Sri Aurobindo's view on Education

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·           Name: Abulhasan H. Aabedi             

·          Roll no: 01

·          Topic: Aurobindo's view on Education

·           Paper no.4: Indian Writing In English

·           Class: Semester 01

·           Enrollment no.:2069108420180001

·           Batch: 2017~19

·           Submitted to Department of English MK Bhavnagar University.

·         Sri Aurobindo's views on Education

·         Introduction:

Philosopher Aurobindo (1872-1950) can be viewed as a 20th century renaissance person. Born in Kolkata, India, Aurobindo was educated at Cambridge University. He was an intellectual who intensely analyzed human and social evolution.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 need 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 (1956) 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”.

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:

 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".

      “The Education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.”

                                                       ~ Rabindranath Tagor

·        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 civilization 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.

·         Curriculum Transaction:

Aurobindo prescribed free environment for the child to develop all his latent faculties to the maximum and suggested all those subjects and activities should possess elements of creativity and educational expression. He wished to infuse a new life and spirit into each subject and activity through which the development of super human being could becomes possible. He laid down the following principle for curriculum-

Curriculum should be in such a way which child find as interesting.

It should include those entire subjects which promote mental and spiritual development.

It should motivate children towards the attainment of knowledge of the whole world.

It should contain creativity of life and constructive capacities

Aurobindo describes 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, chemistry, 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, type, cottage-industries, mechanical and electrical engineering, nursing etc at vocational 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 role 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 instruments 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.

·         School:

Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy of education aims at modifying the school curricula, maximizing the learning modalities, helping the child to achieve his potentiality at his own pace and level and devote his time to discover himself. This kind of schooling is seen as an anti-thesis of an imposed uniformity of prescribed courses and teaching which the traditional schools purport to do and can be linked to what was taught in schools under the colonial rule. The type of schooling visualised by Sri Aurobindo is seen as aiming to bridge the gap between the child’s life at school and that at home.

In contrast to the educational ideas of Sri Aurobindo , the present day education system in India is purely an instruction-of-information enterprise, supported by a subject-time-bound curriculum, which neither relates to the needs or abilities of the learner nor takes into consideration the way children learn successfully. Instead of being child-oriented it is subject-oriented. The schools focus on competition with others, mastery of subject matter for getting better marks or grades than on learning in cooperation with and from one another for personal growth and for welfare of others.

This is not exclusive to Indian phenomenon, rather all over the world education is largely reductionist, materialist, ego enforcing, and devoid of the joys of the spirit. It is in this context that there is a need to examine initiatives which are rooted in Indian tradition, seek alternatives in curriculum teaching and learning for measuring success, involve children in the process of learning and focus on learning from the another and not from an authoritative pedagogue.

·        Discipline:

Children should be provided with a free environment so that they are able to gain more and more knowledge by their own efforts. According to him any retrained and imposed environment stunt the growth and natural development. Aurobindo propagated the concept of self discipline which was the cure of impressionistic discipline.

·         Aurobindo’s Philosophy in Global Context:

The 20th century saw the birth of a new social phenomenon termed as ‘globalization’. The idea is that the world is evolving into an interconnected social system producing a corresponding higher level of collective consciousness on a planetary scale. Therefore, humankind now has a communal responsibility to facilitate evolutionary movement toward global social integration, the construction of a new social reality and to cultivate planetary collective consciousness. Due to the severity of present day international problems, the grand idea of globalization now holds minimal concern for the majority of educators.

Sri Aurobindo Ghosh strived to philosophically reconcile Western scientific rationalism with Eastern transcendent metaphysics into a holistic narrative of reality. His academic interest was interdisciplinary in scope: political science, education, sociology, psychology and philosophy. He was deeply influenced by Western thought, most significantly, Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and French intellectual Henri Bergson’s philosophy of cognitive evolution. The ideas of impending human evolution and global futurism became the foundation of his spiritual philosophy, sociological theories, political ideology and educational thought.

His approach to yoga is an integration of the physical social behavior with the metaphysical level as a holistic system of inner-self meditation and outer-social action: (1) knowing (seeking objective rational knowledge), (2) behavior (cultivating subjective positive social and humanistic mental models), and contemplation (nourishing reflective capitulation to the evolutionary energy of the absolute). His method of Integral Yoga is not a specific physical or psychological procedure of physical postures but it is to consciously surrender to evolutionary energy. This energy causes increasing levels of personal evolution, spiritual awareness, which is necessary for future social evolution.

In 1947, after the emancipation of India, Sri Aurobindo devoted himself entirely, along with his soul mate and social comrade, Mirra Alfassa (“the Mother”), to liberate the whole of humanity socially and spiritually by advancing Integral Yoga and planetary social activism toward human unity and global evolution.

Sri Aurobindo’s vision of evolution as a long slow process of dialectical energy of evolution being the intercourse between spiritual descent into the world and evolutionary ascent of consciousness. Aurobindo’s idea is that evolution is the incarnation of the Divine on earth through descent into the earth nature and thus into the collective embodiment of humankind. Within this framework, Sri Aurobindo asserts that planetary evolution has resulted in distinctive spheres of existence. In this sense, Philosopher Aurobindo (1872-1950) can be viewed as a 20thcentury renaissance person.

·        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.

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Works Cited

 <http://ddceadipur.org/ebooks/sriaurobindoeducation.pdf>.

<http://schoolofeducators.com/2012/04/aurobindos-vision-on-education/.>.