Thought-provoking forum

IT WAS a feast for the mind: flow of thought and reason in a language that was flawless and a pleasure to listen to for an hour and more in the city recently. The occasion was the Open Forum organised by the RZIM Life Focus Resource Centre, Chennai branch, to explore the subject, "Goal of education: Information or character''.

The speaker, Mr. L. T. Jeyachandran, holds a Master's degree from IIT, Madras, and has served as a senior Class 1 officer and then as Chief Engineer in charge of 13 provinces. After an early retirement in 1993, he joined RZIM as Director of Ministries, and has since been touring the globe addressing intellectuals in premier universities.

The chief guest for the open forum in Chennai, Mr. Clement Felix, former headmaster and Correspondent of MCC Higher Secondary School, in his introductory remarks to the select audience of teachers and educationists, referred to information as that which takes place in a mere head-to-head transfer.

Teaching is no longer an adventurous or ennobling experience.

If knowledge enriches one's mind, enhances personality and embellishes the intellectual power, character transforms a person and transcends the mind, Mr. Felix felt.

Mr. Jeyachandran asserted that knowledge only informed and not transformed a person. Formal education cannot produce character.

A boy returns from school, does not play with his peers, but sits in front of the computer and starts playing centre-forward against Manchester United. Good entertainment, no doubt, but there is a gap when all information is formalised into software. It is more a blow to information itself, said Mr. Jeyachandran.

Although information is an absolute necessity in life, it is the over-emphasis on information that is worrying. You open your e- mail and find that it is flooded with information. Copies transmitted non-personally, effortlessly. But the sad part is information by itself does not produce transformation.

Referring to the Euthanasia Bill brought in by Holland, Mr. Jeyachandran said it was a striking example of how knowledge by itself does not give a basis for morality. Neither does information provide the wherewithal nor show the way to use it. Knowledge needs direction.

Can formal education transfer character? Character is not communicated by completing the syllabus in a class. A brilliant maths teacher may not be morally upright. True transfer of character takes place inter-personally.

What is ultimate accountability? You are accountable to the one you teach, the institution, the discipline itself. But above all, you are accountable to the one who made this world and in a sense made possible knowledge at all, in the first place. God's character - not your conscience or mine will do - is the standard to which we have to conform to.

Since He has taken it upon Himself, He can liberate you so that you can begin to lead a life of values, not only intellectual but where your character is transformed and you begin to touch the character of others. What then is the goal of education? It is more than transfer of information.

It is transfer of character, which cannot be done in a purely formal and intellectual way. It can be done only inter-personally and the ultimate transfer is accomplished when God has interacted with the person of human race, in the person of Jesus Christ, Mr. Jeyachandran concluded.

SELINE AUGUSTINE

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