Aims of Education

Any educational endevour should be clear about what its aims are. Here we look at some of the aims of popular efforts in India – Siksha-Satra propounded by Rabindranath Tagore, Nai Talim of Mahatma Gandhi, The National Curriculum Framework of 2005 and finally a list provided and justified by yours truly. In the coming Asha bi-annual conference I am planning to propose these aims and see how Asha would go about developing a strategy and implementation for achieving these aims.

Siksha Satra

1. Education should provide an environment and opportunity for children to exercise their natural desire for self-expansion and growth.
2. Education should provide skills in art, science and business to assist in self-preservation of individuals
3. Education should prepare individuals to operate effectively in the field of human service and citizenship. It should inculcate in individuals the capacity to understand and sympathize with their neighbors and hence function as a decent member of the human society. Through education of children entire neighborhoods can be rejuvenated for active self-governance.
4. Education, through art, should assist the individual in self-expression and imagination. It should provide the ability to expand the horizon through this imagination for spiritual abstraction and human welfare.
5. Through the above education should provide the basis for a renaissance of the countryside in India.

Nai Talim

1. The core aim of Basic Education is to help students to develop self-sufficiency. This self-sufficiency is not limited to the narrow sense of preservation, i.e. dependence on others for daily bread but also develop the power of acquiring knowledge for oneself and ability of individuals to rule themselves to control their senses and thoughts.
2. Basic education laid a strong emphasis on manual work. The belief was if everyone in society does most of the manual work required to sustain themselves materially, it would make society more just. Material production also involved co-operative and co-ordinated activity and thus education would also promote these important values.
3. Basic Education did not look at art as a separate area but as an integrated component within the physical work. Whether creating a pot or building a hut, adequate energy was spent on the aesthetic aspects. Doing a job well done and moving beyond the mere function and giving importance to the form was emphasised.

National Curriculum Framework

1. Education should aim to build a commitment to democracy and values of equality, justice, freedom, concern for other’s well being, secularism, respect for human dignity and rights.
2. Education should aim to build independence of thought and action and value-based decision making independently and collectively. It should make individuals capable of constructing knowledge independently by learning to learn and unlearn.
3. Education should aim to develop a social temper. It should help develop capabilities that would enable individuals to participate in democratic processes and economic processes. It should enable individual to find work not only for self-sustenance but also to contribute meaningfully in the socio-economic processes of the nation.
4. Education should encourage creativity and aesthetic appreciation. It not only provides creative avenues for self-expression but also guards against exploitation of aesthetic gullibility by vested interests.

Aims of Education - Thus Spake Ram

The essential aim of education is to provide the ability to persons to achieve their various needs – individually and collectively. The needs can be broadly categorized as physical, psychological, social and self-actualization. Good education should aim to create a disposition amongst students that would make satisfaction of these needs possible. Education should strive to create:

1. An introspective and confident being – Knowing and understanding oneself is an essential quality that a person requires to live in a community. Education should provide the opportunity and space for individuals to introspect and understand what kind of person they are, what their likes and dislikes are and what their capabilities and limitations are. Understanding and accepting oneself helps in acquiring self-confidence and one of the primary aims of education should be to help individuals be confident about themselves. The ability to introspect and evaluate oneself for the consequences of their actions and inactions is essential for harmonious communal living.
2. A knowledgeable being – To know about things around them is a natural curiosity that human beings possess. This curiosity needs to be encouraged systematically through education. Knowing what, how and why about things and events should be a habituated desire and the ability to find the source of such knowledge and assimilate it is essential if a person needs to understand the world around them and act accordingly. Education should aim at helping this ability to construct knowledge.
3. A rational and thinking being – The ability to reason and find rationale is critical to operate in a complex environment, which is what human society is. In a democratic society, force of custom or word of higher authority cannot be sufficient justification for a person’s actions and its consequences. Justifications have to be made based on logical reasoning that is acceptable to all. Science has made enormous progress to increase our understanding of the world around us and it is also based on reason and critical thinking. To create a scientific temper is an important aim of education.
4. An adaptive being – Self-sustenance is very important for any individual. But school education rather than teaching ‘a specific skill’ to its students should create the ability and disposition to learn skills as necessitated by changes in the external environment. Since change is constant, only those who adapt quickly and correctly to these changes would end up successful. Education should also go beyond providing mere adaptability; it should also enable individuals to be agents of change themselves.
5. An ethical and moral being – When capability is not followed up with ethics and morality, society is riven with injustice, inequality and strife. School education should help students explore the ethical and moral dilemmas and develop a social temper. How important is individual liberty? What is the balance between individual liberty and communal responsibility? Education should assist in at least making students think about these issues and finding satisfactory answers for themselves.
6. An aesthetic being – Humans have always aspired to transcend beyond the mundane through artistic expression. Ability to appreciate and participate in good art brings out so much joy in us that it is imperative that education brings out and develops this aesthetic temper amongst us. High art and literature may also temper our desires and acts as a curative in our ethical pursuits.

A society that consists of confident, knowledgable, rational, adaptive, ethical and aesthetic individuals would definitely be a more just and equitable one.