Intellectual restructuring of young Hindus : Creating the future

 
Educational systems in India have undergone fundamental changes during Islamic invasion and Christian colonialism. Traditional Indian Educational systems were originally designed to teach knowledge, wisdom, culture, spirituality and life skills based on Dharma. Islamic invaders have destroyed major educational institutions and learning centers in India. Under the Christian Colonialists, educational system adapted procedures for rote learning and service for the Colonial masters without any cognitive skills. Christian colonial education system is characterized by an unabashed questioning of all that we come to know as knowledge, wisdom and truth. The colonial masters indoctrinated Hindu students to ignore long established tradition, knowledge and spiritual values.

Since independence, the bogus secular Congress government continued the colonial educational system and made English as the medium of instruction. The phony secular Congress leaders and mindless Marxists colluded with the missionary gang and have introduced western approaches and applied models and methods of the natural science to study human affairs including knowledge building. They viewed the social world as conflictual and oppressive requiring change through economic, political and social crisis. This approach values knowledge for change’s sake. Muslims and Christians were given special educational privileges and allowed to establish parochial educational institutions to preach fundamentalist and dogmatic philosophies.

The bogus secular education in India emphasizes division among individual, groups and communities and depersonalized people that prevented them from their full potential. Such western oriented approaches completely ignored Indian culture, philosophy, and our traditional science and social understanding. Instead of eco-systemic theories, Indian educational system has introduced western concepts, theories assumptions, and language. Sanskrit and regional languages were ignored and outmoded concepts like modernism, post modernism, deconstruction theories, and Marxism were introduced as core subjects. These assumptions and conflicted theories will have profound impact on intellectual reconstruction of students.

THE NEED FOR EDUCATIONAL RESTRUCTURING

Educational experts, political leaders and Hindu organizations are demanding educational reforms. In this era of globalization, computer science, information management, the policies the Congress Party and the Marxist experts propose are fragmented and unclear in its purpose and direction. It is as if they recognize the need for a new game but still have not quite figured out who the players are, where the game should be played, or by what rules. Any educational restructuring must be grounded in a broad understanding of our culture, Hindu philosophy, science, and on the purpose and goals of education. Educational restructuring must address the needs of the individual, community and the nation.
 
CREATING THE FUTURE

How do we educate our children in spite of the cacophonous strains of post modernity and without resorting to modernist tendencies to silence our traditional wisdom and knowledge? The struggle to provide proper education and introduce effective learning is the central challenge of modern education. The basic function of schools and colleges in any society is to socialize and prepare children and youth with the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors that they will need to fulfill their individual and societal roles as adults. Indian schools and colleges must transmit and conserve the knowledge and wisdom developed in the past. In this sense, schools and colleges are conserving institutions. Educational institutions must also anticipate the future and the knowledge, skills and behaviors that youth will need when they assume adult roles and the traditional map in finding meaning and means to prepare them for a future society. The transmission of our past culture, wisdom and knowledge is very important to prepare our students to understand or deal with the needs of our future society.
In this context, teachers have a great task. This task begins with the teacher caring about young minds and teacher’s motivation to improve the actual and potential intellectual ability of students. Underlying teacher’s impetus to educate, shape, restructure and redirect students, are knowledge, facts, and concepts about art, science, philosophy, spirituality, literature, ethics and our society in which we live. We must first understand what is of value to students, society and the nation and the fundamental means of attaining individual and national goals.
 
There are competing concepts and theories constantly developing around the world. The sciences, the arts, and the humanities all attempt to explain and portray the mind, body, and the nature of human person. Each type of knowledge approaches this task differently. Modern sciences seek consistent, predictable and quantifiable levels that will explain human behavior.
By understanding that there are many sources of knowledge, and emergent vital new ideas competing with other ideas creating perennial controversies in the broad territory called “battle of the mind”, we can avoid one-dimensional views of behavior and human existence. Positivism, neo positivism, pessimism, Marxism, socialism, linguistic programming, critical thinking, functionalism, empiricism, rationalism and a host of conceptual models are competing one other for shaping our young mind.

Our education system is caught within the constraints of politics, pseudo secularism, and post modernism. The constraints revolve around a hollow secularism, phony intellectualism, and de-construction and information management. The result is disenchantment and alienation stemming in part from the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of power and position as opposed to the use of knowledge to reach individual and national goals including self-realization.
The development of students into caring, sensitive citizens with moral and civil conviction at the core of education requires a fundamental rethinking of what our schools and colleges most often do. A rethinking of higher education hinges on the question of who we are as a group of people engaged in academic work and nation building: “The answers to the basic human question, such as what we can know? Or how would we live? Or what is the ultimate purpose of education? Our sages say that “ways of knowing are not morally neutral but morally directive”. By morally directive refers to spiritual dimension of life which is a search for meaning and purpose.

Our youths can learn about data processing, information management, cloud computer and computer programming. But they need for an education to help build their sense of efficacy, to cultivate their aspirations, and to find meaning and direction in their pursuits.
 
INTELLECTUAL RECONSTRUCTION THROGH SPIRITUAL EDUCATION

What is needed now is not more sophisticated computers or cloud computing, but a revised educational philosophy. Few deny the importance of spiritual education in intellectual development. Unfortunately, spiritual questions often are absent from academic conversations. We need some common spiritual ground for intellectual restructuring.

The ontological, epistemological, and methodological frameworks on which to restructure intellectual development must seek to understanding of what we are and the situation or position we occupy. Our Rishis have insisted on the primacy of spiritual consciousness, as the source of all true knowledge. The goal is to realize our spiritual being, become the Supreme Being within us, the immediate knowledge of immanent God.

It is crucial to study spirituality for intellectual growth, to understand human behavior, common human needs, problem solving in all levels of social systems from the individual to the family to community and the nation. For individuals, groups and families, organizations and the nation, spirituality provides ways of coping with life challenges.  As an aspect of personhood, spirituality involves the quest for meaning, purpose, and morally fulfilling relations with the self, other people, and the encompassing universe, and ultimate reality, whatever a person understands that to be.

Therefore spirituality should be given significant attention in educational curriculum in India as a means for intellectual restructuring of young mind. To exclude spirituality from educational curriculum or to render them peripheral is simply absurd.

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