4. An Experiment in Education for Tomorrow An unprecedented kind of experiment in education was launched by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, when in 1943, a school came to be established at Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry with merely 20 students on its rolls; soon it began to grow, and in 1951, when the number of students had increased, and studies in Higher Education had to be organised, it was expanded into Sri Aurobindo International University Centre. Eminent educationists of the country welcomed the formation of this University Centre, and the foremost educationist of the country, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherji, specially came to Pondicherr

7. Value-Oriented Education I Values, secularism and spirituality At the outset, it seems necessary to deal with the concept of secularism, since we may observe that this concept is ridden with ambiguities in our Indian situation; and it is thus left to every one to interpret it in any way one thinks best. There is a view of secularism, which consists of equality before law irrespective of caste, religion or race. But this view often tends to become tainted in actual situations where there are unreasonable demands coming from religious groups, which insist on special provisions which tend to mitigate the idea of equality before law. There is al

6. Peace through Learning and Education Peace is often interpreted to mean absence of war. This is not entirely illegitimate; but on a close scrutiny we find it to be inadequate. Absence of war does not rule out prevalence of tensions and even of cold wars. And where tensions exist, hot war can at any time become a concrete actuality. We must, therefore, go to the root of the matter and define peace in positive terms. Fundamentally, peace is a collective phenomenon, and it connotes a collective state of harmony, which can provide a stable base for activities of growth, development, friendliness, comradeship and brotherhood. It is true

3. Coming of the 21 st Century: Implications for New Orientations for Education An important fact that we need to underline is that humanity is undergoing an unprecedented crisis today, and we cannot hazard to look into the coming of the 21st century without taking serious note of this crisis, and how it has developed through the course of the 20th century. The 20th century has been an unquiet age of gigantic ferment, chaos of ideas and inventions, clash of enormous forces, creation, catastrophe and dissolution amid the formidable agony and tension of the body and soul of humankind. During this period, the age of reason reached its highest p

5. Lifelong Learning Project The aim would be to make available appropriate opportunities for lifelong learning to increasing number of people without regard to restrictions of previous 'education or training, sex, age, handicapped condition, social or ethnic background, or economic circumstance. Lifelong learning is the process by which individuals continue to develop their knowledge, skills, interests and cultural attainments throughout their life times. Lifelong learning is a "motherhood" issue, and it overarches all aspects and all levels of learning, formal, non-formal and informal. Justification of lifelong learning project is to be v

10. Towards a New System of Education India has had in modern times five greatest educationists. Significantly, all of them were stirred by the teacher-pupil relationship that flourished in the ancient Indian system of education, and all of them renewed for us the ideal and practice of education that the gurukulas or the ashrams nourished in the days of Vasishtha and Vishwamitra, of Aruni and Yajnavalkya. Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati visualised clusters of teachers spread over the entire breadth and length of the country nestled in groves of woods and trees where pupils could be trained in the ancient knowledge contained in the Veda as also i

2. Society, Morals and Ideals We are not alone in the world; that is the rub for the egoist; that is the comfort and solace to the collectivist; that is the problem for the moralist; and that is the enigma that inspires the idealist; Human nature is complex and it is at once egoistic, collectivistic, moralistic and idealistic. It is easy to dwell upon one of the elements of this complexity, and emphasise it against the others; but the emphasis on one or the other does not abolish the complexity and unless we find a true equation and reconciliation of the elements of the complexity, we cannot realise any true harmony and peace. And in the meantime, we shall hav

8. Value Oriented Education II We are passing through a critical stage of a battle between the best possibilities and the worst possibilities. At a time when forces of unity and harmony can triumph and science and technology can be used to abolish poverty and deprivation, precisely at that time, the forces of violence and gravitational pulls of impulses of the lower human nature are pressing forward on a global scale. Rationality, in which humanity has placed great trust for arriving at fulfilment of its ideals of true knowledge and comprehensive knowledge, appears to be overtaken by the forces of Unreason. It has, therefore, become imperative to explore

1. Education at Crossroads Education is at crossroads. The road on which education has been running at present has reached dead ends from several points of view. Underdeveloped and developing countries like ours have awakened vastly to the value of education; but the road is unable to bear the burdens of increasing role of education. Requirements of economic development oblige governments to frame and pursue objectives that tend to impose heavy burdens on people, who, in turn, project expectations in regard to education which cannot be fulfilled by the present system of education. Sociology, in the whole world, is undergoing radical changes, since th