________________
5. Life is one Continuous Education Education should not be merely the imparting of knowledge. It should be so done, that the student imbibes the spirit of enquiry and discovery, so that whatever one does, one is slowly learning and life becomes one continuous education. The primary role of education is to prepare an individual to face the challenges of life. This principle is generally accepted but it is difficult to implement. Different teaching techniques will afford more or less opportunities in doing this. Even the printed matter can arouse the curiosity and encourage the reader to think, wonder and find out for himself. The printed matter can do this, most successfully only for people who have this quality. The book only focuses attention on a new area to investigate. The very young who are just introduced to reading have to struggle to get meaning out of the book and cannot pick up the subtle thoughts. Modern methods of teaching science include a demonstration or an experiment and then induce the student to arrive at the principle and then wonder why and how. These are a big improvement but have only limited success. The enterprising students read ahead of their class and somewhere the principle is already stated and so he does not "arrive" at it. It is like a brainteaser in a magazine. If you know the answers are given on Page 124, you have limited patience and if you cannot solve it, you are tempted to look up the answer. Also, the teacher knows the answer and his behaviour will be acting a part and never searching for an answer. In real life, the search goes on for months, years and may be for life. These experiments cannot teach the quality of persistence in the search. The subject matter of the experiment itself introduces some limitations. If the school experiment deals with the behaviour of gases or say the effects of a magnetic field, the students tend to Rural Development Through Education System 131
