“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.
Principal's Desk