It may sound like an audacious question.
Why learn mean what?
Since we have to live in this world, we need
to learn the means of living! It is so simple! The means of living can only come
after learning some skill that provides income, which helps to buy the
essentials to live and the extra can be used for the luxuries of life! The
skill may be any. It may be earned through rigorous studies, and the knowledge gained can be utilized as a valuable resource for society or for future generations, or by transforming something useless into a useful product and earning profits. This is
too simple and an accepted purpose of education by the present society. But
Jain philosophy has thought far beyond.
Presently, most of the students go
to school, study for the sole purpose of getting degrees that could help earn a livelihood in the future.
But is it so?
Is the purpose of education limited to this narrow purpose?
Can earning a livelihood be the sole
purpose of education?
Education is for shaping our minds
to make us responsible, knowledgeable, and gentle people to make a coherent,
harmonious, and progressive part of society.
There are a lot many things that are knowable in the world. Same time, we can find that there still remain
infinite things yet unknown. The quest of the human being is to know the unknown.
Explore the unexplored. That is a real urge that erupts in you, even if you are a
child. You have a lot many questions and an immense curiosity to know.
You keep on asking your parents,
teachers, and elders to seek answers. And when you grow up and find that the
unanswered questions are unanswered because the attempts of the past
generations have failed and you set yourself to find answers to them. You jump
in the untiring quest. You may find answers or not, but you enjoy the process.
Education exactly is like this.
Morals and ethics are the foundation
of Education.
Without them knowing knowledge and
efforts to know the unknown is not possible. Knowledge without morals and ethics
can prove dangerous to society.
Jain philosophers knew it well.
They knew learning is the most important part of life, but they also knew how things should be learned. Every subject matter that is being learned is
associated with inherent morals and ethics.
For example, when the student
learns atomic science, he should also learn the disastrous effects associated
with it. When a student learns languages, they should also learn the misuse of the
languages made by the supremacist people. Also, he should learn how bad it is to
misuse language to hurt or flatter someone. He also equally respects other
languages without keeping a grudge against any. If they don’t, this would
mean they have not understood the meaning of language. Learning any, even a mother tongue, will also become bad unless the meaning of the language is
understood. Language is a medium of expressing thought, feelings, and knowledge,
not hatred or enmity.
The knowledge is inert of any
vice or good quality. Knowledge becomes good or bad depending on the morals of
the user.
If the world is in chaos of the
constant struggle between good and bad is only because of the misuse of knowledge. Some use the knowledge for good, some use the same knowledge for bad.
This causes a clash between both. Hence, any knowledge can cause good or bad
effect. The correction is only possible with the morals that go with every
kind of knowledge. The teachers must keep in mind that while teaching any
subject, teach the morals associated with that subject. Only then does the
comprehending ability of the student go up so that not only does he become knowledgeable but also morally correct.
In Jain philosophy, the importance
of woes is most important. Satya, truth, is the supreme woe that helps everyone in
living a peaceful and harmonious life. In education, too, the approach towards
the subjects to be learned must be associated with truth. In fact, the quest for
knowledge is a quest for the truth. That’s indeed what everyone wants to
know. May it be useful for livelihood or enhancing one’s spirituality. And to
know the truth, students ultimately go to school. Truth has many facets. The great vow of satya applies
to "speech, mind, and deed", and it also means discouraging and
disapproving of others who perpetuate a falsehood.
If we see, the knowledge that is
taught in schools and colleges possibly could be misleading or a mixture of truth
and hypotheses. The students need to learn what is taught from the curriculum but
they should be taught to apply their analytical mind to reach the truth with
self-efforts. It is an essential part of morality that unless the truth of the subject
matter is reached, the education will remain incomplete, no matter whether the student
passes the examinations.
So, why learn?
One has to learn to know the
truths of the subject matters given in the syllabus that he is interested in or taught.
He has to know the truth “truthfully,” which makes him morally also correct, and
true knowledge of the subject matter is attained. This will bring the aims of education and the aims of life together without causing any conflict.
If students are taught with the
curriculum morals associated with them, the quality of education will be highly
enhanced. And truth is one moral besides others, which we will deal with in
forthcoming chapters.
Learning is not only about attaining material goals, but the goals of self-satisfaction and self-realization
together. And this can be only achieved if morals are associated with the teaching!
-Sanjay Sonawani
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