasonable and considerable
alternative philosophy of education. He opined that a school has to create cooperative
environment instead of being engaged in competitiveness to counter the manifestation of
capitalistic logic of greed and self-centric individualism. Gandhi wanted to promote a culture
of peace, tolerance and harmony; he championed the cause of women education by opposing
purdah system and child-marriage. Women education is a serious need of the hour.

Gandhi’s view of imparting primary education in mother tongue has a sustained logic because
in mother tongue a child can learn new knowledge without any difficulty and it is most suited
for natural expression. The current English based education system denies the ability of self-
expression to subaltern groups. It is time to move past the misconception that knowing
English makes someone more intelligent or superior. Instruction in regional languages should
be encouraged not just in letter but also in spirit through social, structural and institutional
mechanisms.

In Basic Education, he opined that children should work to generate revenue as a way of self-
reliance to give more autonomy to schools from corporate powers and political influence. He
was not in favour of state interventions in education sector. It can still be debateable whether
or not making school children work for economic motivation is a way of emancipating
education system from clutches of political interventions. I think state initiative for providing
better quality of education is an important factor, and education at all levels should be a
concern of state and public policy. It is the duty of the state to provide free and compulsory
education to all its children, and we, as citizens, should ensure that we put sufficient
democratic pressure on policy makers to make the education system more egalitarian and just.
Gandhi suggested self-funding in a different time when Indian state did not have enough
economic resources. His view may have been of some use then but now, as Amartya Sen has
explored, inequality in India is not produced due to lack of resources but unequal resource
distribution.

For Gandhi, handicraft is also a way of learning by doing. It is a thoughtful suggestion to

move away from school learning staged on mechanical repetitions, memorisation, and sheer
boredom. Experiential learning provides children the ability of self-expression. Gandhi also
considered handicrafts as a symbol of equality for subaltern and traditionally oppressed
groups. He wanted manual work should not be seen as something inferior to mental work. I
think Gandhian philosophy of learning handicraft skills is a valuable contribution to revive the
indigenous mode of production and embrace cultures of all groups and communities.
Ajay Kumar’s paper Quality of Public (Civic) Life, Democracy and Value Education in
Globalising India explored how Gandhian model can be an solution to address inequality
created in education system by globalisation and capitalism. He argued that capitalism,
modernity and globalisation have created a culture of consumerism, commodity fetishism and
alienation of social relations which funded the further development of social inequality in
resource distribution (Kumar, 2011). Therefore it would be safe to say that contemporary
education system has failed to develop a social spirit among students. Gandhian model of
character building through moral and civic education can be a good starting point to move
people away from uncritical obedience to consumerism and commodity fetishism. Students
should be taught to respect women, elders, the community members, and humanity as a
whole.

CONCLUSION: A CRITICAL VIEW

Value education (Kumar, 2011) has at least four main criteria: (a) individualisation of
children’s interests for the evolution of autonomy; (b) participation in natural scheme of
things such as enjoyment, art, society, culture and physical environment; (c) inclusion of
multi-cultural values to embrace the “difference”; (d) activity-centric socialisation for moral
and intellectual well-being. The value education is central to foster emotional maturity and
social balance, and a natural cultural vision with multiple plural identities of a nation state.

We also need our education system to accommodate our future concerns and aspirations, as
well as vision of founding fathers to make us responsible citizens. We need to emancipate
education system from the elites and corporate domination. But at the same time, we must
also guard it from retrograde, sectarian, fanatical, patriarchal and uncritical tradition of
Brahminical values. It should be “salad-bowl” rather than “melting curry” (Kumar, 2011,
p.140).

Whether or not there are better alternatives (than Gandhian model) available to our
contemporary education system is not the object of this study, only a separate sociological
investigation can bring proper clarity on this question. However I must add Gandhi’s views on
experiential learning, character building, primary education in regional languages, and moral
and civic education are worth adopting and experimenting in our school system. But not
uncritically (ibid), first there is a need for further research on cross culture values,
socialisation process of students, and everyday life in school for gaining a more
comprehensive understanding of problems present in contemporary school education. A
cosmopolitan, progressive, multi-layered education system which has Gandhian essence,
inclusive of all groups and communities can be a good solution to some of the problems being
faced by our contemporary school system.

In Emile Durkheim’s view, educational systems reflect “underlying changes in society

because the systems are a construct built by society, which naturally seeks to reproduce its
collectively held values, beliefs, norms, and conditions through its institutions” (Lukes, 1972,
p. 12).

Gandhi’s philosophy compliments Durkheimian functional view of education as it stresses on

national spirit, moral and ethical conduct, and community feeling. His vision of education is
to create a utopian society- small, self-reliant communities with its citizens being self-
respecting ecological conscious people who believe in cooperation rather than competition.

REFERENCES

Durkheim E. (1956), Education and Sociology. Translated by Fox S. D. New York: The Free
Press
Gandhi, M. (1997). Hind Swaraj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kumar, A. (2011). “Quality of Public (Civic) Life, Democracy and Value Education in
Globalising India” Chapter in Schooling, Stratification and Inclusion (collected essays).
New Delhi: NCERT.

Kumar, K. (1991). “Meaning of Progress” Chapter in Political Agenda of Education. New

Delhi: Sage Publication.

Parel, A. (1997). “Introduction” in Hind Swaraj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Singh, Y. (2011). “Introduction” in in Schooling, Stratification and Inclusion (collected

essays). New Delhi: NCERT

Steve, L. (1972). Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work. New York: Harper & Row.
Thapan, M. (2011). “Schooling, Identity and Citizenship” Chapter in Schooling, Stratification
and Inclusion (collected essays). New Delhi: NCERT