Today’s children are different. They are more intelligent and more perceiving. They have gathered to themselves many special traits to cope with the fast life in our present age. They know more and often perceive more than their own parents.

With the rapid growth and spread of modern science and technology, our children have to live in an environment that is totally different from that of their parents. They are getting moulded by the new atmosphere, and nature has faithfully enlarged their abilities to meet the kind of world that they have to live in. Thus, their emotional nature and their intellectual grasp is different; naturally, their physical behaviour also seems unique.

They are thrust into and therefore have learnt to live in an alien atmosphere of minimum love and concern even from their own parents. Everywhere around them, they see utter selfishness and free-for-all competitions – each for himself. The child never watches anyone living in the spirit of self-control or sacrifice. Nothing is sacred to the parents; all are madly running around, seeking paltry pleasures and pastimes in their escapism. Children have to cope with an unfortunate and confusing sense of insecurity within and a harsh world of neglect and lack of love without (outside).

No one can doubt the fact that our understanding of our children is almost zero. We have never tried, nor can we ever succeed, in seeing our world and our behaviour in it from a child’s standpoint. The educational system of the last century, thrust upon our children, is slowly crushing them into ugly twisted caricatures. The system is not geared to the needs and demands of the perverted world we have created for them to play, grow and live in.

They are now much more intelligent than the generation of children that came into this world some 40-45 years ago. There is no comparison between them. The present-day children are smarter, with a higher I.Q. and a greater power to know, analyse and judge things and beings around them. This is an extra gift of nature given to them for their survival in such a cruel world we have created for them without love or affection, respect or reverence.

The problem is mammoth and the task ahead appears to be very strenuous. It needs the immediate and urgent attention of all sane and intelligent people. We are definitely growing into a nation of heartless brutes, extremely uncultured and uncivilised. To curb the rot and put the nation back on the rail, we may have to be very brutal and unrelentingly severe for some time. If there is yet another decade of neglect, the tragedy will perhaps deepen and congeal into a problem without a solution.

No doubt, all over the world, we see a slow decay in living the enduring values of life. But everywhere, behind the confusions and sorrows, we perceive some redeeming features – love of the country, belief in a social or economic order, a feeling of revolt against the existing systems. But the rot in India has no such ideology as a saving feature; here we see that every vulgarity in politics and commerce, in religion and social system, in profession and industry, is based upon, and springs from, a callous, outrageous and barbarous selfishness.

We must at least save our children of today, who are to be the citizens of tomorrow. The path seems obscure to many. Opinions are so varied and so contradictory from place to place that some people feel the roaring onrush of a stupendous calamity for man and his hard-won culture and sensitivity. Yet we must strive to evolve a method to meet satisfactorily the urgent needs of the children at home and in the society around them.

All of us start our career at birth, arriving into a strange world with no evident knowledge of it. Thereafter start our subjective struggles to discover and experiment with our ability to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Then we learn to move, to coordinate and function with our main instruments of action – speech, hands, legs etc.

When the child has thus crawled out of its infancy and reached sufficient proficiency to move about, watch and observe, it is now fit for its self-education. The child’s endless wonderment at things, its steady sense of inquisitiveness, its silent but very thoughtful attention to everything said and done around it in its world, its experiments with love, affection, anger, jealousy, covetousness, instincts of acquisition, grabbing, fighting, kindness – the entire gamut of emotional life – is the next stage. During this time education starts and this highly impressive period is the most crucial time in building up the child’s entire future.

At this juncture, the child learns mainly from examples and imitates all the elders in

the little world around it – parents, maids, neighbours and their children, and visitors. From everyone the child picks up traits, habits, words, ideas, dress-sense, accent and inflections of speech. The child observes everything around it tirelessly and learns from every person and every situation.

The ideal thing will be to provide the children at the nursery level a happy and cheerful atmosphere with ideals of affection, tenderness, concern for other living beings, appreciation of the good and the noble, recognition of beauty in things and charm in people. Children are slow to grasp the subtle – therefore we have to exaggerate the noble virtues and be shamelessly demonstrative. Hug and reassure the children. Tell them that you love them, that they are beautiful, intelligent, good and noble. Repeat it again and again.

Demonstrate your readiness to sacrifice for others. Let children see that you are very anxious to be helpful to others. These can very quickly impress them and sink into their personality. Thus noble character is easily formed. Teaching children is a 24-hour, 365-days job. Children are very observant, especially of their teachers for whom they develop love and respect. No action of the teachers is insignificant to the children. They watch and watch, and learn to imitate and reflect upon their teacher’s actions and words.

When the child is five years old, its limbs are steady. Now the child is fit for regular schooling. Everywhere the entrance to the primary classes starts at five. A healthy child has enormous energy to burn up, so it needs frequent refreshments to replenish the energy drained away in playing and fighting, in running, singing, howling and screaming, and of course, in studies.

Now we must start taming the child’s behaviour to conform to a happy social life with others, while encouraging it to grow up in knowledge and abilities. Arts and craft classes provide the best atmosphere to polish their behaviour. The wild ones are to be specially treated with more love and kind persuasion. In extreme cases, punishment must be given in the presence of all other children as an example. Yet, never show any rancour, but continue to demonstrate your love for the child and express your endless concern for its safety and comfort.

Between five and ten years of age, the child stretches its emotional and intellectual abilities into ever widening fields, and this is the right time to implant the higher, nobler values of life. This is done best through stories. The child will pick up its own ideal to admire and revere. The Puranic stories, toned down to their level of understanding, stories of great saints and sages, mighty heroes of science and politics, social workers who had moulded the character of people, are all very easily absorbed by them. Stories of animals in the Panchatantra style hammer into the child concepts of the good and their distinctive features; they also show how the good alone wins in the end in any confrontation between the good and the evil. Recitations, mass chanting and group songs are very effective at this stage.

During the age of 10-14, they need a little more material to handle, as their minds have unfolded to an extent. They would feel more interested if there are ideas that they can wrestle with. They enjoy the flashes of wonder at understanding life and its ways. ‘Gita for Children’ and ‘I Love You’ are typical of the kind of enriching literature they will enjoy at this stage.

At the age of 15-18, we must help them to assimilate these values in their own minds. We must encourage them to express their ideas about what they have studied. Their shyness must be carefully drained away from them. We should encourage them with open compliments and presents for what they have tried to express – never at this stage should we criticise the mistakes they make. Leave them alone to grow up, do not hasten them…

By the age of 18-20, they reach a fuller growth in their mind and body. Now they need a deeper understanding and require some early steps in sadhana to discover that they can, with diligence and practice, control the mad onrush of their own wild and crazy mind. A little japa and daily sessions of a few moments of quietude will be very helpful to them. We can, in slow steps, lift them to a firm conviction of the need to control one’s own mind. Without such a tuned-in mind, excellence in their activities cannot be assured.

At the age of 20-25 we can readily initiate the youngsters into the highest. Without any hesitation, teach them the Upanishads (Ishavasya Upanishad, Kenopanishad and Kathopanishad) and the Gita (chapters 2, 3, 6, 9, 12 and 18). Let them study the rest by themselves. Leave them alone to grow up at their own pace.

This kind of a graded system, if followed faithfully, can effectively complete the education of our growing generation, by inculcating the inner values of life while studying the external objective sciences. Secular education will make them proficient to meet the challenges in their profession, while the values of life will mould them to be better persons in society.

Can we conceive and plan out in all details a system of education for our children based upon the above idea? This will be the job of our educationists. Will they take up this national challenge and face it wisely with determination and courage?