30/04/14

© Paul Kohl | An Indian Holiday - Wandering in Fertile Fields, 2013

"If you think of the two great leaders of thought during India’s independence movement, namely, Mahatma Gandhi, and Rabindranath Tagore, they differed completely on the issue of formal school education. Tagore was very keen on education: reading, writing, arithmetic and science, along with play. Gandhi, on the other hand, had a very different approach. He was very sceptical of formal education and thought that education should be acquired through work, in a practical way. But I think that is a way, really, of not educating people much. Tagore was very critical of that. When Gandhi had said that you can bring about great personal improvement by spinning a wheel, Tagore responded that spinning a wheel consists of endlessly turning the wheel of an antiquated machine with a minimum of imagination and a maximum of boredom." Amartya Sen, in "India must fulfil Tagore's vision, not Gandhi's" - JP O'Malley, The Spectator, 2013

© Paul Kohl 

Sem comentários:

Enviar um comentário