Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/504

 414 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES

appropriate results ; our lot is like that of the penny wise and pound foolish trader who does not employ enough capital in his business.

FAULTY SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.

But although much good and useful work can be done without a knowledge of reading and writing yet it is my firm belief that you cannot always do without a knowledge thereof. It develops and sharpens one's intellect and it stimulates our power of doing good. I have never placed an unnecessarily high value on the knowledge of reading and writing. I am only attempting to assign its proper place to it. I have pointed out frbm time to time that there is no justification for men to deprive women or to deny to them equal rights on the ground of their illiteracy : but education is essential for enabling women to uphold these natural rights, to improve them and to spread them ; again the true knowledge of self is unattainable by the millions who are without such education. Many a book is full of innocent pleasure and this will be denied to us without education. It is no exaggeration to say that a human being without education is not far removed from an animal. Education, therefore, is necessary for women as it is for men. Not that the methods of education should be identical in both cases. In the first place our state system of education is full of error and product- ive of harm in many respects. It should be esjhewed by men and women alike. Even if it were free from its present blemishes I would not regard it as proper for women from all points of view. Man and woman are of equal rank but they are not identical. They are a peerless pair being supplementary to one another ; each helps the other so what without the one the existence

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