Topic: Sri Aurobindos views on Education

Name: Chauhan Sejal  Arunbhai

Subject: Indian Writing in English

 Paper: 4

Roll no:31

M.A. Part I Sem I

Year: 2013-15

Submitted to: M.K.Bhavanagar University

SRI AUROBINDO’S VIEWS ON EDUCATION

·       Sri Aurobindo

                 “The supreme truths are neither the rigid conclusions of

                    logical reasoning nor the affirmations of creedal statement,

                   but fruits of the soul’s inner experience.”

                  Sri Aurobindo always laid great stress on education. He himself had the best education while in Cambridge, and between 1897 and 1906, was a professor in the Bengal National College. So he knew the question in depth. And he had hopes in the young. He trusted that youth can give their good contribution in rebuiling the nation. Sri Aurobindo never tired of calling for what he termed “a national education.” He gave his definition.

                   The education which starting with the post and making full use of the present builds up a great nation. Whoever wishes to cut off the nation from its past is no friend of our national growth. Whoever fails to take advantages of the present is losing us the battle of life. We must therefore save for India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thought in her immemorial past. We must acquire for her best knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these are we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance so as to build up men and not machines.

                   Aurobindo Ghosh was an Idealistic to the core. His Idealistic philosophy of life was based upon Vedantic philosophy of Upanishad. He maintains that the kind of education, we need in our country, is an education-

                 “Proper to the Indian soul and temperament and culture that

                   we are in quest of, not indeed something faithful merely to

                   the past, but to the developing soul of India, to her future

                   need, to the greatness of her coming-self creation, to her

                   eternal spirit.”

Sri Aurobindo’s concept of ‘education’ is not only acquiring information, but “the acquiring of various kinds of information,” he points out , “is only one and not the chief of the means and necessities of education; its central aim is the building of the powers of the human mind and spirit.”

                    Here describe Aurobindo’s aims of education. He emphasized that education should be in accordance with the needs of our real modern life. In other words, education should create dynamic citizen so that they are able to meet the needs of modern complex life. According to him, physical development and holiness are the chief aims of education. As such, he not only emphasized mere physical development, that but physical purity also without which no spiritual development is possible. In this sense physical development and purification are the two bases on which the spiritual development is built. The second important aim of education is to train all the sences hearing, seaking, listening, touching, smelling and tasting. According to these senses can be fully trained when nerve, Chitta and manas are pure. Hence, through education purity of senses is to be achieved before any development is possible. The third aim of education is to achievemental development of the child. This mental development means the enhancement of all mental faculties namely , memory, thinking, reasoning, imagination and discrimination etc education should develop them fully and harmoniously. Another important aim of education is the development of morality. Shri Aurobindo has emphasized that without moral and emotional development only, mental development becomes harmful to human process. Heart of a child should be so developed as to show extreme love, sympathy and consideration for all living beings. This is real moral development. Thus, the teacher should be a role model to his children that mere imitation can enable them to reach higher and higher stages of development. Development of conscience is another important aim of education that needs to develop by the help of teacher. Conscience has four level chitta, manas, intelligence, and knowledge. Aurobindo emphasized that the main aim of education is to promote spiritual development. According to him every human being has some fragment of divine existence within himself and education can scan it from each individual with its full extent.

·       AUROBINDO DISCRIBES CURRICULUM FOR DIFFERENT STAGES OF EDUCATION

Mother tongue, English, French, literature, national history, art,  painting, general science, social studies and arithmetic should be taught at primary stage.

Mother tongue , English, French, literature, arithmetic, art, chemistery, physics, botany, physiology, health education, social studies at secondary stage.

           Indian and Western philosophy, history of civilization, English literature, French, sociology, psychology, history, chemistry, physics, botany at university level .

          Art, painting, photography, sculptural, drawing, types, cottage- industries, mechanical and electrical engineering, nursing etc at vocationan level.

·       TEACHER-TAUGHT RELATIONSHIP

Aurobindo enunciates certain sound principles of good teaching, which have to be kept in mind when actually engaged in the process of learning. According to Sri Aurobindo, the first principle of true teaching is ‘’that nothing can be taught.” He explains that the knowledge is already dormant within the child and for this reason. The teacher is not an instructor or task- master; “he is a helper and a guide.” The roll of the teacher is to suggest and not to impose. He does not actually train the pupil’s mind, he only shows him how to perfect the instrumensn of knowledge and helps him and encourages him in the process. He does not impart knowledge to him; he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself. He does not call forth the knowledge that is within; he only shows him where it lies and how it can be habituated to rise to the surface.

