Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c6.s3.41

c6.s3.41

For the present, in India, various schemes of reform of education are in the air, but it is to be remembered that no reform can take root or bear fruit unless it conforms to national ideals and traditions. The course of growth of social and national life is regulated by certain basic ideals and norms. These define the structure that society and the trends of social activity assume in the course of historical evolution. They may be called, in Kantian terminology, the "categories" of national life. Divorced from them, social thoughts, activities, and institutions, to use the Kantian notion again, follow a "blind" course. The discovery of these concepts is essential for the formulation of schemes for any phase of national activity. Our educational thought, like every other strand of social life, must orient itself to these regulative principles which have validated themselves pragmatically, by "working", through the ages, and through tensions and crises.