Paper Name :- Indian Writing in English
Name :- Avani N. Dave
Roll No. :- 2
Semester :- M.A- 1
Topic : - “Shri Aurobindo's views on
Education"
Education"
Date
:- 17 /10/12
Year :- 2012-2013
Submitted to :- Heenaba Zala
Department of English,
Bhavnagar University.
Before knowing Shri Aurobindo’s views on
Education, The Basic Concept of Education is as under.
The Concepts of Education as given by
prominent Indian educationists are as follows.
Rigved:
"Education is something which makes man self-reliant and selfless".
Panini: "Human education means the
training which one gets from nature".
Vivekanand: “Education is the manifestation of
the divine perfection, already existing in
man."
Tagore: "The widest
road leading to the solution of all our problems is education."
Sri Aurobindo:
"Education which will offer the tools whereby one can live for the divine, for the country, for oneself and for
others and this must be the ideal of every school which calls itself
national".
Meaning:
According to some learned people, the word
"Education" has been derived from the Latin term "Educatum"
which means the act of teaching or training. A group of educationists say that
it has come from another Latin word "Educare" which means "to
bring up" or "to raise".
Sri Aurobiondo’s views on Education :-
Sir
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 rebuilding
the nation. Sir Auribindo never tired of calling for what he termed “ a
national education”. He gave his brief definition for it. :-
The
education which starting with the past 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 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.
Sir aurobbindo
had little love for British education in India, which he called a ‘‘ mercenary and soulless education,” and for
its debilitating influence on the “ the innate possibilities” of the Indian brain.
“ In India,” he said “ the students generally have great capacities, but the
system of education represses and destroys these capacities.” As in every
field, he wanted India to crave out her own path courageously:
The greatest knowledge and the greatest
riches man can possess are India’s by inheritance; she has that for all mankind
is waiting but the full soul rich with the inheritance of the past, the
widening gains of the present, and the large potentiality of the future, can
come only by a system of National Education. It can not come by any extension
or imitation of the system of the existing universities with its radically
false principles, its vicious and mechanical methods, its dead-alive routine
tradition and its narrow and sightless spirit. Only a new spirit and a new body
born from the heart of the Nation and full of the light and hope of it’s
resurgence can create it.
Young Indians
are increasingly deprived from their rightful heritage, cut off from their
deeper roots. He have often found himself in the curious position of explaining
to some of them the symbolic meaning of an ancient Indian myth, for instance or worse,
of having to narrate the myth it self. Again, a French or English child will be
given at least some semblance of cultural identity, whatever its worth; but
here, in this country which not long ago had the most living culture in the
world, a child is given no nourishing food only some insipid, unappetizing
hodgepodge, cooked in the west and pickled in India. This means that in the
name of some irrational principles, India as an entity is throwing away some
precious treasures. As Sri Aurobindo put
it :
Ancient India’s culture, attacked by
European modernism, overpowered in the material field, betrayed by the
indifference of her children, may perish for ever along with the soul of the
nation that holds it in its keeping.
Young Indians are increasingly deprived from their deeper roots. He have
often found
Concept of Spiritual Education :-
‘‘Man can not rest permanently until he reaches some highest
good.’’
‘‘ To fulfil god in life is man’s manhood. ’’ - Sri Aurobindo
A true
spiritual education has to teach the students to recognize this relationship of
spirit and matter, so that one neither looks down upon matter and all the
problems the material life presents, nor shuns spirituality as a less on in
escapism.
A
Spiritual education would prepare the student to face life armed with a greater
faith and face with an outlook which is integral. His recognition of the
problems of life will not depend entirely on their appearances. He will be able
to grow spirituality through tracking.
Sri Aurobindo has been widely
acclaimed as a modern seer and a Vedic scholar. He had headed the first
National College of Education of Calcutta and had written extensively on the
subject of education. His approach to ‘Integral education’ is in itself a
unique concept. Education of the body, mind and spirit are each expounded in his
writings on education, but their integration is even more significant. He has
also dwelt on the social and psychological aspects of education. His thought
has been put to practice at Sri Aurobindo Ashram’s educational programmes, The
Auroville and several other schools of the country.
Integral education for the growth of the soul:-
Originally
a poet and a politician, not a philosopher, Shri Aurobindo engaged himself for forty-five
years out of his seventy-eight years in the practice of Yoga, and developed a philosophy
of complete affirmation, affirming the reality of the world from the ultimate standpoint
and the meaningfulness of socio-political action from the spiritual standpoint
He was sovereignly aware of the significance
of variations in the concept of man, his life and destiny, of the nation and of
humanity and the life of human race, which get reflected in the respective
philosophies of education, and developed his scheme of integral education
rooted in ‘the developing soul of India, to her future need, to the greatness of
her coming self creation, to her eternal spirit according to Shri Aurobindo,
has seen always in man the individual a soul, a portion of the Divinity enwrapped
in mind and body, a conscious manifestation in Nature of the universal self and
spirit. In his educational philosophy, Shri Aurobindo upheld the basic but
commonly forgotten principle that ‘it is the spirit, the living and vital issue
that we have to do with, and there the question is not between modernism and
antiquity, but between an imported civilisation and the greater possibilities
of the Indian mind and nature,not between the present and the past, but between
the present and the future’. In devising a true and living education, three
things according to Sri Aurobindo the man, the individual in his commonness and
his uniqueness, the nation or people and universal humanity should be taken
into account.
Conclusion :-
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 education 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.
