Slaughterhouses of Children

By nature’s arrangement, all creatures born in this material world know how to eat, sleep, mate, and defend. Only the most evolved modern man needs a rigorous training of twenty-five to thirty years (forty to fifty percent of one’s life) to be able to begin earning his bread!

For hundreds and thousands of years prior to the modern educational system, even the so-called primitive human beings have been growing their food, constructing their houses, and defending themselves. So to claim that the modern educational system is designed to teach human beings how to earn their bread is actually an insult to that system.

A more apt laudation of the modern educational system would be how it trains human beings to snatch bread from the mouth of its fellow being, man and animal alike, in effort to satisfy the insatiable lust and greed fuelled by the system itself.  

Thus hard struggle and cutthroat competition ensue in human society, with the result that a few powerful men exploit the weaker masses, who earn their bread only by great struggle. Yet we think that without the modern educational system we would starve. This mentality is the product a society wherein people’s means of earning their livelihood are directly or indirectly dependent on the modern educational system; in other words, “the degree earns your bread.”

Although for eternity it has been only the land that provides bread, on the plea of “advancement” a very complicated economic system has been designed, wherein degrees earned after years of hard labor are needed to transport this bread (grown from the land) to our mouth. Thus the notion “no schooling, no bread” has been instilled in the mind of modern man.

The sole purpose for which the modern educational system exists is for increasing one’s desires to enjoy this world through his senses, which in turn makes him more and more lusty to do so. They who are able to fulfill their lust become greedy and thus remain unsatisfied forever, while those who are unable to fulfill their lust become frustrated. Thus immersed in lust, greed, and frustration, one’s chances to contemplate a higher aim in life become null, what to speak of actually systematically pursuing the path for overcoming birth and death. Hence the child is spiritually “slaughtered” in modern schools and colleges.

In the Vedic tradition, formal education was never necessary for earning one’s livelihood. Education was meant for building character and imparting higher moral values, leading ultimately to the student’s becoming fully self-realized. The responsibility of growing food for society was undertaken by a section thereof, and the necessary skills for farming, cow protection, construction, and crafts were learned through apprenticeship—from one’s father, uncle, or neighbor.

From the age of five, the child would be sent to a guru’s ashram, the gurukula,where under strict discipline he would learn about the ultimate aim of human life and the means to attain it. After a few years of primary education, only those with brahminical and kñatriyainclinations would continue formal education—to thoroughly study Vedic texts—while the others, who would be returning into society, would learn the skills necessary for their livelihood through apprenticeship, and would start earning their livelihood by the age of twelve or so.

In a nutshell, the traditional Vedic education trained one to overcome the base animalistic instincts within us—lust, anger, greed, envy—whereas the modern educational system aims at develop;ing these instincts.

Although one might appreciate the innate weakness of modern education, he finds himself so much entrenched in the current socio-economic system that to escape it seems practically impossible. Therefore His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhuapäda, the founder-äcärya of ISKCON, directed and guided his disciples to establish farm communities based upon Vedic socio-economic guidelines, to enable all humans to live according to the fundamental elements of ideal Vedic society.

(Savyasachi Das holds a degree in medicine from Madurai Medical College, Dr. M. G. R. Medical University. Presently he oversees farm community Salem, Tamilnadu, INDIA)