July 17, 2003
(by Karmayogi)
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Social
evolution is the growth of social institutions.
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Family is the
foremost of them. Marriage makes family possible. Money and credit are age-old institutions.
Education is a significant one. Army, government, library and a host of other
institutions have made today's civilisation possible. Insurance is a
preeminent institution.
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What the collective cannot do to
the Individual, it accomplishes through these institutions.
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These institutions need physical
infrastructure as well as psychological infrastructure, viz. values.
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For the leader and the pioneer,
these institutions enable them to serve the society.
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For the less privileged and those who cannot progress on their own, these
institutions are a boon when they want to rise in the social scale.
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One cannot write a full list of
these institutions easily, as they are everywhere and in every shape.
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My purpose here is to indicate
1.
How even those
who find those institutions superfluous have a use for them, a higher use, and
2.
How man
ultimately outgrows these institutions.
3.
I would draw
upon that eternal resource of education in the context of teaching.
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To fully appreciate this
theme, one needs to fully appreciate the present service of these institutions.
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One who has earned a lot of
money has no use for credit. Looked at from his own point of view,
that is true. His excess funds can be of service to others so that they
may move up in society.
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When one is below the social
average, these institutions help him to rise. When he is above the average,
these institutions are the channels for him to serve his fellowman.
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Hire purchase
is a great system which enables the poor to buy with their future income.
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The affluent have no need for
the hire purchase system at all.
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Education is
the yoga of the society, but the genius has no use for schooling.
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Insurance is
a social miracle that brings all those below average to average. It is an instrument of
social progress where the society takes the full responsibility for the
misfortune of the Individual.
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Affluent persons
may not avail of the advantage of the society in life insurance. Even in fire
insurance, conscientious people may not feel comfortable to draw upon the
scheme.
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Internet almost
dispenses with the great use of the library.
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As the individual grows in his
external capacities, he generally outgrows the use of the physical social
infrastructure. Similarly, when he grows in inner capacities, he outlives
the need for the psychological infrastructure.
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The school is an intermediary
between the family and the society. It is in a position to help the child equip
himself with most of the outer and inner endowments.
Theoretically, a good product of a school of high educational standards can
outgrow all such uses of physical and psychological infrastructures.
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If the theory is valid, it
needs to be reduced to a teaching assignment – a syllabus.
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Supposing all such aids of teaching
are there, it will be a more formidable task to enlist teachers who can handle
such work.
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A naughty child under a
parent of dry emotions changes into a disciplined child under an understanding
teacher.
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This way the school is replacing
the family.
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It is inevitable in
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The scheme I moot is, not to
replace poor, dry, refractory homes, but for children whose lives are not
vitiated by such families.
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How to give the
child the various capacities so that he may not need the help of various social
institutions?
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Each child has two faculties,
one lying over the other, as memory and understanding. The latter includes the
former.
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The child becomes dependent on
memory when memory is fed. The child overcomes that dependence when the
understanding is addressed.
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Salaried employment needs skills to
work. Self-employment demands capacities to organise, produce, create. These capacities are inclusive of skills.
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It is easily seen that
opinions are part of attitudes and motives include both.
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He who readily
risks what he has in favour of what he seeks, will not meet any risk that needs
to be covered by insurance.
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Productive
skills at once raise the person above the future eventuality of poverty.
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We know the social phenomenon
of bribes and influence to secure a job. But in all these institutions we also
know the dearth of talented candidates. Talents come from training. No school
can train children in all talents or in many talents. But any talent is
created by one skill getting fortified by the entire capacity of the
Individual. To convert one skill into a talent by the general capacity, one
needs that ability.
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For example, a school teaches a
language until all students acquire a full capacity in it. Grammar,
composition, diction, original phrasing, oratory, repartee, ready wit, humour, vocabulary, pronunciation, etymology are the
various lines in which one can acquire talents. To train the student in one
line to acquire the ability to create talents is enough for him to acquire any
other talent in the field of language.
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Language
expands into LIFE. The school instead of
giving academic education, must endeavour to give
life education where the child will have acquired the ability to create any
talent life needs. It is not impossible to raise a child, or help a child raise
himself to a pinnacle of a talent for which he has a natural inclination before
he leaves school.
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This is to train one for life.
There is a higher opening for the teacher which need not be taken in the school
for the generality of children but can be pursued at home when there is a child
awaiting education. It is spiritual education. Mother calls for psychic
education.
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A child starts learning
addition. Later when the child learns multiplication, the need to add endlessly
is not there. Such gradations are there in all walks of learning. Initially one
learns facts. Finally, one learns laws that make facts incidental. With
advanced technology instruments – calculating machine, Internet –dispense with
the use of the primary faculties of the mind.
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We see a gradation in hearing,
listening, understanding, assimilating, deciding, determining and committing
oneself to what one listens to. Up to assimilation, it is the part of
knowledge; beyond it is the work of will. A student can outgrow simpler
strategies and end up in the final strategy of committing himself to the
instructions he listens to. A further step is consecration, which culminates
in surrender.
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The teacher exhorts the pupil
to be GOOD. The child can approach it
by any of the list above (hearing, listening, understanding, etc.). Each state
of receptivity has appropriate work to do and has commensurate results. Having
come to the stage of commitment, if the child moves to consecration, the
child becomes GOOD. As
assimilation is more powerful than understanding and the child can directly
assimilate what it hears, she can learn to consecrate also.
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In listening, the child tries
to understand. At each stage, the work of the child is the next stage. For
consecration, the child needs to suspend understanding or commitment i.e. the
child eliminates herself. It produces the result directly.
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An attitude of consecration or surrender, it can be seen, will directly
help one acquire what arises in one's mind or what is spoken to one. It is
an attitude of humility of the mind to the subject he is listening or the
person he is listening to. When we can listen to someone with such an
attitude of humility, what he speaks becomes TRUE inside us. In extreme cases, the theoretical
possibility is one can learn to be a genius listening to an idiot as the idiot
is the inverted genius. One's attitude of humility makes the idiot reverse his
mind to the other side of the genius which is withheld.
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