In plain words
But though this holy learning spreads like a light through the whole house and shines, the people of Bhārata sit right under the lamp. The shadow beneath it has been taking shape as their prārabdha. Our great-grandfathers, grandfathers and fathers read the holy Sanskrit texts of Bhārata, expounded them, remembered them and kept up their recitation, and so enjoyed Śānti in many ways. They read the Bhārata, the Bhāgavata, the Rāmāyaṇa, the Bhagavad Gītā and such texts, took their moral teaching into the heart, practised it in daily life, set the books on the altar and worshipped them with pure hearts.
They filled their hearts with moral feelings and, offering experience in the form of practice, went on doing service to society. By ill luck the modern age began; they surrendered merely to the new fashions, had no faith in these holy books, thought them signs of backwardness, and have been throwing those ‘dust-laden scraps of paper’ out of doors, the people of today. The holy books that the people of Bhārata threw away were taken up by the Westerners. Counting it a great fortune in their hearts, they carried them off, read them, searched out well the secrets inside them, and through them they now think of the people of Bhārata as standing on a high place.
The people of Germany, who took up the Atharva Veda, took from our texts the sciences of missiles and weapons and modern medicine, and have been handing them back to Bhārata itself in a strange form. As the saying has it, “Rather than the five delicacies and the sweet rice cooked in one's own house, ‘the sour greens next door are tasty’”: so the people of Bhārata, though they know every secret and have grasped every śāstra through and through, have been drawn by these unholy notions that the Westerners hand them.
The students of today grow only their cleverness, put good qualities out of mind, forget their own humanness, and have been keeping material life as their chief aim. Teachers must strive so that students develop good qualities. Good qualities are more important than cleverness. It is the lack of any moral, dharmic or spiritual worth in today's field of education that has become the root cause of students sinking down into degradation. They are in a state where they do not know what moral worth is. They do not understand that the welfare of society itself is the breath of their own life. However many skills one learns, without the spirit of helping others it breeds an unholy outlook. The spirit of helping others makes the light of humanness shine.
The students of today acquire these petty skills in plenty, and not only fail to widen their hearts but even strive to swell their Ahaṅkāra. Ahaṅkāra drives good qualities out of mind. Students cannot see either the welfare of the country or the greatness of society.