I recently attended a 7 day workshop on Jeevan Vidya and in this article I'd like to share some ideas proposed. The Shivir (workshop) began by proposing the role of education.
Role of Education :
Role of Education is to facilitate the development of competence to live with definite human conduct.
Being a learning activist and associated with deschooling movement, at first this role of education came to me as a blunder ! I said to myself , "What ? Definite Human Conduct ?" . Is that not the factory schooling all about ? Shaping the human behavior to meet society and industry standards, to suppress rebels.
However, it took me sometime to keep aside my conditioning and really understand what the proposal was.
Overtime, I understood it differently and here is my understanding-
In nature everything has its definite conduct. For e.g. Stone, Metal, Elements (Jadavastha, Physical world) they have their fixed properties. How they will react, how will they behave is inbuilt in them, they follow rules of nature. Similarly a seed, plants, trees, animals (Jeevavastha, Living World) also have a definite conduct (and thus a specific role in ecosystem). For e.g. a Neem seed will grow to become a Neem tree, a tiger will grow and behave in the way tigers live. Usually both Physically world and Living World has a definite conduct and each entity has a specific, mutually enriching role in nature.
The same cannot be held true for Human being (Conscious or Human world) . A human being's living style, his behavior is not dependent on something totally innate ( a part of it is, DNA and our body for e.g. ). So how does a human being's conduct shape ? It shapes through education, culture, experiences and knowledge. In this light, role of education is to facilitate the development of definite conduct (thus have the defined role in ecosystem).
Then question comes, what definite conduct ? Here it touches the question of purpose of human life and basic desire of all human beings. This is explained in diagram below. Simply put, we all strive for Happiness which is living in harmony at three levels. (Individual, relationships and nature)
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="613" caption="Jeevan Vidya on Education"]
[/caption]Harmony and Happiness
Jeevan Vidya defines Happiness as the state of being in Harmony and thus unhappiness as the state of being at disharmony at any of the three levels.A human being who is in harmony within self, enjoys harmony in human-human relationships and ensures harmony with nature will be happy.
Our current state of world is different. We have conflicts and wars in human relationships, we have huge disharmony that we have induced in nature (climate change, exploitation of nature) and even personally we are unable to ensure joy, satisfaction and prosperity. Most of us feel rather empty inside inspite of having riches and facilities.
Jeevan Vidya proposes "Right understanding" along with Practice (living according to right understanding) as a solution or alternative. This forms the foundation of education as well.
My personal comments
I found the philosophy to be really very objective, scientific. It does not ask one to accept any belief system. It encourages one to use our own way of "Natural acceptance" and find out answers for ourselves. What it does offer is a framework, an outline for us to consider and follow. I think, overall it makes a strong and valid foundation for educational reforms as well. However as they say, devil is in details, we have to see how it moves forward without becoming a system or a sect. Nevertheless, it is a joy to come across a solution oriented philosophy that's both easy and effective to implement.
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