Education should inculcate in students love and compassion for humanity, the only qualities Adolf Hitler lacked, said Swami Suparnananda, the secretary of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Golpark.
The monk was addressing a conclave of school heads, organised by Ramakrishna Mission, Gurgaon, at the Golpark institute on Saturday.
If schools only focus on making students smart, ambitious, disciplined and intelligent but don’t impart lessons on love and compassion, they would send more Hitlers to society, Swami Suparnananda said.
“You are producing students who are intelligent, hardworking, disciplined, aggressive and hopefully leaders in their fields of endeavour. That’s all and nothing else. And kindly note that these are exactly the qualities which Adolf Hitler had.... So you are producing more efficient Hilters and letting them go to society. Then how can you think of a society that is non-violent, peaceful and harmonious? This is the crux of the problem,” the swami said in his introductory address at the programme titled “Foundation of Citizens”.
“Hitler had all the disturbing qualities in him minus love and compassion for humanity. These qualities (love and compassion) are missing either in the teaching community or the students. That is a fact.... It all depends on how you (teachers) nurture them (students)."
Several hundred school heads attended the programme.
Swami Shantatmananda, the secretary of Ramakrishna Mission, Gurgaon, said the education system in India was far removed from what Swami Vivekananda had wanted.
“Swami Vivekananda advocated education that would make a student ready to face the challenges of life. But our system thrives on learning by rote and can make students academically successful but does not prepare them to face the challenges of life,” said Swami Shantatmananda, who was the programme coordinator.
He later told Metro that students were committing suicide by dozens in IITs or in Kota while preparing for an IIT seat because real education, which grooms one to face the challenges of life, is eluding youngsters.
The swami said it was unfortunate that inequality was increasing sharply in India.
“In our county today, 5 per cent of the people control 95 per cent of the wealth. Just think what a horrendous situation is awaiting us. During Covid, the rich people became 10 times richer. At the same time, lots of people lost their livelihoods. The overall welfare of the nation is a concern for all of us.... We can do this by the transformation of minds. How do you achieve this transformation of the minds? Education,” he said in his
address.
“Education is the platform through which it can be done. When the children are young, if we can give them the right education, there is a possibility that they would become responsible and humane.”
He later told this newspaper: “At this juncture in our country, on the one hand, we see a lot of expansion but the poor are being further marginalised. You can have 50 billionaires and millions and millions of people living below the poverty line and yet have a good GDP.... That’s why someone said GDP is Grossly Deceptive Parameter.
“We have to grow in other indices: the happiness index and welfare index, for example. We have to be inclusive. The value education that we are imparting, in a nutshell, represents the values enshrined in our Constitution.”
Swami Suparnananda later told this newspaper: “Today we have world leaders who don’t believe in oneness. Which is why imparting spiritual education is so important.”
In his address, he said: “If you practise a little bit of religiousness, that is not enough.”
The programme’s objective is “value education” for teachers, said Swami Shantatmananda. They have been running the programme for over 12 years and have reached out to 6,500 schools.