Jain Spirit 1999 10 No 02

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 37

YOUTH
THE PARROT'S TRAINING
Rabindranath Tagore
his classic satire on education by one of the greatest Indian poets
the of standard educational systems in acknowledging and dealing with the uniqueness of each soul. A must read for all those who have complete faith in the modern education system and those who have their doubts.
Once upon a time there was a bird. It was ignorant. It sang all right, but it never recited scriptures. It hopped, it flew, but it lacked manners. Said the Raja (King) to himself, "Ignorance is costly in the long run. For fools consume as much food as their betters, and yet give nothing in return." He called his nephews into his presence and told them that the bird must have a sound schooling.
The pundits (teachers) were summoned, and after deep deliberation went to the root of the matter. They decided that the ignorance of birds was due to their unsuitable habit of living in nests. Therefore, according to the pundits, the first thing necessary for the education of this bird was a proper cage.
The pundits had their rewards and went home happy. A golden cage was built with gorgeous decorations. Crowds came to see it from all parts of the world. "Culture, captured and caged!" exclaimed some, in a rapture of ecstasy, and burst into tears. Others remarked, "Even if culture be missed, the cage will remain, to the end, a substantial fact. How fortunate is this bird!"
The goldsmith filled his bag with money and lost no time in sailing homewards. Then a pundit sat down to educate the bird. With due deliberation he took a pinch of snuff, as he said, "Textbooks can never be too many for our purpose!"
The nephews brought together an enormous crowd of scribes. They copied from books, and copied from copies, till manuscripts were piled to an unreachable height. Men murmured in amazement, "Oh, the tower of learning, egregiously high! The end of it lost in the clouds!"
36 Jain Spirit • October December 1999 Jain Education International 2010_03
An outdoor class at Shanti Niketan, a unique learning centre by Tagore. It has produced great visionaries like Satyajit Ray and Nobel laureate in Economics Amartya Sen
Photo courtesy: Images of India by Sophie Baker
The scribes, with light hearts, hurried home, their pockets heavily laden. The nephews were furiously busy keeping the cage in proper trim. As their constant scrubbing and polishing went on, the people said with satisfaction, "This is real progress!"
Men were employed in large numbers, and supervisors were still more numerous. These, with all their cousins of differing degrees of distance, built a place for themselves and lived there happily ever after.
But whatever may be its other deficiencies, the world is never short of fault-finders. They went about saying that every creature remotely connected with the cage was flourishing beyond words, except one - the bird. When this remark reached the Raja's ears, he summoned his nephews and enquired, "My dear nephews, what is this that we hear?"