The more our children get such an education, the more will trained minds be made available to one country in all fields of national activity. But, today, we are far from it; the current
education is largely stuffing the brain and not training the senses and the mind.
Even in many university graduates, including science graduates, this
power of
observation is very limited, and the power of independent thinking and judgement and decision-making is still more limited. What the country needs is, therefore, not plenty of mere science graduates but batches and batches of
scientific minds, out of whom will come giants in all secular and spiritual fields. That is the wonderful type of mind that can bring the galvanic touch to rouse and raise a population. Quantitatively, we are big; but qualitatively, we are small. Our national mind is to be trained, out of which will come the creative power of imagination and critical power of thinking.
That is fundamental science education. We need such an education to be imparted to our children from primary classes upwards. We need to inspire our children with authentic stories taken from history of physical science, for example, the story of the
boy Watts who observed the power of stem and whose work later enabled Stevenson to develop the
steam engine. When he was a young boy, Watts was sitting at
breakfast table with the other members of his family; his mother was preparing the breakfast. The kettle, filled with water for tea, was on fire; the water was boiling. The boy looked at the kettle; he saw the lid of the kettle jumping up; he observed it, not merely saw it, and felt it to be a unique phenomenon. The mother called the boy to join the party at breakfast, but he did not hear it; he was concentrated on that one single phenomenon in front of him; in the course of observation, his mind caught its significance imaginatively.
The power, or energy, hidden in the steam, it makes the lid jump up all the time, and that energy of the steam can be disciplined and made to serve the purposes of man. Out of that experience came the discovery of the steam engine which was one of the important ingredients behind the early phase of the modern industrial revolution. It is this scientific curiosity and power of critical observation and love of truth, instilled in a big way in our children that will produce the much needed scientific and social and spiritual revolution.
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