Dear parents and teachers and my dear friends,
Now i am saying about the ‘As Schoolmaster’ is an extract from Gandhi’s autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth. This chapter gives us Gandhi’s views on education. Gandhi, while he was in South Africa, had established a settlement in Johannes berg called ‘Tolstoy Farm’. It was a cooperative colony and was inspired by the Tolstoyean ideas. The present chapter is about Gandhi’s attempts to provide a better education to the inmates of the farm, which becomes an enunciation of Gandhi’ seducational philosophy.People belonging to different religions lived in the Tolstoy Farm. They lived together like one family and Gandhi occupied the place of the father in the family. So he found it his responsibility to give education to the children of the farm. Gandhi was not satisfied with the current system of education there as that was giving children only three ‘R’s which included reading, ‘riting’ and ‘rithmatic’. So he decided to find out a comprehensive system of education that would provide the children an all round development. Gandhi found this a difficult task as the children were brought up in different conditions and environments and they belonged to different religions.
Gandhi strongly believed that moral training should be given to all children alike. He
regarded character building as the proper foundation of their education and once this foundationwas laid, they could learn all the other things themselves or with the assistance of friends. For giving the literary training, Gandhi got the help of Mr. Kallenbach and Sjt. Pragji Desai, the close associates of Gandhi in South Africa. Gandhi gave importance to thebuilding of the body also. All the works in the farm, from cooking down to scavenging, were done by the inmates. Some engaged in gardening also. All these works gave the students much delight and ample exercise. Thus the children were able to build up a fine physique and therefore the instances of illness were very rare in the Farm. Gandhi always ensured good air, water and regular hours of food for the inmates of the Farm.
Gandhi gave importance to the vocational training also. They made children trained in shoe making, carpentry, cooking and the like. It was a system in Tolstoy Farm that youngsters were not asked to do anything which was not done by the teachers. Teachers were working with the students and they became role models for them and thus students learned cheerfully.
thanks for listening my simple speech. thank you very much.
