As we move into yet another academic
year, its time to take a pledge as educators that we will ensure that education
is a pleasure and not a pain for the children in our schools and colleges. This
story written, The Parrot’s Training, by
Rabindranath Tagore, a satire on the education system is sadly relevant even
today. Let us together ensure that it is no more relevant in
our education system.
THE PARROT’S TRAINING
Once upon a time there was a
bird. It was ignorant. It sang all right, but never recited
scriptures. It hopped pretty frequently, but lacked manners.
Said the Raja to himself.
“Ignorance in costly in the long run. For fools consume as much food as
their betters, and yet give nothing in return.”
He called his nephews to his presence
and told them that the bird must have a sound schooling.
The pundits were summoned, and at once
went to the root of the matter. They decided that the ignorance of birds
was due to their natural habit of living in poor nests. Therefore,
according to the pundits, the first thing necessary for this bird’s education
was a suitable cage.
The pundits had their rewards and went
home happy.
A golden cage was built with gorgeous
decorations. Crowds came to see it from all parts of the world.
“Culture, captured and caged!”
Exclaimed some in a rapture of ecstasy, and burst into tears.
Others remarked: “Even if culture be
missed, the cage will remain, to the end, a substantial fact. How
fortunate for the bird!”
The goldsmith filled his bag with
money and lost no time in sailing homewards.
The pundit sat down to educate the
bird. With proper deliberation he took his pinch of snuff, as he said:
“Textbooks can never be too many for our purpose!”
The nephews brought together an
enormous crowd of scribes. They copied from books, and copied from
copies, till the manuscripts were piled up to an unreachable height.
Men murmured in amazement: “Oh, the
tower of culture, egregiously high! The end of it lost in the clouds!”
The
scribes with light hearts, hurried home, their pockets heavily laden.
The
nephews were furiously busy keeping the cage in proper trim.
As their constant scrubbing and
polishing went on the people said with satisfaction : “This is progress
indeed!”
Men were employed in large numbers,
and supervisors were still more numerous. These with their cousins of all
different degrees of distance, built a palace for themselves and lived there
happily ever after.
Whatever may be its other
deficiencies, the world is never in want of fault-finders; and they went about
saying that every creature remotely connected with the cage flourished beyond
words, excepting only the bird.
When this remark reached the Raja’s
ears, he summoned his nephews, what is this that we hear!”
The nephews said in answer: “Sir, let
the testimony of the goldsmiths and the pundits, the scribes and the
supervisors, be taken, if the truth is to be known. Food is scare with
the fault-finders, and that is why their tongues have gained in sharpness”.
The explanation was so luminously
satisfactory that the Raja decorated each one of his nephews with his own rate
jewels.
The Raja at length, being desirous of
seeing with his own eyes how his Education Department busied itself with the
little bird, made his appearance one day at the great Hall of Learning.
From the gate rose the sounds of
conch-shells and gongs, horns, bugles and trumpets, cymbals, drums and
kettledrums, tomtoms, tambourines, flutes, fifes, barrel-organs and
bagpipes. The pundits began chanting mantras with their topmost voices,
while the goldsmiths, scribes, supervisors, and their numberless cousins of all
different degrees of distance, loudly raised a round of cheers.
The nephews smiled and said: “Sir, what do you
think of it all?”
The Raja said: “It does seem so
fearfully like a sound principle of
Education!”
Mightily pleased, the Raja was about
to remount his elephant, when the fault-finder, from behind some bush, cried
out: “Maharaja, have you seen the bird?”
“Indeed, I have not!” Exclaimed
the Raja, “I completely forgot about the bird.
Turning back, he asked the pundits
about the method they followed in instructing the bird. It was shown to
him. He was immensely impressed. The method was so stupendous that
the bird looked ridiculously unimportant in comparison. The Raja was
satisfied that there was no flaw in the arrangements. As for any
complaint from the bird itself, that simply could not be expected. Its
throat was so completely chocked with the leaves from the books that it could
neither whistle nor whisper. It sent a thrill through one’s body to watch
the process.
The time, while remounting his
elephant, the Raja ordered his State Ear-puller to give a thorough good pull at
both the ears of the fault-finder. The bird thus crawled on, duly
and properly, to the safest verge of inanity. In fact, its progress was
satisfactory in the extreme. Nevertheless, nature occasionally triumphed
over training, and when the morning light peeped into the bird’s cage it
sometimes fluttered its wings in a reprehensible manner. And, though it
is hard to believe, it pitifully pecked at its bars with the feeble beak.
“What impertinence!” Growled the kotwal.
The blacksmith, with his forge and
hammer tool his place in the Raja’s Department of Education. Oh, what
resounding blows! The iron chair was soon completed, and the bird’s wings
were clipped.
The Raja’s brothers-in-law looked
black, and shook their heads, saying: “These birds not only lack good sense,
but also gratitude!”
With text-book in one hand and baton
in the other, the pundits gave the poor bird what may fitly be called lessons!
The kotwal was honoured with a title
for his watchfulness, and the blacksmith for his skill in forging chains.
The
bird died.
Nobody had the least notion how long
ago this had happened. The fault-finder was the first man to spread the
rumour.
The Raja called his nephews and asked
them: “My dear nephews, what is this that we hear?”
The nephews said:
“Sire, the bird’s education has been completed.”
“Does it hop?” The Raja
enquired.
“Never!” Said the nephews.
“Does it fly?”
“No.”
“Bring me the bird,” said the Raja.
The bird was brought to him, guarded
by the kotwal and the sepoys and the sowars. The Raja poked its body with
his finger. Only its inner stuffing of book-leaves rustled.
Outside the window, the murmur of the
spring breeze amongst the newly budded Asoka leaves made the April, morning
wistful.