1. EDUCATION FOR
TOMORROW
What innovations do we need ? and Why ?
- The modern age is marked by breath-taking discoveries and
inventions. But nothing is perhaps so significant and pregnant for the future as the
discovery of the child and the modern educationist’s efforts for the invention of the
New Education which would be appropriate to the ever-fresh discoveries of the mysteries of
the child.
- The modern educationist has been wonder-struck by the
tremendous feat of learning that the child performs in the first few years of its life.
What is the secret, he has asked, of this tremendous speed of learning ?
- He has observed, with fresh eyes, the child craving for the
moon, and its wonder at the stars that twinkle. And he has made fresh propositions. The
child learns so fast, he says, because it has no other occupation than that of learning ;
or rather, for the child, all the occupations are occupations of learning. To it, all play
is learning and all learning is a play. The child learns so fast, he continues, because it
has before it a living book, the open book of Nature itself. And the child learns so fast,
he concludes, because the child "reads: this book of nature with its total being, by
the happy exercise of all its faculties, by the concrete urge of experience.
- The modern educationist is led to apply these propositions
to all aspects of education, and he finds that this application implies a radical
change in the contents, methods and structure of education, and above all, in the very aim
of education.
- This is the central context of innovations in education all
over the world.
- We have begun to look upon the child as the creator of the
New Future. And the educationist is, therefore, necessitated to look into the Future, not
merely as a happy exercise of imagination or even of direction, but as an object of a
serious and scientific study that can be used as a tool for current planning. Indeed, at
no time was the Future so central to the present.
- An important realisation has come to us that the future that
the modern age has been of the fulfilment of one condition, namely, a universal and
lasting peace. It has been realised that wars must be eliminated, that actual wars are
fought primarily in the minds, and that, therefore, there is a need to change the very
working of the minds.
- The educationist is called upon to define this change and to
present new contents, methods and effects, enable us to develop not merely the normal
beings but to develop it in such a way and to such a degree that we would be able to transmute
ourselves, to eliminate from overselves the wars that are fought in our minds and to grow
into a new kind of global beings.
- The modern educationist is called upon to find the right
means of the education by which the growing child may, in due course, come to transmute
its ordinary texture and grow into a new kind of being, into a new lotus of light that
would radiate the breath of peace and harmony and live by intimate mutuality with the
entire universe.
- We must note that this task is new, its dimensions are
multiple, and it invites the educationist to soar high above all his narrow preoccupations
and to apply himself to the task of innovation with a new mind and a new heart. This task
is imperative and urgent.
- Is there, we have to ask, something in the child itself that
has an inherent capacity to grow like an angel of light and to meet all the pains of
growth without getting entangled into the knots of ordinary human thought and action,
which limit and bind man into the stifling grooves of jealousies and rivalries and narrow
and suicidal loyalties? For if there is nothing in the child which is intrinsically
angelic, if it is true that eros and thanatos are the alpha and omega of the child, then
it is impossible to predict any ultimate and harmonious survival of human existence on
this planet.
- But as we stand at the frontiers of science and of human
potentialities developed to their highest value, we are let to an optimistic conclusion.
The brilliant messages that come to us by flashes and inspirations, when studied
impartially with a scrupulous scientific rigour, give a clue to the domains of knowledge
that seem so pertinent to the basic premises of the educationist. These domains of
knowledge await the quest of the educationist and there is a promise that just as he has
discovered the child, he will discover also the soul of the child, the real angel of
light. And in this discovery may lie, it is suggested, the true justification of his
aspirations and his efforts.
