Education is Cultivation of the Mind

                                 Nidhu Bhusan Das

Every weekday morning I get puzzled when parents swarm at different points of Siliguri town to put their dear children into school buses. The puzzle leads to optimism when I think how our children are destined to be in the firmament brightened with the galaxy of resourceful educated people to lead the nation and thereby the globalized world. None will, perhaps, find it wrong to share the optimism of such ambitious parents. This optimism helps us remove our annoyance in the afternoon when the same school buses cause the embarrassing and disturbing traffic jam that terribly brings the town to a standstill here and there. Such is our aspiration for education.

But where is education and what is it? An illiterate peasant in the Indian countryside knows which soil is good for what crop, when to sow seed, how to take care of the seedling i.e., he knows cultivation. Now, what is cultivation? In agriculture cultivation means loosening and breaking up of the soil, increasing soil aeration and water infiltration. Cultivation also means socialization through training and education to develop one’s mind or manners.

 Is there any link between cultivation and education? Let us try to explore. The synonyms of the verb cultivate are acquire, develop, absorb, adopt, foster, nourish, gain, attain, nurture, etc.Now let us see what acquire, absorb, adopt, nourish, attain, nurture, etc. mean. Acquire means to learn or develop a skill, habit, or quality; absorb means to take in knowledge, attitudes, etc.; adopt means obtain; obtain means acquire. All these synonyms of the verb means acquire.

What is education then? By now we may have the idea that there is a co-relation between cultivation and education. Education is cultivation of hopeful environments and relationships for learning.It is cultivation of the mind.

What is the Mind? The mind is a set of cognitive faculties including consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, language and memory. It is usually defined as the faculty of an entity's thoughts and consciousness. It holds the power of imagination, recognition, and appreciation, and is responsible for processing feelings and emotions, resulting in attitudes and actions. Cognition is a mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses.

What is knowledge? Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, information, descriptions, or skills, which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering, or learning. All the above leads to the tentative understanding that education is not, after all, mugging up or cramming i.e., prepare hastily for an impending examination- just gobbling up the answer to vomit in the answer book. It is a process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses.

A Missionary English School for girls affiliated to ICSE, reportedly, asks the students to memorize the whole play “The Merchant of Venice” for the board examination. Is it education? Does such an exercise help the students to understand the text left behind by Shakespeare and develop a critical mind?