From Confucius to Freud

THINKERS ON EDUCATION (in four volumes): Zaghloul Morsy - Editor; UNESCO Publishing, Oxford & IBH Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., 66, Janpath, Second Floor, New Delhi-110001.

THE BOOK under review, in four volumes, on the thinkers on education has concerned itself with a galaxy of thinkers from various fields, countries and historical periods.

Far off, in terms of time the most ancient of the authors studied, Confucius, is presumed to have been born five and a half centuries before the Christian era (551 B.C.), some 80 years before the master thinker of western civilisation, Socrates (470 B.C.), himself indissolubly linked to Plato (420 B.C.) and profiled here as one caught up in the wake of his disciple. In our own day, figures which are still very much alive continue to animate, directly or indirectly, the universal debate on education (Freire, Husen, Illich, etc.). In the intervening period, as we progress through these pages, 25 centuries will elapse with barren stretches (everywhere there are ``dark centuries'') and periods of incandescent light.

As regards geographical space, topography may well have the edge over chronology. Through all the centuries touched upon, we shall have come to know China, Japan, India, the Near and Middle East (Iraq, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel), the Maghreb, Greece, the Balkan countries (Bulgaria, Croatia), Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, England - and later the United Kingdom - Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the former USSR. We shall have touched down in Africa and made stopovers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela before reaching the United States.

A mere mention of the illustrious thinkers will convince the reader about the wide-ranging nature of the publication. Their names are mentioned in the alphabetical order and included separately. The introduction called Paideia galaxy after the monumental work Paideia on ideal of Greek culture, is quiet meaningful and indicates the fact that the volumes have dealt with thinkers concerned with civilisation, culture, tradition and education cutting across national and discipline boundaries. From India, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and J. P. Naik are included. Revolutionaries like Paule Friere are also included. Rabindranath Tagore is universally known and recently the world had occasion to take note of an illustrious product of the institution set up by Tagore, Professor A. K. Sen, by giving him Nobel Prize and Bharath Ratna. It is indeed a remarkable testimonial to the soundness of the educational thinking of Rabindranath Tagore. In India while Gandhiji won the political freedom through non-violence and in the process of generating educational ideas like basic education, Paule Friere has nearly demolished formal education through his work called The school is dead.

This is the result of UNESCO - IBE Project. There is no need for apology for publishing this work which was originally in different languages and is now made available to the entire English speaking world. Researchers and educationists will find them very useful. At a time when slogans take the place of well- reasoned dogma it is essential to go back to fundamentals of philosophy. There are politicians, sociologists, novelists, historians from all over the world who have contributed to educational thinking. Lastly education has become globalised and will become more so in the coming years. One will notice a great deal of commonality indeed of thinking of many, though centuries have separated them.

We may look at the thinking of some of the educational thinkers. Aristotle's educational ideals and their greatness are reflected in the achievements of Alexander - his pupil. Only due to his influence, Alexander earned his place in the world history. To Aristotle the goal of education was identical with the goal of man and his life as in the case of Vedas of India and other educational thinkers. The human ideals occupied a supreme place in the educational thinkers. To Aristotle the education theory was quite practical; his theory should be mean, the possible and the proper. To Durkheim the thought of education has dealt with the plan to construct what he wished to be a genuine social science, which can be a framework for education.

Even in the year 2000 one cannot say that education has become a social science. It is still dominated by the thinking on teaching and learning and pedagogy and only psychology has come near education to a much greater extent than others. Other social sciences like economics or sociology have not yet addressed themselves fully to the problems of education in contrast with certain countries like Thailand which have made developmental education a separate field of study and research in universities, a lesson which India has yet to learn.

S. Freud (1856 - 1939) is noted for his discovery of psychoanalysis as both a therapeutic practice and a hypothetical model for understanding human behaviour with which education is closely concerned. His enthuses on childhood provided the basis for subsequent development of educational thinking by his daughter.

Mahatma Gandhi's ideal of education work is mainly for the purpose of making India politically and economically free. He had his own ideals of economic development based on self-sufficiency, non-violence and local freedom. Every educational thinker was very much influenced by the time at which he lived and the aspirations of the country of that time. Of course the ideals contain more than their relevance to their particular time.

This collection of monographs will be found highly useful by all persons interested in education, whether as students or planners or administrators, at any level of education. The contributors are from different countries and occupations. They are eminent educationists, professors, researchers, drawn from reputed research institutions and ex-vice-chancellors. One can safely commend this set of volumes to any one interested in education without fear of challenge. The UNESCO and the International Bureau of Education deserve to be congratulated.

C. B. PADMANABHAN

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