Principal's Desk

Dr. Fr. Benny K. John, CSC
Principal, Holy Cross College Agartala

“Educating Mind and Forming Heart”

“Where the Mind is without fear and the Head is held high”

The Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore was convinced that education is the sole remedy to eradicate poverty, ignorance and social evils. ‘If Knowledge were to be free’ he dreamt! Contrast to his vision, knowledge is commercialized and manipulated today by vested interests. So much so, some scholars lament, ‘Knowledge is unfortunately power’!

We are professionally in ‘education’ but religiously we call our profession a ‘ministry’ because it is not a job but a vocation. CSC way of education, we claim, is to ‘educate the mind and heart’ of pupil who come to us; molding in them a scientific bend of mind that is rationally critical and endowed with a heart compassionate and caring. We are, to a great extent, successful in our mission of forming intellectually competent and socially responsible human beings in our institutions.

Sociologist Randy David wrotewith insightful analysis of socio-economic and educational realities, applicable to all societies.

In our highly stratified society, education alone offers to the ordinary individual a path to social mobility. But access to this path is very much determined by a family’s level of income. The smallest differences in the economic capacity of students often spell the greatest differences in opportunity later in life. I believe it is one of the most vital functions of the state to neutralize the effects of such income differences on access to education. The earlier in life this is done for every member of society, the greater the chance that education may contribute to the reduction of social inequality. (...) When the poor’s access to good education is blocked by their lack of capacity to pay, education becomes yet another contributing factor in the reproduction of inequality. (...) Education has to be harnessed as a means to interrupt this intergenerational transfer of inequality.(R. David, PDI 2013)

The above quote is taken from my PhD dissertation, Chapter on Education, page 126, where I tried to analyze the impact of poverty and inequality on social mobility and education as the sole remedy to transform individual and societal life.