The Story of My Experiments with Truth Education Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

Had I been without a sense of self-respect and satisfied myself with having for my children the education that other children could not get, I should have deprived them of the object-lesson in liberty and self-respect that I gave them at the cost of the literary training. And where a choice has to be made between liberty and learning, who will not say that the former has to be preferred a thousand times to the latter? (3.5.7)

Yeah, most schools don't teach freedom fighting. It's interesting to consider that Gandhi has what might be called a partisan approach to education. He thinks his ideals should be the ones promoted: his views on liberty, his views on self-respect. Others might think education should be more neutral.

Quote #5

As I had made no other arrangement for their private tuition, I used to get them to walk with me daily to the office and back home—a distance of about 5 miles in all. This gave them and me a fair amount of exercise. I tried to instruct them by conversation during these walks, if there was no one else claiming my attention. All my children, excepting the eldest, Harilal, who had stayed away in India, were brought up in Johannesburg in this manner. Had I been able to devote at least an hour to their literary education with strict regularity, I should have given them, in my opinion, an ideal education. But it has been their, as also my, regret that I failed to ensure them enough literary training. (4.23.4)

One thing Gandhi is referencing here is his eldest son, who criticized Gandhi very publicly in the press for not providing enough education. The author is admitting that, to some extent, he really did fail to provide enough.

Quote #6

I did not believe in the existing system of education, and I had a mind to find out by experience and experiment the true system. Only this much I knew—that, under ideal conditions, true education could be imparted only by the parents, and that then there should be the minimum of outside help, that Tolstoy Farm was a family, in which I occupied the place of the father, and that I should so far as possible shoulder the responsibility for the training of the young. (4.32.2)

True education given only by parents? Tell that to your teacher. Of course, many people today are home-schooled. Laws differ from place to place, but many jurisdictions across the world require children to acquire a government-provided education. Gandhi definitely would oppose that.