- The educationist has today spoken of "Learning to
Learn" and of "Learning to Be" ; he has spoken of the necessity of the
freedom in the process of growth, and of the necessity of breaking the walls of the school
and of removing the boundaries of studies. But it has been suggested that it is only when
the soul of the child is discovered that we shall find the true justification of these
pronouncements of the modern educationist. It has been suggested that there must be
freedom in the process of education, not for any reason, but because the soul of the child
is, in its nature, free, and that it can grow to its fullness under the conditions of
freedom. There must be, it is affirmed, the breaking of the walls of the school, not for
any reason, but because the soul is not a prisoner, and because it is the breaker of the
bonds and letters. The boundaries of studies must be removed, it is confirmed, not for any
reason, but because the entire universe – the expanding universe – is the
soul’s own home. Learning must be to learn, for that is the essential method of
soul’s growth in the universe, and learning must be to be, because to know, to
possess, and to be is the natural breath of the soul. It is on these premises that, it is
suggested, the entire story of innovations in education can be truly understood, and it is
on these premises that our future innovations in education, I think, can find their right
direction and goal.
- Permit me, in this context, to present to you a passage from
Sri Aurobindo that indicates the value of the modern educationist’s discoveries and
the direction of his task ahead :
"The discovery that education must
be a bringing out of the child’s own intellectual and moral capacities to their
highest possible value and must be based on the psychology of the child-nature was a step
forward towards a more healthy because a more subjective system ; but it still fell short
because it still regarded him as an object to be handled and moulded by the teacher, to be
educated. But at least there was a glimmering of the realisation that each human being is
a self-developing soul and that the business of both the parent and teacher is to enable
and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral,
aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be
kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material. It is not yet realised
what the soul is or that the true secret, whether with child or man, is to help him to
find his deeper self, the real psychic entity within. That, if we ever give it a chance to
come forward, and still more if we call it into the foreground as "the leader of the
march set in our front," will itself take up most of the business of education out of
our hands and develop the capacity of the psychological being towards a realisation of its
potentialities of which our present mechanical view of life and man and external routine
methods of dealing with them prevent us from having any experience or forming any
conception." 1
- We speak today of the need for mass education. And in India,
we have indeed a massive problem of mass education. Mass media are, no doubt, a powerful
aid for the solution of this problem, and all the innovations that are being attempted in
this direction are not only welcome but ought to be augmented both in regard to quantity
and quality. But still we need to underline a very important phenomenon which has begun to
emerge more rapidly in recent times. It is the phenomenon of an increasing demand,
implicit or explicit, from the members of the masses to provide them individualized
education. This is a phenomenon which is not sufficiently known. But the psychological law
of awareness is that it always tends more and more towards ‘self-awareness’. It
is for this reason that wherever the mass media have begun to operate successfully, there
has arisen, within a short period, a need to provide means of education that will cater to
the problems of individual growth. Failure to provide this has led to a sense of
suffocation among the masses and to an implicit or explicit unrest. One of the root causes
of the massive youth unrest all over the world can be traced to such a failure. For while
the masses of the youth have become more and more aware by various media of education,
there has not been, at the same time, a sufficient realisation of the need to provide as
soon as possible individualized education to these large masses of the youth. We try to
persuade ourselves that we can still postpone the demands of what may be called massive
individualized education. But this postponement is neither possible nor desirable. An
important field of innovation in education, therefore, is how to provide individualized
education to larger and larger masses of people.
- We come now to the area of individualized learning itself.
Individualized learning means, it may be suggested, learning that is suitable and
appropriate to the individual in question. Each individual, although a member of a group,
and although he shares the commonness of the group to which he belongs, has still in him a
special and unique combination of qualities, latent or active, which follow a special law
of development towards the fulfilment of a specific and unique function. To use the Indian
terminology, we may say that each one of us has his own swabhava and swadharma and
a learning process that answers to the rhythms and cycles of swabhava and swadharma
is what may properly be called individualized learning. And it may safely be said that
the central preoccupation of all the modern educational methodology and innovations is to
invent a flexible structure of education that would fulfil the demands of individualized
learning.
- And we may at once state the heart of the problem that is
related to individualized learning. The central knot lies in the inter-twining of three
needs in a meaningful process of learning, the need for self-learning, the need for
different kinds and degree of help from the teacher, and the need for a group or a
collaborative study or work-experience. These needs are interlocked, and yet the
organisation demanded by each is so different from the one demanded by the other, that a
series of antinomies begins to emerge as soon as we try to conceive or work out some
complex and flexible organisation which would harmonize all the needs.
