Shri Aurobindo's views on Education

Paper Name    :-  Indian Writing in English

Name               :-  Avani N. Dave

Roll No.           :-  2 

Semester         :- M.A- 1

Topic               : - “Shri Aurobindo's views on
                              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.

"The first principle of teaching is that nothing can be taught". This statement of Sri Aurobindo condenses a whole lot of theories of education and a new form of pedagogy closer to integral approach to education. It puts learning above teaching. It makes learning a self-starting, self propelling process. It redefines the role of the teacher from a mere possessor of information to a facilitator and a guide for the learner. I am not aware of any other profound statement in teaching which has such a permanent validity.''  - Shri Aurobindo        
 
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.