In plain words
The future safety of the individual and of the country rests on this foundation.
Children, in themselves, are good. For their taking to the wrong road, the teachers are not the only cause. ‘When these two, teachers and police, work properly, the foundation of society is secure,’ they said. Parents too must stand with them. With the teachers who train and the police who protect, the parents, the able ones, must shoulder the responsibility too. Ninety children in a hundred go astray precisely because of their parents. Giving them a love that has no understanding and a freedom beyond all bounds, they themselves lead their own children astray. You must tell the parents that character alone is the goal of education.
Discipline is essential even for little children. You must keep on teaching it. Many teachers and lovers of learning now argue, ‘We must follow the children's wishes; we must not stand in their way.’ This is a big mistake. You all know this. If you do not tie a small stone to the snake gourd while it is still a tiny fruit, it grows all crooked and bent. It does not grow straight. As it grows, you must make the stone bigger too, to suit its size. When children set out at nine o'clock to reach school, no one inquires whether they have left the school and are watching a cinema. Nor does anyone scold them when they do not come straight home after school is over. It is the children of officials and of the educated who most of all take to wrong paths. They alone have so much chance and encouragement to roam about freely; the parents, regarding these children as the sons of their own desire, and the teachers, regarding them as the sons of their Prema, must strive in a fitting way to turn them onto the right path.
Education without the spiritual is artificial education. Through this kind of rubbish learning the citta crumbles into ruin. You must show that the gaining of Viveka is what counts, not the gaining of money. All the educated today want no soil touching their hands, and no lost crease in their clothes. They hope to do their jobs in comfort, sitting on a sofa under a fan in an air-conditioned room. Unless you root out this attitude, the country will not rise. You must work hard, toiling in sweat. Each must stand on his own feet. He must become a man devoted to work and to sacrifice. Selfishness has grown, and man behaves as its puppet. Because of it, the demon called envy is dancing its wild dance. Envy is the throne of Ahaṅkāra; a poisonous worm has got into the flower of Prema. People who recognise their duty are nowhere to be seen. It is those who scramble after authority who are many. Duty itself is authority, and that alone is what you must follow. You must live it and rejoice in it.
People do not recognise what the supreme purpose of life is. In some ways man is lower than the beasts that live in the forest. They pass their time in constant satisfaction and contentment. They have no wicked desires, no evil ways, no evil thoughts. It gives joy just to watch them. The system of education must serve people well in bringing out the divinity within them and making it shine. One must foster the harmonious bond between man and man. Courses of study in the Bal Vikas way have begun, to sustain and develop equanimity, forbearance and the spirit of sacrifice. They have entrusted Me with the task of releasing three books that the Bal Vikas Samiti made to teach such good qualities. Those books have come out of heads; without putting them back into the head, without keeping them in the head alone, you teachers must strive to put into practice the counsel and the training each of them holds. Consciousness must take shape as skill. Buddhi must take shape as ability. The whole of today's education ends in the work of filling the head with what is in the books and pouring it out onto the answer paper at examination time. In the second week that student remembers nothing of it. It must not end up in the head. Education must be printed on the heart. If it is printed in the head, it is a Polaroid print. You cannot get another copy. But to make one, you need a special machine. If it is printed on the heart, it is a negative. You can take as many copies as you want, easily. You can teach any number of people in a way that plants it in the heart.
A child's heart is tender. There is no room in it for jealousy, envy or show. Look on them as your very own children and shape them. If you do so, God will bless your children and protect them. Prema alone is the chief principle of life. God is in everyone. ‘Bījaṃ māṃ sarvabhūtānāṃ,’ said Śrī Kṛṣṇa in the Gītā. If you plant one seed, it becomes a great tree and gives thousands of fruits. Yet the seeds that were planted go and settle in every one of those fruits. In the same way, God is in all beings. In the State of Karnataka, the Education Minister, Śrīmati Nagamma Keshavamurthy, stands pledged to reshape the course of primary education and to establish teachings that put moral, dhārmic and spiritual principles into practice: that is an auspicious sign. The education officials too have approved, and stand ready to nurture her holy intent. When you pour water from one vessel into another, the upper vessel must not move at all. The vessel below must also stay quite still. In the same way, however intense the Minister's zeal and dedication, that much dedication and zeal must show in the officials who carry out this scheme as well.