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VIII Do We Need a New System of Education?
The title given to these lectures, "Our New System of Education", is almost a misnomer, for what Sri Aurobindo has in view is not a system, if by this word is meant a set of rules, methods and techniques. What is the essence of our new education? For the teacher, it is a specific attitude towards the child, for the child it is a way of living, growing and progressing. The teacher is there to ensure the protected freedom necessary to the child for his self-educative process. But for the purpose of carrying this attitude of the teacher and this way of living of the child into the collective life and work of the school, we have to construct a frame-work, to devise methods, to elaborate techniques. The principal aims of these methods and techniques are to co-ordinate the activities of the numerous teachers and students and safeguard the continuity of education throughout the school life. This casting into forms of the principles is unavoidable. Methods and techniques have: their importance; they must be constantly refined and perfected. But it is the principles that we have perforce to understand, assimilate and accept fully. It is to the principles that we have to turn whenever we are in difficulty. It is the principles that we have to keep in mind in our daily work and contact with the students. With this understanding, we may speak of "our new system of education". A person who would select any of our methods - for instance, the work-sheet technique - and incorporate it in the traditional education with the view to make the students work more or better, would in no way enter into the spirit of our new education, and the results would be partial and limited, and perhaps deceptive. What is the aim of our education? I need not repeat here what has been fully explained in the part Education and the Aim of Human Life. Page- 149 One sentence of The Mother sums it up: "We do not want brilliant students, we want living souls."¹ Let me only add that, in my opinion, the full acceptance of our new system will exclude the aim of assigning to the student a fixed amount of factual knowledge and consequently the preparation for examinations as they are nowadays almost universally understood. At least this applies to the Secondary schooling. What modifications this outlook will impose on our Higher Course, it is too early to say; it will have to be studied and investigated in the coming years. One may imagine provisionally that when a student has done satisfactorily - i.e., checked and controlled by the teacher - all the work assigned to Class 10 in any one subject, then a certain number of avenues of study will open to him in the Higher Course. If he has reached this level in two subjects a larger number of avenues will lie open before him and so on. The necessity of acquiring a certain mastery to be able to prosecute higher studies usefully would in this way be taken into account without imposing any compulsion on the students. Every student would be allowed to pursue the studies for which he has made himself fit and which correspond to the bent of his nature. I need not speak further on this matter. I am now coming to the end of these lectures, which I would call preliminary, as they contain more hopes than results. During these lectures, some of you may have thought: "Pavitra is telling us all kinds of nice things about the ideal child who, according to him, is always turned towards progress, full of good disposition, who uses his freedom to organize his work, gain knowledge and mastery, who is naturally concentrated and listens to his soul - an enchanting portrait! But we know how different the reality is. We have taken classes in our school for years; we know that there are good children, inclined towards study and congenial to our ideals, but we know also that there are other children who, though they may not be wicked, are unruly and not amenable Page-150 to advice or reason. Whatever we say, they only do what they like and some openly scoff at us. They have very little interest in knowledge and mastery, and they use the freedom that they get here to play and not work, and the more freedom they get, the more uncontrollable they become." Well, I may agree with you about this picture, though it may not be a complete view of the situation. But, then, why are we in such a mess? The goodwill and spirit of dedication of most of our teachers are undeniable; they try to do their duty and to bear their lot with equanimity. Why then are our children like that? Is my version of the needs of the normal child wishful thinking and this new education a mere mirage? To this I shall answer by giving what I believe is the diagnosis of our illness.
