Bharatiya
Philosophy
and Culture
in School
Life
C.V.Narasimhan
I.P.S (Retd)
An important point emphasised by all saints and philosophers in ancient
much
better attention in every educational institution. Some schools have a system of
dividing their children into different houses and evaluating the performance of
each house as a whole, giving credit to individual performance of students also
but crediting such individual performance to the account of the house as such
and not so much to the student himself. In
the field of games and sports primary place should be given to team events.
Individual events should be put in the second place. Even an event like 100
metres race can be viewed from a slightly different angle by setting up a
target, say 11 seconds, to complete the course of 100 metres and then testing
how many among the children are able to complete the run within that specified
time. In this process several students may get grouped and declared successful
in having achieved the target. Thereafter, the particular student among them who
completed it within the shortest time may be complimented specially. In this
arrangement the group performance gets prior recognition and individual
performance comes later. I am only mentioning this is an example. Several other
similar arrangements can be devised in all activities inside and outside
classrooms in schools.
Another important concept in our ancient philosophy is the law of karma.
This, in a lay man's language, means the inevitability of a person having to
experience the consequences of his action. Nowadays a general feeling is
creeping up in society, particularly among the younger generation, that
they can do just what they want and yet get away with it, without
suffering the consequences of their action. This is again and again seen in
different types of violent activities into which students are drawn. In most of
these cases, the law is not allowed to take its course on some ground or the
other. We have to strike at the root of this growing malady. The system of
rewards and punishments at the school stage must be so designed and practised to
make the student realise the inevitability of the consequences of his action. He
must have the assurance that his good conduct will be recognised and he must
also have the certainty that his bad conduct will also be followed by a
consequence which may not be to his liking. Any soft handling of issues which
has the effect of making a student feel that he need not bother about the
consequences of his action is always detrimental to the proper development of
his personality as a whole. A proper implementation of the reward-punishment
system at the school stage will definitely help the growing students understand
better the law of karma in their adult life.
Another aspect of our ancient philosophy is the importance given to the
mind of an individual as distinct from his physical being. Our ancient
scriptures emphasise that it is ultimately the state of the mind that matters,
and all that is perceived by the physical senses is unreal. The importance of
the mental situation as compared to the physical situation of a young student at
school has to be brought home to him by some method or the other. Several
situations in class room in which some students feel agitated on account of
their academic failure or other reasons should be carefully handled by the
teacher to reduce the situation of mental distress of the individual students
concerned. Every effort must be made to identify the plus points in every
experience of a student and he must be made to feel better by contemplating on
such plus points in preference to minus points. Plus points will mostly relate
to a mental experience while minus points may mostly be linked with physical
experiences. Careful handling of a student by the teacher in a variety of
situations which generate both plus and minus points would go a long way in
shaping the student's personality on healthy lines.