The sixties are more than
ever the age of further education -- we need to train youths for the
technological way of life and an .understanding of its impact on the
humanities. This type of education, apart from providing immense opportunities.
Also poses challenges for the future.
The object of education, in general, is to enable
individuals to be fuller and society to be richer. Education must be constantly
adaptable to new conditions, need and discoveries. It must provide for all.
While planning for higher education. We should if
four necessary sidestep the burden of custom, and free our outlook from the
shackles of traditionalism so as to would our universities to the needs of
today and tomorrow. This must be a continuous process from earliest childhood
to maturity.
In one respect this would break away from the
old-type departmental specialization which often ended with a student knowing a
great deal about his own subject but very little about anything related to it.
We cannot ignore the fact that specialization is necessary in a complex, modern
society, but synthesis -- the bringing together of subjects so that we can
perhaps find an underlying pattern in them -- is just as necessary. To achieve
this. It would be useful to follow an integrated course of study, giving time
for students to pursue their specialized subjects for half the period of any
course. And then allowing them to study with their fellow students in related
subjects for threats of the period. Such a course would make their specialized
learning meaningful. It might even turn experts into wise men.
Any system of learning which strives only to stuff individuals
with knowledge will fall short of the broad aims of education.
One of the cardinal aims of education should he
development of character and personality. For this students should be trained
to think and judge independently, and to broaden their vision so as to
understand, appreciate and accommodate opposing views. Most important of all,
they should be trained to take a genuine interest in the life at surrounds them
and to show .i keen desire to contribute to its improvement. This spirit of
social obligation and readiness to sink personal and group activities m the
common good of a larger whole, should be developed in full :n the individuals.
Education, in short, should be designed to produce a people capable of
concessive action to identify’ their collective interests and to act in
furtherance of them.
A fitting epitome to the aims of higher education i
the remarks by Dr. Zakir Husain in a take on ‘The state and higher Education”
that you (the students) have to work on yourselves to build, on the foundations
of our peculiar endowment, a harmonious. Stable and sensitive character. This character
you will harness to some of the higher values of life, that is. More than the
merely personal. It ill transforms you into a moral personality. For individuality
though character to personality is the destiny of a worthwhile human life.”
This should be the goal of higher education.