Mahavira Jain Vidyalaya Rajat Jayanti Mahotsava

Author(s): Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya Mumbai
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 180

[M. J. V. SILVER JUBILEE |
THE WARDHA SCHEME
was to create men who would help the administration. The aim of education today is to develop the best which is in every man and woman, so as to give him or her the same opportunity in life as is open to anyone else. Education is a solvent of inequality and a leveller of classes ; but the education has to be suited to the needs of the people. The imposition of a system imported from rich countries of the West has failed. A new system has, therefore, to be evolved. In this new system, provision must be made for that, the lack of which was remarked by everybody during the last one hundred years. All critics of education in the past have referred to the absence of physical education, the absence of a training which will fit a person for a vocation, and generally the absence of that which would train up the mind, the eye, the sense of touch, the sense of measure, and the capacity to put in effort to secure a particular end without spoiling the material.-in one word, in short, what is known as "skill". The principle of the Wardha scheme enunciated by Mahatma Gandhi is not only an alternative to the existing system, but is the alternative, without which it would not be possible to bring about the same great result of instilling skill in millions of school-going children, who are at present deprived of what I consider it to be their right, viz. to be trained.
MENTAL LIMITATION OF Critics. I have carefully gone through the criticisms of the Wardha scheme, which have emanated in all corners of India. They are from middle class critics, who have been unable to forget their own school days, or to divest themselves of their own class prejudice. Their criticisms disclose their mental limitations. For the first time I have realised, on reading some of these criticisms, the inability and unwillingness of a large section of middle class people to appreciate the wants and difficulties of the masses. I do not wish to suggest that the criticisms have been dishonest. But, in some cases, I have been unable to avoid the feeling that the criticisms come from people who are not willing to acknowledge their limitations. Educationists and others, who would not undertake the task involved in the scheme, have called that scheme impossible and impracticable. Men in the teaching profession, or professional men generally, who are unfamiliar either with the question of fatigue in industrial work, or with the question of costs and values, have turned round and said that such a scheme can never succeed. If they had less of vanity and more of patriotism, they would have confined their criticism to that part of the scheme which is expected to give educational value, and would have withheld judgment regarding the creation of economic values. They would