Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/925

 NATIONAL BDUOAZIION 836 him. His own civilization is presented to him as im- becile, barbarous, superstitious and useless for all practi- cal purposes. His education is calculated to wean him from his traditional culture. And if the mass of educated youths are not entirely denationalised, it is because the ancient culture is too deeply embedded in them to he altogether uprooted even by an education adverse to its growth. If I had my way, I would cer- tainly destroy the majority oi the present text·books and cause to be written text-books which have a bearing on and correspondence with the home life, so that a boy, as he learns, may react upon his immediate surroundings. Secondly, whatever may be true of other countries, in India at any rate, where more than eighty per cent. of the population is agricultural and another ten per cent. industrial, it is a crime to make education merely literary and to unfit boys and girls for manual work in after-life- Indeed I hold that as the larger part of our time is devoted to labour for earning our bread, our children must, from their infancy, be taught the dignity of such labour. Our children should not be so taught as to despise labour. There is no reason why a peasants son alter having gone to a school should be- come useless, as he does become, as an agricultural labourer. It is a sad thing that our schoolboys look upon manual labour with disiavour, if not contempt. Moreover, in India, il we expect, as we must, every boy and girl oi school·going age to attend public schools, we have not the means to finance education in accordance with the existing style, nor are millions of parents able to pay the fees that are at present imposed. Elucation to be universal must therefore be (ree. I fancy that oven under an ideal system