Primary Education

AFTER a great deal of reflection and experimentation, I have come to the conclusion that primary education should be given for at least a year without books, and, even after that, the use of books should be restricted to the minimum.

If books are introduced from the very start and the children made to master the alphabet, the development of their various abilities are arrested and their intelligence stunted, although this is the time when it should grow rapidly. A child begins to learn immediately after its birth, but mostly through the eyes and ears or through the senses. And, as soon as he has learnt to speak, i.e., to imitate the sound of words, he begins rapidly to acquire the use of language. Naturally, he picks up the same language as that of his parents. If the parents have taste and refinement, he also develops those qualities. He pronounces the words correctly and copies their good manners and conduct. This is his real education. And if our culture and traditions had not fallen apart, children would still be receiving the best kind of education in their homes.

But looking at the deplorable conditions in which we are living at present, this cannot be and there is no alternative save to send our boys to schools. But if the child has to go to a school, we must see that it looks like a home to him and the teachers like parents, and the education provided should be such as would be provided in a cultured home. This means that all preliminary teaching should be oral. A child educated in this way would learn in a year ten times more than the boy taught in the other way, i.e., through the alphabet.

Oral Teaching

Oral teaching would enable the children to know the usual rudiments of History and Geography much in the same way as they get to know stories, quite easily, in the very first year. They would commit to memory a fairly good number of poems ; and they would learn the counting of numbers almost automatically without any effort. And because they would not be subjected to burden of recognizing and learning the alphabet, the growth of their minds would not be stopped and their eyes would not be misused.

They would use their hands not in tracing different letters—a practice which spoils their handwriting for good—but in drawing the figure of Geometry and simple pictures. This would be good preliminary training for the hand, as it would develop both co-ordination and skill.

And if we want to provide education to the cores of children, this is the only way in which primary education should be imparted to them.

— Navajivan : May 13, 1928