The vision of India's new education system has accordingly been crafted to ensure that it touches the life of each and every citizen, consistent with their ability to contribute to many growing developmental imperatives of this country on the one hand, and towards creating a just and equitable society on the other. We have proposed the revision and revamping of all aspects of the education structure, its regulation and governance, to create a new system that is aligned with the aspirational goals of 21st century education, while remaining consistent with India's traditions and value systems. The historic Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted at the UN General Assembly in I948, declared that everyone has the right to education. Article 26 in the Declaration stated that education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages and elementary education shall be compulsory, and that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
The idea that education must result in the ‘full develo ment of the human personality’ continued to be reflected in influential reports such as that entitled ‘Learning: The Treasure Within’, which the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century chaired by Jacques Delors, submitted to UNESCO in I996.
The Report argued that education throughout life was based on four pillars:
i) Leaning to know - acquiring a body of knowledge and learning how to learn, so as to benefit from the opportunities education provides throughout life;
ii) Learning to do - acquiring not only an occupational skill but also the competence to deal with many situations and work in teams, and a package of skills that enables one to deal with the various challenges of working life;
iii) Learning to live together - developing an understanding of other people and an appreciation of interdependence in a spirit of respect for the values of pluralism, mutual understanding and peace; and
iv) Learning to be- developing one’s personality and being able to act with autonomy, judgement and personal responsibility, while ensuring that education does not disregard any aspect of the potential of a person: memory, reasoning, aesthetic sense, physical capacities and communication skills.
Such an articulation of a broad view of education encompassing the holistic development of students with special emphasis on the development of the creative potential of each individual, in all its richness and complexity, has grown increasingly popular in recent years, and many recent reports from UNESCO, the OECD, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and the Brookings Institution have highlighted the broad consensus that has developed. Students must develop not only cognitive skills - both foundational skills of literacy and numeracy and higher-order cognitive skills such as critical thinking and problem solving skills - but also social and emotional skills, also referred to as soft skills, including cultural awareness and empathy, perseverance and grit, teamwork and leadership, among others.
The process by which children and adults acquire these competencies is also referred to as Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). Based on the developments that have taken place in the world of cognitive science, there is now deep engagement with the idea that these social and emotional competencies must be acquired by all learners and that all learners should become more academically, socially and emotionally competent. The Policy recognises that it is important to conceive education in a more encompassing fashion, and this principle should inform and guide reforms in relation to the reorientation of the contents and processes of education.
Drawing from India's heritage:
India has had a long and illustrious history of holistic education. The aim of education in ancient India was not just the acquisition of knowledge, as preparation for life in this world or for life beyond schooling, but for complete realisation and liberation of the self. According to Swami Vivekananda, Education is not the amount of information that we put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life.
We must have life-building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library. If education is identical with information, the libraries are the greatest sages of the world and encyclopaedia are the greatest Rishis. The Indian education system produced scholars like Charaka and Susruta, Aryabhata, Bhaskaracharya, Chanakya, Patanjali and Panini, and numerous others.
They made seminal contributions to world knowledge in diverse fields such as mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy, medical science and surgery, civil engineering and architecture, shipbuilding and navigation, yoga, fine arts, chess, and more. Buddhism and its strong influence on the world, particularly in south-east Asia and especially so in China, prompted Hu Shih the former Ambassador of China to the United States of America to say “India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her borderâ€.
Education in India was only enriched through the mixing of cultures that arose from the very first invasions, till the arrival of the British. The country has absorbed many of these influences and blended them into a unique culture of its own.
Culturally, India has been, and continues to be, a cradle of great diversity in all walks of life, with its myriad languages and dialects, with as many as seven classical dance forms and two classical music forms, many well-developed traditions of folk arts and music, pottery, sculptures and bronzes, exquisite architecture, incredible cuisines, fabulous textiles of all kinds, and so much more.
These rich legacies to world heritage must not only be nurtured and preserved for posterity, but also enhanced and put to new uses through our education system. For instance, they can be integrated into a Liberal Arts education to help develop the creativity and originality of students, and to encourage them to innovate. As Einstein said to a group of children “Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools is the work of many generations. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things that we create in common.
