A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"llOO>wjEDUCATION ON NATIONAL LINES.*E must have a hold on the spiritual atd seculareducation of the nation. Do you understandthat ? You must dream, you must talk, and youmust think and you must work. Till then there is nosalvation for the race. This education tha uyou a>~getting now has some good points but ithas a tremendousevil at its back, and this evil is so great that the goodthings are all weighed down. In the first place it is notj-aman-making education, it is merely and entirely a negativeeducation. A negative education or any training thatconsists negation is worse than death. The child istaken to school and the first thing he learns is thathis father was a fool, the second his grandfather was acrazy lunatic, tke third that all his teachers were hypocrites, the fourth that all the sacred books were lies ! Bythe time he is 16 he is a mass of negation, lifeless andboneless. And the result is that fifty years of such education have not produced one man in the three Presidencies.Every original man that has been produced has been educated elsewhere and not in this country, or they have goneto the old universities once more to cleanse themselves ofsuperstitions. This is &j)t education. Education is notthe amount of information that isput into your brain andrunning riot there, undigested,making a battle of Waterlooallyour life. must "We frave life-building, man-makingcharacter- making, assimila ion of ideas. If you have* From the lecture bnThe Future of India."