Bibliographical Note The first edition of Education and the Aim of Human Life, published in 1961, comprised only the first section of the present book. A revised version of that text was issued in the following year. The text of the third edition (1967) was enlarged considerably by the inclusion of two new sections: "Our New System of Education", a transcript of a series of three lectures delivered by the author in 1961 to the teachers of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, and "Two Cardinal Points of Education", a collective memorandum written by the author and presented by him in 1965 to the Education Commission of the Government of India. This enlar

OUR NEW SYSTEM OF EDUCATION ( The Free Progress System ) A series of three lectures delivered by the means to the teachers Sri Aurobindo centre Of Education on September 24 and October 22, 1961. Page - 83 I How The Child Educates Himself In Sri Aurobindo's The Human Cycle we find an explicit and luminous passage, already quoted but which we repeat here because it reveals the secret of true education. Apropos of the new trends evidenced by the experiments in education carried out in various countries, he says: ...the business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his

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

TWO CARDINAL POINTS OF EDUCATION A Collective Memorandum presented in 1965 to the Education Commission, Government of India, by P.B. Saint Hilaire (Pavitra), Director, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, on behalf of the Teachers of this Institution.* ""This Memorandum is an official document stating the position of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. It is in fact a summary of the thesis expounded in the previous pans of this book. The reader will excuse the unavoidable repetitions. Page-155 In the right view of things the true purpose of education is not only to bring out of the child the bes

V A Valuation of the New System We have already compared the traditional and the new systems on many points. Let us summarize our results to derive further conclusions. 1. At every moment the student is to some extent free to select the work he will do, i.e., he himself has to organize his work. At times he will be engaged almost exclusively in one subject; at other times he will be less exclusive - that does not matter much. There is in the child a self-regulating. principle - his soul that tends towards a harmonious development, provided the child has been given the freedom and responsibility and has had time to shed the bad habits of the past. T

II The Conception of Progress and the Present World Crisis There was a time when society was almost static in its vision. Children followed the occupation of their parents and transmitted their knowledge and skill to their own children. There was little change from one generation to another. Civilizations and empires grew, bloomed and decayed, without affecting the ways of living and the outlook of the masses. What men perceived in the contemporary events which they witnessed was their intensity, their violence, not their evolutionary trend, which was invisible to them. One can really say that the life horizons of the

VII The Task of the Educator 1. As I have already said, the first task of the teacher is to maintain the class environment well supplied with objects of interest suited to the varied grading of his students. He has to prepare the work-sheets - a considerable work - and the related documentation (photos, pictures, etc.). I hope I have clearly shown that the self-education which is the core of the method can only start and sustain itself when the child finds a satisfaction of his needs in the school equipment. 2. The second task is to organize and maintain the goodwill of the students. For this purpose the teacher must carefully observe the behaviour of e