ఆంధ్ర గ్రంథాలయం/సంపుటం 2/సంచికలు 3, 4/Adult Education and Library Movement

by S.R.Ranganathan

Adult Education and Library Movement*^[1]

By

Rao Sahib S. R. RANGANATHAN, M. A., L. T.,F. L. A„,

Librarian, Madras University Library

and

Secretary, Madras Library Association

Adult Education has been and will ever be of paramount importance in every community. Its value is independent of time. It can never be said that Adult Education is necessary at such and such times and not so very necessary at other times. Neither its necessity nor its quality is really conditioned by time-factor.

But time is an important factor in the methods adopted in securing universal Adult Education. The method that was effective some centuries ago is no longer adequate to-day. Various causes have led to this change. In far off days people lived under very different circumstances. Both the political and the economic units were small. They were often conterminous and self-contained; with the result, a knowledge of fundamentals was sufficient to enable one to go through the material-political, economic and social side of life in a fairly comfortable way. These fundamentals were so few and so stable that a knowledge of them would be absorbed by the very process of living in the Community. In other words they were transmitted by tradition and the imitation of the seniors gave the necessary education to the juniors. Thus oral tradition and imitation proved to be adequate methods in Adult Education in those days. Literacy was not a necessity and hence the use of written or printed records did not play any prominent part.

But to-day three new factors have come in. The barriers of old economic units have been shattered; even the days of national economics have gone; we have now indeed entered the era of world economics. On the contrary the expansion of the political unit is lagging far behind. It is true that we have out-grown the stage of village units or district units in the political sphere. But it is equally true that we are still partitioned off into national units. Most of the ills of to-day are traceable to this unequal expansion of the political and the economic units. World economics and national barriers are totally incommensurable. The incommensurability is rendered ever so mystical and painful by the currency civilization which has been overwhelming us in recent years. Currency civilization means the introduction of an artificiality of a high degree.

A knowledge of the artificialities, which have come in the train of currency civilization, which have been reinforced by the scientific and industrial activities of the day and which are complicated by the conflict of political and economic interests cannot by any means be acquired either by oral tradition or by the imitation of the seniors. Values have undergone a violent change. Each generation of adults feels how rapidly it becomes out of date even before it crosses middle age.

Under such conditions the only available means of acquiring material knowledge is through literacy. An illiterate adult is a misfit in society to-day. He not only damns himself but he damns the very community in which he lives. Hence liquidation of illiteracy is the concern not merely of the individual but of the community as a whole. Anything short of universal literacy will mean ultimate disaster to a community in the present condition of the world affairs.

But it should not be forgotten that literacy is not the end of life. It must be remembered that literacy is but a means - is but one of the factors forming the means - of keeping the adults of a community informed of all the things whose knowledge is essential for the well-being of the individual and the community. Written sources of information form the second factor in these means. As these sources must reach everybody, young and old, man and woman and rich and poor these resources must be printed ones.

And yet we should remember that there is nothing more artificial in the world than scraps of paper with black spots stitched together and called books. They cannot attract the humans of their own accord even as a lovely lotus can. Men have to be trained and persuaded to like books and to use them. More than that, books ought to be placed on the way if not in the hands of everybody by the community. Adult Education can spread and can keep itself at the proper level in a community if and only if the community has set up a special agency to collect, organize, display, distribute and interpret books among one and all of the constituents.

That special agency is the public library. The old Victorian inventory outlook which reveled in meticulous care and accuracy in the maintenance of stock of books as mere property and in the instance on periodical stock verification even to the detriment of the use of books does not any longer belong to the public library; for its business is not to preserve but to encourage use even at the risk of losing some books; for the mission of a public library to-day is Adult Education of the highest quality. A public library succeeds or fails in the measure of its ability to reach one and all of the community by the most aggressive methods of publicity available to-day. The public library with such a mission proclaims that the destiny of books is the hands of the reader and not by any means the shelves in closed cupboards.

In our country we are in a strange situation. We have not yet reoriented ourselves in the light of the great commotion that is taking place in the world in regard to sense of values. seek to get on in the days of world-economy with an adult population of 90 per cent of which is illiterate and in a state of affairs in which the 10 per cent literates are not supplied with books as a public project. A population of forty millions let us say a population of four million literates - is expected to be furnished with the necessary intellectual pabulum by the provision of Rs.35,000 in the library column of the governmental budget. There is no civilized country in the world where this will be tolerated to-day.

It was only this morning that the foreign mail brought me a script which says that in New Zealand where book service was regulated by direct payment or subscription lists is being transferred into a public project. Perhaps this is one of the last of the countries inhabited by Europeans where the change over from 'cash and carry' policy to 'no cash please and free service' outlook is taking place. It is the accepted principle in local administration in all countries to-day that one of the primary obligations of the local body is to provide free book service to every citizen and thus provide for Adult Education. Am I asking for something extravagant when I urge that our local bodies too should shoulder that responsibility if Mother India is to occupy a fitting and honorable place in the economic and political picture of the world.

---

1. A paper sent to the Andhradesa Adult Education Conference, which met at Tenali on 24-8-41.