A Different Take on ‘Education’- Harmony between Head, Heart and Hand

What 'Education' really means? The question keeps us thinking at times. Does it mean just being able to read, write and express ourselves? Does it only come with a single focus to secure a job? Or is there something more to it? Is the purpose of Education only limited to our ‘Self’? Or is it supposed to take us beyond our own ‘Self’ to ‘Others’, including human beings, animals, plants, trees and material world. And what about going even beyond? Can education have something to do with our spiritual quest? 

Charged with these questions, we began our search last year at Bir, Himachal Pradesh. In the process of working with kids and learning from the experiences of educationalists, we got some answers to our questions. But the answers were never the same. We realized that different people perceived ‘Education’ differently according to the way they perceived the world. For some, Education meant excelling in the worldly world to be a leader in the mainstream. They were striving hard to exploit every means to provide required exposure to their kids. For others, mainstream never made sense. They simply believed in living locally while being in harmony with nature. The focus was to go beyond physical selves to facilitate kids towards inner growth. And then, there were some who were trying to find a balance between both these approaches. 

But, what does actually work? Is there any single definition of Education? The question still left us searching until we came across Gandhiji’s simple yet sensible logic of Harmony between Hand, Head and Heart. According to Gandhiji, happiness is when there is harmony between what a man does, what a man thinks and what his heart says. The quote made a lot of sense to us. 

Driven with the quote, we came up with a simplistic definition of Education as to make one able to ‘Think’ (Head), to ‘Feel’ (Heart) and to ‘Act’ (Hand) in harmony. Digging deeper, we realized that our academics actually serves as a means to ‘Head’, values as a means to ‘heart’ and life skills as a means to ‘Hand’. The definition does not undermine the importance of making a living (Hand) while ensuring spiritual growth (listening to heart) at the same time. All it requires is harmony between what we think, what we do and what our heart says.

Today, the more we think about the beauty of Head-Heart-Hand harmony, the more we learn what ‘Education’ actually means.