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Editor's note: The PROUT philosophy opposes indoctrination of any kind--leftist, conservative, religious, or otherwise--in educational institutions. Rather, students should be encouraged in a spirit of free inquiry to search for the truth.

"[C]olleges really are stepping on the idea of free thought and...people are being punished simply for expressing views."

The war in Iraq was a regular hot topic in English class when I was in school. But why -- when it had no relevance to writing analyses', breaking down prose, or fine-tuning style? When I heard about an unapologetic independent film production that uncovered illegitimate classroom agendas at public universities, I knew my school (Indiana University) was part of a larger problem.

"I've been learning in geography class that gender is socially constructed," said a student from the University of Tennessee in the revealing documentary. "Indoctrinate U" exposes the liberally biased agenda of professors and administrators whose practices are like the Wizard of Oz -- behind a curtain no one has dared to lift until now.

The film illustrates how American universities inject political dialogue into every subject from physics to 19th Century literature, according to students interviewed at schools from across the country: that is not the education their tuition was supposed to pay for.

"We have to keep in view three fundamentals before imparting education. The first is that education must always be based on factuality. There must not be the injection of any dogma or fanaticism or any type of geographical or racial chauvinism in the education system.

The second fundamental is that education must awaken the thirst for knowledge in the students' minds. The students themselves will create environmental pressure by persistent demands for answer to queries like: What is the answer? Is it correct? The longing, "I wish to know ... I wish to understand and assimilate the entire universe" should be created. Such a thirst for knowledge should be created in the minds of students. a learner, in Arabic, is called "ta'lib-ul-ilm", meaning "a genuine seeker of knowledge. So a tremendous thirst for knowledge must be awakened n the students' minds. They will constantly pry their teachers, their parents and their neighbours with questions like: 'Why is this so? What is that? Why does that happen? Why does this not happen?" etc. they are ready to assimilate the entire universe.

The third fundamental of education is that teachers and students should have a balanced mind, unaffected, unassailed by unimportant entities. These are the three fundamentals of education. Education is a must not only for human beings but also for all living beings. For instance, if you train a dog, you can take much work from it. If you train a cow, it will give you greater service... Proper education enables one to stand against the influence of the physical environment and awaken the psychic urge to attain a higher life, that is, the ideological goal. This gives a person much inspiration. We would do our bet to impart proper education not only to the entire humanity, but also to all created beings. We can impart training to all trees, plants and birds, and put them on the path of welfare."

Parents_* often allege that teachers do not teach anything worthwhile nowadays, but I do not feel that this is a very well-considered remark. In actual fact they are only making excuses in order to avoid their responsibilities. At the same time, however, I should add that most teachers demonstrate, through their mental outlook or their actions, far less awareness of their social responsibilities than concern for their own interests. They do not devote even a fraction of the time and energy to building society that they spend making money by any means possible, such as by writing "made easies" [course summaries] or study guides.

_* Throughout this chapter, "parents" should be understood as "parents or guardians". --Trans.

The task for this paper is to locate the works of Shrii P. R. Sarkar in a range of classification schemes and at the same time to make these schemes themselves problematic. In general, we find Sarkar's works exemplary for the following reasons. In terms of economy, his work is strong on both growth and distribution dimensions. Sarkar is also eclectic in his theory of political-economy drawing on market and regulatory mechanisms. Alienation is a result not of private property but of the concentration of wealth and of the location of the self in a materialistic paradigm. Sarkar's Prout manages to satisfy survival, wellbeing, identity and freedom needs. Market models are strong on freedom but weak on wellbeing (especially at the periphery). Local "small is beautiful" models are strong on survival, wellbeing and identity but weak on the freedom dimension. Sarkar also takes an eclectic model of epistemology having a range of ways of knowing the world. He also takes a layered "deep and shallow" view of the nature of reality. Finally, and this is the centerpiece of the argument, Sarkar's social theory combines linear, cyclical and transcendental dimensions, thus avoiding cultural exploitation and fatalism, and accentuating ancient, modern and postmodern constructions of the social and the economic.

Having progressively crossed the different evolutionary stages since the distant past human beings have at last reached the present stage . The journey has not been solitary: People have advanced together in society. Even in the primitive past, humans lived in clans and tribes, for alone they could not easily procure the means of livelihood. An individual who totally shuns collective life finds existence difficult, for humans are essentially social beings. Whenever one thinks of a human being one automatically thinks of the society in which he or she lives. Human existence is thus two-sided - individual existence and collective existence - and as such it has two sets of values : social values and human cardinal principles.

Education plays a pivotal role in making the human personality and shaping the human life. But as of now, the education falls short of people’s high expectation.

Concept of Education: Education, in ordinary sense of the term, means enlightenment. To educate means to enlighten one, i.e., to make one aware of what one did not know or what one is ignorant of. Ever since the inception or rise of intellect in human being, man awoke with certain cardinal questions, seeking the truth about oneself and one's life, truth about one's surroundings, the truth about the world and the truth about the ultimate goal of one's life. The cardinal questions such as who am I; what is this world and what is the goal of one's life etc. have been haunting the man. It is in quest of the truth of life and this world that man invented different branches of knowledge or education. Human being, in course of its journey from ignorance to knowledge, came to know that human life is not only a lump or a corpus of bones and flesh, nor it is only a biological machine, nor it is only a psychic phenomenon, nor it is only a beholder or container of spiritual prowess, rather it is a curious amalgamation and complex composition of body, mind and soul (Atma), a wonderful manifestation of spirituo-psycho-physical phenomenon. Thus human life is tri-farious, i.e., physical, psychic and spiritual. Hence, mere imparting of knowledge of alphabets and books is not education, rather education is systematic and sustained efforts to unfold and develop one's latent physical, psychic and spiritual potentialities in order to unite the psyche with the self. That is why it has been said, "Knowing oneself is the real knowledge". Education should aim at integrated, i.e., tri-farious development of personality.

By society ordinarily we mean a collective body of men and women, but the innate spirit of the word 'society' is not this. Samája or society in the true sense of the term implies an action of moving together (Samánam' ejate). We come across groups of persons in buses, trams and trains moving together; but this occasional movement cannot be termed society either. Being inspired by a common ideology, when different individuals move towards the common goal and become active for its achievement, this can be called a society. The appropriate English equivalent for Samája should not therefore be society. Social advancement, which is a type of social action, means that the tie of mutual unity among the persons moving together has become strong.

Prout's approach is that the medium of instruction from primary to tertiary level should be in the local language. The sum total of human expression is culture, and language is the best medium to express human culture. While different groups should encourage every language, each unit should use the local language to inspire self-confidence and self-respect amongst the local people. Encouraging a positive cultural identity is an important ingredient in the development of the local area, and is an essential factor in generating a sense of affinity and unity amongst the people.

Every living being has its own inherent tendency to express and symbolise. In the evolutionary process of creation, where higher species have evolved, living beings try to express their feelings by gesture, posture or by some sound. In a general sense, this acoustic expression of ideas is called language.

Culture is a vague term. It is the collective name for different expressions of life. People eat, enjoy hospitality, laugh on some occasions and shed tears on others, and thereby express life through various actions. The collective name of all these actions is culture.