But when we go to borrow help from a foreign neighbourhood we are apt
to overlook the real source of help behind all that is external and
apparent. Had the deep-water fishes happened to produce a scientist
who chose the jumping of a monkey for his research work, I am sure he
would give most of the credit to the branches of the trees and very
little to the monkey itself. In a foreign University we see the
branching wildernesses of its buildings, furniture, regulations, and
syllabus, but the monkey, which is a difficult creature to catch and
more difficult to manufacture, we are likely to treat as a mere
accident of minor importance. It is convenient for us to overlook the
fact that among the Europeans the living spirit of the University is
widely spread in their society, their parliament, their literature,
and the numerous activities of their corporate life. In all these
functions they are in perpetual touch with the great personality of
the land which is creative and heroic in its constant acts of
self-expression and self-sacrifice. They have their thoughts published
in their books as well as through the medium of living men who think
those thoughts, and who criticise, compare and disseminate them. Some
at least of the drawbacks of their academic education are redeemed by
the living energy of the intellectual personality pervading their
social organism. It is like the stagnant reservoir of water which
finds its purification in the showers of rain to which it keeps itself
open. But, to our misfortune, we have in India all the furniture of
the European University except the human teacher. We have, instead,
mere purveyors of book-lore in whom the paper god of the bookshop has
been made vocal.
A most important truth, which we are apt to forget, is that a teacher
can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can
never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame.
The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living
traffic with his knowledge, but merely repeats his lessons to his
students, can only load their minds; he cannot quicken them. Truth not
only must inform but inspire. If the inspiration dies out, and the
information only accumulates, then truth loses its infinity. The
greater part of our learning in the schools has been wasted because,
for most of our teachers, their subjects are like dead specimens of
once living things, with which they have a learned acquaintance, but
no communication of life and love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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