Self-supporting Schools

IN the schools I advocate, boys have all that boys learn in High Schools less English but plus drill, music, drawing and, of course, a vocation.

To call these school factories, amounts to an obstinate refusal to appreciate a series of facts. It is very like a man refusing to read the description of a human being and calling him a monkey because he has seen no other animal but a monkey, and because the description in some particulars, but only in some, answers that of monkeys.

I admit that my proposal is novel. But novelty is no crime. I admit that it has not much experience behind it. But what experience my associates and I have encourages me to think that the plan, if worked faithfully, will succeed. The nation can lose nothing by trying the experiment, even if it fails. And the gain will be immense if the experiment succeeds even partially. In no other way can primary education be made free, compulsory and effective. The present primary education is admittedly a snare and a delusion. Seven years are not an integral part of my plan. It may be that more time will be required to reach the intellectual level aimed at by me. The nation won't lose anything whatsoever by a prolongation of the period of instruction. The integral parts of the scheme are :

(1) Taken as a whole, a vocation or vocations are the best medium for the all-round development of a boy or a girl, and, therefore, all syllabus should be woven round vocational training.

(2) Primary education thus conceived, as a whole, is bound to be self-supporting, even though for the first or even the second year's course it may not be wholly so. Primary education here means as described above.

— Harijan : Sept. 18, 1937