Short note on contribution to education by swami vivekananda
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On January 12, India celebrates National Youth Day and that is how India pays tribute to the great patriot prophet of India ‘Swami Vivekananda’ on his birth anniversary. He was born as Narendranath Datta on January 12, 1863 at Calcutta. And today is Swami Vivekananda’s 154th birth anniversary. He was not only a social reformer but also an educator. His contribution to educational thought is of supreme importance if education is observed as the most powerful instrument of social change.
According to Swami Vivekananda education should cover all aspects of life – material, physical, moral, intellectual, spiritual and emotional, as education is a constant process. For him, education defines as ‘the manifestation of perfection that is already in man.’
He suggested that education should aim at reforming the human mind; it should not be for filling some facts into the brain. Education should be the preparation of life. He once said that “Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making, assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library. If education were identical with information, the libraries would be the greatest sages in the world and encyclopedias the rishis.”
Vivekananda propagated that the essence of Hinduism was best expressed in Adi Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta philosophy. And thus, for modern education system Swami Vivekananda wanted to implement maximum emphasis on meditation and concentration in the teaching-learning process.
In the practice of general education, as it is in the practice of yoga, five fundamentals have necessarily involved- the aim, the method, the subject, the taught and the teacher. He convinced of the fact that by practicing meditation and concentration, all knowledge in the human mind can also be practised.
By giving re-orientation to education, politics, economics and sociology, Swami Vivekananda wanted to remove the evils of the society. For this change, he laid stress on education as a powerful weapon.