- A close examination of this issue may be suggested so that a
satisfactory solution could be evolved. To most of us, who address themselves to the
learning process which is circumscribed within the walls of the lecture system, syllabus
system and examination system, and yet who aspire to initiate and organize a meaningful
learning process, the solution of this problem is a thing of paramount importance.
- It seems to me that in order to arrive at this solution, a
number of difficult things need to be done patiently and laboriously, and each one of them
could constitute a project of innovative experimentation. For instance, the grouping of
students will need a new basis ; and this will largely be determined by the nature of
areas of studies in question. Teachers will need to prepare materials which can be studied
by students without much help, and there will be a need of a new material which can be
used as a part of the environment. Again, in regard to each area of study, we shall need
to determine with some precision the essential elements, and differentiate them from that
which is peripheral or which is a matter of detail. We shall need to determine several
different ways and approaches to learn the same topic or subject. We may also need to
enquire if there is something like most essential and indispensable knowledge that we, as
human beings, must possess, and if so, what is the best method of acquiring it.
- The way in which we should study, for instance, the inner
meaning of Indian culture is evidently to be different from the way in which we learn,
say, the details of some geographical area. History, for instance, can be learnt in
several different ways. It can be learnt predominantly through an account of events,
or else, through biographies or predominantly through the study of the growth of
institutions or cultures. One may like to begin the study of history from modern times and
then go backwards, or one may prefer to study "then" and "now" in a
systematic sequence.
- Moreover, areas of study where general stimulation is
needed, methods of environmental influence by mass media may be found suitable. And areas
of study where detailed precision is necessary, various methods of individual study or
methods of individual consultation with the teachers will have to be employed.
- There is also the question of time-tables. To create a
situation in which time-tables could be flexible is perhaps one of the most difficult
tasks of innovators in education. There are a number of areas of studies in regard to
which regular and fixed time-tables are necessary, but there are others where a free
pursuit without the constraints of "periods" is quite legitimate. It is true
that a ‘rough’ solution is always possible, but I do not think that we, as
educational scientists, should feel satisfied with any rough solutions. We need to invent
a new system which reconciles all the needs of the total process of learning accurately
and harmoniously.
- There are still further areas for our innovative effort. We
may state some of them.
- We witness today an endless explosion of knowledge, and we
do not know if we can psychologically contain this explosion. We need to ask, as in the Chhandogya
Upanishad, if there is knowledge possessing which all can be known.
- Is there, we may ask, an all-embracing project of
work-experience that would generate a continuing process of life-long education ?
- Is there a programme, we may ask, which would necessitate an
effortless synchronization of the needs of personal development with the needs of
collective development of humanity ?
- Is there, it may be asked, a tool of the acceleration of the
summing up of the past and the unfolding of the future?
- And we may ask if there is a secret which we can
educationally provide to the child whereby it can grow continuously and yet remain a
child, like Newton, playing with pebbles on the shores of the ocean of knowledge. In other
words, is there a secret of perpetual progress and of perpetual youth?
- All these are fascinating questions, and we can suggest that
all of them are centrally relevant to answer the question as to why we need a new
education for tomorrow.
- May I mention that I am one of you engaged in the task of
innovations, and it is with a sense of identity with you that I have presented these
questions so that we may all share together our quest. What I have presented is only a
small fraction of a number of problems that confront us in the field of innovations. And
this workshop is an excellent opportunity to pool together all our problems of
innovations, our experience and our reflections for the possible lines of fresh enquiry
and experimentation. I am sure that the results of this workshop will be of immense value
to the development of education in general and of education in India in particular.
---------------------------
1 Sri Aurobindo: Collected Works, Centenary Edition, Vol.
XV, pp. 27-28.
* *