We have already repudiated the idea of coercing the child
to do his appointed work, we have given up the means of
coercion: we do not beat children and we have no punishment. We have eliminated the incitements usually offered
by society such as valuable diplomas, good salary, high
positions. The only means at our command to influence the
child is persuasion and reprimand. Neither of them brings
much result and they seem to become less and less effective
as the years pass. But we have hitherto kept the idea of a
fixed standard of knowledge up to which the children are to
be brought. This knowledge is communicated to the students by the teachers or the text-books. It has to be
remembered and assimilated, not discovered by experiment
and research. The tests that we have do not differ fundamentally from the examinations held outside: they do not Page-151 shows and exhibitions are given by us to children in a measure not matched by many institutions. If we have done away with yearly examinations, our aim is still to bring anyhow our students to a level at least comparable with the outside institutions. And by 'comparable' we mean that we expect them to have the same kind of formation, the same insistence on factual knowledge. And we would be quite pleased when they are recognized to be as good as graduates from other universities. Well, these aims are not natural to children of this age living and growing in freedom. They are imposed upon us and upon them by the present-day state of society. We have given them a good amount of free choice and we find that they do not turn with interest to the studies which we present to them. Mind! I do not say that mathematics, history, geography, etc., are not objects of interest for students. I am convinced that they are or can be. But the interest will be aroused and kept only if the joy of discovery and progress is the constant companion of study, and this comes about only when the study answers a need of the child. Traditional education has paid very little attention to the needs of the growing child and the ways in which the child satisfies them. Therefore I say that while keeping the aims of traditional education we have deprived ourselves of the means of achieving them. We have a foot in one boat and a foot in another, and the two boats are moving away from each other. Is it surprising that we find ourselves in an uncomfortable situation? What has happened to us is a clear proof that the traditional education is unable to evoke and sustain the interest of young people in the acquisition of knowledge - at least at the school age - without the succour of external compulsion or social solicitation. And the reason is that it does not give heed to the needs of the children as growing beings but wants to impose upon them what the adult world in its wisdom considers useful for them. Children up to 10-11 are relatively docile and yield to Page-152 persuasion or command. But when youngsters of the critical age (11-16) who have to build up the frame of their knowledge are left with unsatisfied needs, deviations and distortions take place that cause dullness in some, restlessness and boisterousness in others, in any case an aversion for imposed studies. Later, at about 17, when knowledge itself is an object of cogitation, they realize with stupefaction how they have wasted their time. They want to make up for the loss, but it is too late; they have lost the most precious years, when the mind is plastic, receptive and quick at learning. They lament that they have become dull and sluggish. Our experience has thus laid bare the defects of traditional education. What is the remedy? How are we to come out of this predicament? Either we keep the aims of traditional education and also suitable means to enforce their attainment, or we accept fully the ideal of a free growth of the child with an awakening to the inner guidance; and then we have to give up once for all the traditional aim and adopt squarely the aim set before us by Sri Aurobindo: "the evocation of the real man within", that is, the calling of the soul to the foreground as "the leader of the march set in our front" There is no doubt that we have truly chosen, even if we have not yet realized all the implications of our choice. The experience of this year in our pilot classes shows that this goal is not a Utopia. We had glimpses of it and those who witnessed feel sure that they are really on the way to it. I must admit that we shall have initial difficulties, for months and perhaps for years. But I believe that most of the difficulties are due to the distorting effect of the traditional system, of which I have spoken at length. I firmly believe that their force will gradually decrease and that they will not long hinder our progress. It is highly probable that the great majority of our children are capable of profiting by the new system, each according to his own capacity. In our extension programme for next year, we have to take into consideration the following facts: Page-153 1. We have to train ourselves and elaborate the methods and techniques; 2. The material means, which these methods and techniques require, may not be immediately available; 3. We have to earn the acquiescence and collaboration of as many teachers as possible. Some may already feel enthusiastic, but some will yield only to results. Let every one be free to follow his inclination. We shall all meet at the end. Someone told me: "What is new in your talks? Educationists the world over have been telling this since a long time." This statement shows that the person has understood very little if anything what I wanted to convey. It is true that there have been intuitive perceptions by a number of educationists, but the fundamental conception of the soul as the leader of the march, the evocation of the real man within as the right object of education is, to my knowledge, only found in Sri Aurobindo. The handing over of responsibility to the child as a means towards this evocation is also entirely new. It is true that there have been very valuable attempts to put into practice partial glimpses of the principles of our education. It is true also that modern child psychology confirms the soundness of Sri Aurobindo's views and consequently that the trend of educational research everywhere is pointing in the same direction. But, taken as a whole, conception of education set before us by Sri Aurobindo and expounded by The Mother gives an entirely new outlook. Face to face with it, one cannot but be struck by its newness, its originality, its comprehensiveness. It is like a new land that is disclosed to us and that we begin to explore. It is this feeling that I would very much like to have conveyed to you all. Page-154 |