“I am a survivor of a concentration camp.
My eyes saw what no man should witness:
Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot
and burned by high school and college graduates.
So, I am suspicious of education.
My request is: Help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, and educated illiterates. Reading, writing, and arithmetic
are important only if they serve
to make our children more humane.”
These words were written in a letter found in a Nazi Concentration Camp addressed to teachers.
Over recent decades, many movies have brought to light the atrocities of those dark days which include classics such as ‘Schindler’s List’, ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’, ‘The Pianist’, ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ and ‘Life Is Beautiful’. While they captured the tragedy of that time, it is heartening also to know through these very movies, the rare moments of humanity that shone through the gloom, the day-to-day hopelessness of the camps, the brutal and lifelong trauma endured by survivors, depicting the perseverance of the human spirit.
While we could say that these are events of the past, similar atrocities, however small, are still taking place across the globe, many of which we are not even aware of. We cannot change the past, yet most definitely we can change the present and create a better future. What we do about it today matters fundamentally for the kind of society that we wish to see develop, its values and the material and cultural well-being of its citizens.
Education is one of the most powerful means to bring about change, and yet education without values does not serve any purpose. Perhaps, we need more persons with hearts filled with love rather than persons with minds filled with knowledge. Today there are many schools, colleges, universities imparting good education yet very few teaching and propagating human values of love, peace, kindness, and understanding which are needed in our society.
The Salesians in the Province of Bombay have, right from the very beginning, worked at providing quality education and imparting values to students. Could it not be more coincidental that the first work entrusted to the Salesians in the city was the care of a boarding school in Tardeo in 1928! As we stand on the threshold of such a great milestone - the golden jubilee of the Province - we are also near the centenary of our presence in western India. A lot has changed in society ever since. What are the challenges we face today in the field of education? What should we focus on? Higher education or Artificial Intelligence (AI) skills? State Board Education or International Baccalaureate (IB) Education?
I think, as a response to the vocation of every Salesian to form the conscience of the young, we need to safeguard students against the unintentional consequences of the technology-based, competition-driven and media-dominated mindset which, if left unfettered, might result in the growing isolation of the individual and the ‘dehumanization’ of values and culture. At a time when family and community structures are breaking up, education remains the main instrument that can knit together this fabric into a humanism, that recognizes the indivisibility of culture, across the arts and the sciences, the humanities and technology, the emotional and the rational, the perceptive and the analytical. We truly need to go back to Don Bosco.
Don Bosco, through the Preventive System, strove to make his pupils good human beings and honest citizens. His education included most of the elements of modern education. He was indeed a man ahead of his times. He passed on this educational legacy to his Salesians who have spread the same in more than 134 countries of the world. As we look into the future, it is up to the Salesians of today to come together and inspire the young in our schools, colleges and technical institutes to live a life of integrity, thereby making the country and the world a better place to live in.
