To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
Theodore Roosevelt
It is over eight months since our children attended regular schools. Yes, the better off are investing in tutoring apps and a semblance of education is taking place through online classes. All of us are trying to make the best of a bad situation and hoping that normalcy will return sooner than later. Yet, having young, impressionable minds confined to four walls, with access to suspect information could be the harbinger of a catastrophe. It should alert us to serious developmental issues which may not manifest immediately. Social skills are an obvious casualty.
A much greater concern should be about moral values and character building. In addition to the ills of social media, uncontrolled web content and the mind-numbing effect of online gaming, look at what our children watch on TV. Most entertainment programs are patently unsuited for young minds—but children can be told these are not reality. What is more worrisome is the news, which is the real world. What do our young see on the news, or more importantly on primetime “discussions”? Lies, unscientific claims, a baseless sense of superiority, bigotry, masochism, aggression, shouting over others, refusing to see the other’s point of view, a total lack of accommodation and now even foul and outright abusive language. Some of the participants are well recognised leading public figures and their behaviour jolts you like a bad dream. Add to this the daily dose of reported violence, apathy, criminalisation of public offices, subversion of institutions, sexual offences, divisiveness, etc., and we can sense that even grown up, educated people are getting desensitized to the deterioration of moral character. If this is normal behaviour, how are we going to tell our children to be different?
Inculcation of discipline, telling the truth, being sensitive to the feelings of classmates, respect for teachers, engaging in debates without grudging the contrary view, inculcating team spirit, graciously conceding defeat on the sports field, respecting the rules and code of conduct, cheering for the success of others have been an integral part of school life. These have an impact on students’ sense of what is right and wrong and what is desired and undesired behaviour. From keeping their classrooms clean, to devoting time at a blind school or hospital, students not just develop empathy; they also learn skills of problem solving, conflict resolution and innovation. I have seen teachers apologise to a child, saying, “I’m sorry”. For a child who has never seen this at home, the purifying experience of seeking forgiveness and recognizing that we all make mistakes soon becomes apparent. Our great narrative tales and epic stories convey vivid images of conduct that our culture admires and also how lives can be wasted and people can betray themselves and their communities. From where will our children learn all this? The corona crisis will pass, but hasn’t this pandemic exposed a weakness in our moral education system?
So who gets to decide what moral values should be taught in our schools and more importantly should we instil moral values at all, in a world that celebrates the opposite? In a multi-religious and multi-ethnic country like India, parents from different denominations are naturally concerned that moral values delinked from religion, might lead to their children being weaned away from their faith. Any attempt to enforce the majority population’s faith and beliefs would be resented by other sections and will deepen fissures, which can only weaken the social fabric and make us vulnerable to machinations of anti-national forces. We must also nurture civic values that are part of our constitutional tradition: we must acknowledge one another’s rights and debate our differences in a civil manner. Keeping the above in mind, can we agree on some qualities of the heart and mind we would want in our children so that they can grow into confident youngsters who can build the nation, indeed the world, into a better place? Can we try and find some common ground from the critical, even existential, problems facing India, and our nation as a part of the global community? Can we broadly agree that these problems are: growing crime; poor education, health and employment opportunities; mounting disparities in incomes; gender, ethnic, communal and religious chasms; corruption; and degradation of the environment? No one can object to inculcating values which will give our children the moral strength to fight these ills and create a more egalitarian society, in harmony with all other citizens, the global community and nature.
Now for the parents’ genuine concern that their children, reared on idealistic lines, will be misfits in the real world. Why shouldn’t all parents want their children to be successful? How long can we expect our young to ignore the audacious, “in your face”, amoral value system of the most prosperous people around us? Why should we give a value system to our children, which runs contrary to the prevailing “aspirational” moral framework of our most celebrated “achievers”? How can we ask them to ignore that people can get ahead of others by lying and cheating; by flagrantly subverting the system and destroying institutions; rise to the top by undermining competition, cornering resources and unashamedly corrupting everyone? What moral values can we teach if the definition of success itself has gone horribly wrong? To start with, defining success will have to be taken out of the hands of people who have taken control over education and information. This is where the sensibility of the educated middle class comes in. They will have to reassert their role as conscience keepers. The values drawn from thousands of years of human existence, as brought out in folklore and epics across the world cannot be wrong. It is the false value systems propagated over the last couple of hundred years, more so the last fifty years, which are wrong. Look around to see the poverty, deprivation, devastation of nature, war and strife and there should be no doubt that a false narrative of success is destroying humanity.
One way to challenge the false definition of success is to remember that howsoever powerful the rich and mighty be, ultimately nature determines the course of history. The human race can survive and prosper only as long as it works in sync with nature’s laws of harmony and equilibrium. The megalomania of a few powerful people may cause suffering and pain, but nature will reassert its huge power by causing corrective and constructive destruction. In our quest for more, as we disturb the ecological balance, we will be visited by floods, storms, climate change, famine, pestilence and pandemics. Gandhi said: “We must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” Today, the “few drops” do seem to look like a sluice valve turned full on, yet history is witness that the mightiest of kings eventually perish. The power of nature and the cycle of life and death are the only undeniable forces which sustain man. The ocean will destroy the dirt!
The second way is to inculcate a scientific temper in our young. This does not mean that all children have to be taught physics, chemistry or maths. Scientific temper would mean developing a systematic approach to looking at things, asking questions, understanding concepts of ecology, demanding evidence for fantastic claims, insisting on finding the cause and effect of phenomenon and having the strength and courage to take questions from others. Let there be no doubt, everyone has the capacity for understanding nature as a whole. Remember, some of the most famous scientists and innovators like Einstein, Galileo and Samuel Morse were also famous for their works of art and music; and that the music of Bach is described as “mathematical” due to its organised symmetry. Children should be taught that everything in nature connects to everything else.
The correct moral compass has to point in this direction. Let the educated men and women of fine arts, our doctors, scientists, engineers, industrial workers, agriculturists, teachers, academicians, and of course our young students assert their responsibility to take back control over our value systems. We must redefine success. Only those who are inquisitive, respect nature, seek truth and create harmony are successful in nurturing life. Call it a “new universal faith” if you like. Goodness and wholesomeness will surely radiate from such a faith. A morally strong population will be a stronger bulwark against Machiavellianism, authoritarianism and rapacious corporate plunder than any political or trade union movement. As scientific temper and moral values permeate our schooling, we can look forward to a new kind of human existence; a “civilisational” change, which the whole world will celebrate and rejoice in, perhaps even replicate—after all we are never shy of claiming that we were the “vishwa guru”.
Arvind Saxena is an Indian civil servant and a former Chairman of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). A 1978-batch officer, he served in the Indian Postal Service for 10 years, before joining the Research and Analysis Wing in 1988, and the UPSC in 2015.