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and self-respect. I suspect that in many cases, the 'failure' in book learning is due to lack of concentration and interest, arising out of non-relevance to real life situation. If learning of a variety of skills is an integral part of education and is made the basis of learning, many who succeed in the former, that is physical and manipulative skills, will feel encouraged and emboldened to master the latter, the mental skills. 3. Education is the Condensed Experience of the Past Obviously we cannot absorb the total experience of all who have gone before us. To help absorb the maximum, the experience of many individuals is generalized into knowledge stated in the form of laws, theories and facts. Thus arise the disciplines of science, engineering, medicine, mathematics, geography, history and even grammar, language and literature. If we are going to condense all the knowledge harvested in the past and pass it on to the children as education, there are two ways in which this could be done. One approach is to list all the essential items to be conveyed and teach them through the books. The other approach is to list the key items and contrive a situation where the children or students rediscover or find out for themselves the main concepts intended to be conveyed. The first approach of giving this through books is what is currently practiced. This has led to unsatisfactory results and everyone agrees on the need to change the latter approach. It is not possible to learn all ideas from the past by "rediscovering them under controlled conditions. Only a finite number of laboratory or field experiments / demonstrations can be arranged as part of education because of limited resources and time. While simple experiments can illustrate or demonstrate ideas, they do not Rural Development Through Education System 128
