KNOWLEDGE cannot be imparted only through books or text-books. Where a number of books are prescribed in the course of study, there happens some thing strange to the minds of the children. The books so possess their minds as to cripple their power to think. I have come to this conclusion from my own experience of innumerable children and from my discussions on this subject with many teachers. In my experiments in connection with the education of children in South Africa, I always kept eyes open and observed every thing most carefully. Even when I was in the thick of the battle, moving about like a man in the midst of a raging fire, I had the same experience. Compare two schools—one, in which the teachers use a lot of text-books and the other, in which the teachers do not use a single textbook, and we see, if the teachers in both the schools are equally competent, that the latter will eventually give more to the students than the former. I do not want to place books before children. The teachers may read them if they like. We may, therefore, write books for the teachers—as a guide to them—but if we write books for the children, the teachers will become machines. That will kill originality and initiative in the teachers.

— Navajivan : Aug. 3, 1924

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Undigested Imitations

There seems to me to be no doubt that in the public schools the books used, especially for children, are for the most part useless when they are not harmful. That many of them are cleverly written cannot be denied. They might even be the best for the people and the environment for which they are written. But they are not written for Indian boys and girls, nor for the Indian environment. When they are so written, they are generally undigested imitations hardly answering the wants of the scholars.

I have, therefore, come to the conclusion that books are required more for the teachers than for the taught. And every teacher, if he is to do full justice to his pupils, will have to prepare the daily lesson from the material available to him. This, too, he will have to suit to the special requirements of his class.

Real education has to draw out the best from the boys and girls to be educated. This can never be done by packing ill-assorted and unwanted information into the heads of the pupils. It becomes a dead weight crushing all originality in them and turning them into mere automata.

— Harijan : Dec. 1, 1933