·       SRI AUROBINDO’S ROAD TO INTEGRAL EDUCATION

         “Every child is a spark of the divine meant to progress, evolve and devlope through experience. This development on the line of the child’s own choice needs to be nourished and not forced to be molded in accordance with the parent’s ambitions or preorbained expectations of society; This is quite different from the present educational industrial mindset, which churns the raw material into uniform mass production. Sri Aurobindo writes about the legend and his philosophy of education. Education as enunciated by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is very different from what is normally understood and practised. It requires us to unlearn our habitual ways of viewing education and other associated responses. The key is a change in the mindset with which we view education; such a paradigm shift of the right perception of what truly constitutes a child, is expected of educators, teachers and parents.

              In Mother’s and Aurobindo’s view the aim of true education should be to give the students a chance to distinguish between the ordinary life and the life of truth to see things in a different unconventional way. Unlike what is commonly expected, to crave for money and worldly recognition or to be engrossed in the pursuit of career building cannot be the sole aim of education.

“To learn for the sake of knowledge, to educate oneself in order to grow in conscience, to discipline oneself in order to become master of oneself, to overcome one’s weaknesses, incapacities and ignorance, to prepare oneself to advance in life towards a goal that is nobler, more generous and more true.”

This is what is expected of students of Integral Education; an all round progress and a constant striving for self exceeding; one of the most significant contributions by Sri Aurobindo to education and understanding the student historically.

“Do not aim at success, our aim is perfection..........”

What did Aurobindo connote by all round develpoment?

The student is made of five distinct parts all of which must be developmed through education.

           The aim of the body is to express the beauty and harmony and needs to be trained to be strong healthy and supple. Next, the need to consciously help our students deal effectively with their emotions. We also want our children to develop a sense of esthetic refinement. The mind being the main focus of modern education needs to develop both its parts the left and the right brain through the training of its various respective faculties of observation and analysis and the other of comprehension and creativity. The most important and central part consists of the fourth dimension which is that of the truth of our being namely our psychic being within which grows across lives through every kind of experience. Its essential nature is to aspire for truth, goodness and beauty. The last dimension is that of the spiritual self which we will not concern ourselves with for now.

               Such is the broad framework of what needs to be addressed in the development of the child, the teacher and even in ourselves through a lifelong education.

               In several ways Aurobindo’s educational vision is meant to open the ways of the future to children who belong to the future.

·       SRI AUROBINDO’S THREE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING

                        The first principle states “.....nothing can be taught.” The teacher is not an instructor or taskmaster; he/she is a helper and a guide. His or her role is to suggest and not to impose. The teacher does not actually train the pupil’s mind; she or he only shows the students how to perfect his or her instruments of knowledge for himself. He or she does not call forth the knowledge that is within: the teacher only shows where it lies and how it can be habituated to rise to the surface. The truth that this principle conveys has been advocated in India by all the great educational thinkers as it in aligment to the ancient Indian belief that all knowledge lies within and needs only to be unfolded.

                    The need is to create interest in the child to learn, Which leads us to the second principle “.....the mind has to be consulted in its own growth.” The idea of hammering the child into the shape dasired by the parent or teacher is a barbarous and ignorant superstition. There can be no greater error that for the parent to arrange beforehand that his son/daughter shall develop particular qualities, capacities, ideas, virtues or be prepared for a prearranged career.” This is a principle of great value and relevance to all teachers, parents and educators to liberate the child from their personal and selfish expectations.

              The third principle takes into consideration the nativity involve in the child’s learning therefore the need “to work from the near to the far from that which is to what shall be.”

               These three principles serve as the foundation of Integral Education and show as how to work towards its right implementation. They can be practiced in any school. 

                          Curriculum must be designed keeping in view the interest of the students as per their age, learning styles and varied interests. The child needs to be encouraged to pursue his own line of interest in the future course of his life.

                  Although still at the infant stage, we at Sri Aurobindo International school entered the domain of practicability and made it possible to bring about some change in the educational curriculum and re-orient it towards integral education. We have started in earnest to implement the same in phases from 1993.

                  The inspiration for SAIS and to draw from a system of Integral Education linked with Sri Aurobiindo’s concept of Integral Yoga. Its fundamental educational concept is that every child is an evolving soul; and that the responsibility of the teacher and the parent is to enable to grow to its true and fullest potential.

                   As heads of schools our goal is high and the scope is endless. The only possible thing to do is to take the first step in this challenging and  meaningful journey of realizing true education, that of Integral Education.

                  Thus, Aurobindo conceived of education as an instrument for the real working of the spirit in the mind and body of the individual and the nation. He thought of educatio that for the individual will make its one central object the growth of the soul and its powers and possibilities, for the nation will keep first in view the preservation, strengthening and enrichment of the nation soul and its Dharma (virtue) and raise both into powers of the life and ascending mind and soul of humanity.