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education. This materialistic outlook is not producing good educated human beings but it is breeding the devil'in us.
Our education is turning out everything but a human being. But can the education, not breeding human values and not making man a man be called education? Today, education is related to bread and not to character. Today, the significance of education is not building a good character but producing a clever diplomat. The government is under this delusion. Some Indian rulers think that teaching of ethics is against the ideal of secularism, but does secularism imply immorality and unethical conduct? The teaching of ethics has been discarded in the name of secularism.
We may print the motto, sa vidya ya vimuktaye, i.e. Education is, that leads to liberation. But our present system of education is not concerned with it. Moral and spiritual values do not have any place in today's education although the commissions recently set up by the government have stressed the urgent need for the teaching of morals and ethics in their reports. Today's educators and students, both are slaves of money. On the one hand, the teacher teaches not because he is interested in developing the character of his students but because he gets his salary. On the other hand, the government, the parents and students do not consider him to be a Guru (master) but a servant. When Guru is reduced to the status of a servant, then the expectations of instilling culture values are in vain. These days the Guru-Shishya relationship is business like a bargain. In our ancient scriptures, education has been described as the nectar of life but today it has been reduced to the status of means of earning the livelihood. We have forgotten the basic goal of education. In the words of the famous Urdu poet Firaq:
Subhi kuch to ho raha hai is a tarukki ke jamane men
Magar kya gajab hai ki adami insan nahin hota
Jainism and its History 270
