Rabindranath Tagore was not only
an outstanding poet but also a very committed educator. He has written
extensively in both Bengali and English about his philosophy of education as
well as his educational experiments and his desire to transform teaching and
learning in Bengal. Here is an example of his thinking about education and
desire to implement it in his institution.
1. Warm up activities
Rabindranath Tagore set up a university with the expectation that it
would be truly eastern and reflect the ideals of education that he cherished
and found in the system of education once practiced in the Indian subcontinent.
Find out the name and other details of the university from the net and talk to
the class for 5 minutes about it.
□ Did Tagore attend any university
in India or abroad? Discuss in a group.
□ What is your idea of the
university? Write a page on the topic.
2. Read the following excerpts
from Tagore's essay and answer the questions that follow:
Universities should never be made into mechanical organizations for
collecting and distributing knowledge. Through them the people should offer
their intellectual hospitality, their wealth of mind to others, and earn their
proud right in return to receive gifts from the rest of the world. But in the
whole length and breadth of India there is not a single University established
in the modern time where a foreign or an Indian student can properly be
acquainted with the best products of the Indian mind. For that we have to cross
the sea, and knock at the doors of France and Germany. Educational institutions
in our country are India's alms-bowl of knowledge; they lower our intellectual
self-respect; they encourage us to make a foolish display of decorations
composed of borrowed feathers ....
Man's intellect has a natural pride in its own aristocracy, which is
the pride of its culture. Culture only acknowledges the excellence whose
criticism is in its inner perfection, not in any external success.
When this pride succumbs to some compulsion of necessity or lure of
material advantage, it brings humiliation to the intellectual man. Modern
India, through her very education, has been made to suffer this humiliation.
Once she herself provided her children with a culture which was the product of
her own ages of thought and creation. But it has been thrust aside, and we are
made to tread the mill of passing examinations, not for learning anything, but
for notifying that we are qualified for employments under organisations
conducted in English. Our educated community is not a cultured community, but a
community of qualified candidates. Meanwhile the proportion of possible
employments to the number of claimants has gradually been growing narrower, and
the consequent disaffection has been widespread. At last the very authorities who
are responsible for this are blaming their victims. Such is the perversity of
human nature. It bears its worst grudge against those it has injured ....
In the Bengali language there is a modern maxim which can be
translated, 'He who learns to read and write rides in a carriage and pair.' In
English there is a similar proverb, 'Knowledge is power.1 It is an offer of a
prospective bribe to the student, a promise of an ulterior reward which is more
important than knowledge itself. . . .
Unfortunately, our very education has been successful in depriving us
of our real initiative and our courage of thought. The training we get in our
schools has the constant implication in it that it is not for us to produce but
to borrow. And we are casting about to borrow our educational plans from
European institutions. The trampled plants of Indian corn are dreaming of
recouping their harvest from the neighbouring wheat fields. To change the
figure, we forget that, for proficiency in walking, it is better to train the
muscles of our own legs than to strut upon wooden ones of foreign make,
although they clatter and cause more surprise at our skill in using them than
if they were living and real.
But when we go to borrow help from a foreign neighbourhood we overlook
the fact... that among the Europeans the living spirit of the University is
widely spread in their society, their parliament, their literature, and the
numerous activities of their corporate life. In all these functions they are in
perpetual touch with the great personality of the land which is creative and
heroic in its constant acts of self-expression and self-sacrifice. They have
their thoughts published in their books as well as through the medium of living
men who think those thoughts, and who criticise, compare and disseminate them.
Some at least of the drawbacks of their academic education are redeemed by the
living energy of the intellectual personality pervading their social organism.
It is like the stagnant reservoir of water which finds its purification in the showers
of rain to which it keeps itself open. But, to our misfortune, we have in India
all the furniture of the European University except the human teacher....
A most important truth, which we are apt to forget, is that a teacher
can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never
light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame. The teacher who
has come to the end of his subject, who has no living traffic with his
knowledge, but merely repeats his lessons to his students, can only load their
minds; he cannot quicken them. Truth not only must inform but inspire. If the
inspiration dies out, and the information only accumulates, then truth loses
its infinity. The greater part of our learning in the schools has been waste
because, for most of our teachers, their subjects are like dead specimens of
once living things, with which they have a learned acquaintance, but no
communication of life and love.
The educational institution, therefore, which I have in mind has
primarily for its object the constant pursuit of truth, from which the
imparting of truth naturally follows. It must not be a dead cage in which
living minds are fed with food artificially prepared. It should be an open
house, in which students and teachers are at one. They must live their complete
life together, dominated by a common aspiration for truth and a need of sharing
all the delights of culture. In former days the great master-craftsmen had
students in their workshops where they co-operated in shaping things to
perfection. That was the place where knowledge could become living - that
knowledge which not only has its substance and law, but its atmosphere subtly
informed by a creative personality. For intellectual knowledge also has its
aspect of creative art, in which the man who explores truth expresses something
which is human in him - his enthusiasm, his courage, his sacrifice, his
honesty, and his skill. In merely academicals teaching we find subjects, but
not the man who pursues the subjects; therefore, the vital part of education
remains incomplete.
3. Why does Tagore criticize
the Indian universities of his time?
4. What, according to Tagore, should a university do?
5. Why, do you think 'Modern India,' (Tagore's phrase) abandoned its traditional system of education? What have been the consequences?
6. Can you find out the equivalent of the maxim 'He who learns to read and write rides in a carriage and pair' in Bengali? Do you agree to what the maxim means?
7. Do you agree with Tagore when he says that the training we get in our schools makes us believe that we must borrow rather than produce?
8. Who is Tagore's ideal teacher?
9. What positive features of European universities does Tagore highlight in the essay?
10. Explain the following ideas in your own words:
a. Knowledge is power
b. It is better to train the muscles of our own legs than to strut
upon wooden ones of foreign make
c. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its
own flame
d. Intellectual knowledge also has its aspect of creative art
e. Our educated community is not a cultured community, but a community
of qualified candidates
11. What do the following words/terms mean?
a. hospitality
b. borrowed feathers
c. humiliation
d. prospective
e. initiative
f. trampled
g. recoup
h. perpetual
i. disseminates
12. Which of the following statements is true and which one false in the context of the essay? Write T or F beside the statements to indicate your answer.
a. Tagore believes that Indian universities do not collect and
distribute knowledge.
b. Educational institutions in India teach their students to borrow
and not produce.
c. Culture is concerned with excellence which is external.
d. Our educated community is a cultured community.
e. European universities encourage self-expression and self-sacrifice.
f. A teacher should have a living traffic with knowledge.
g. Educational institutions should constantly pursue truth.
13. What parts of speech are these words?
Inner, gradually, responsible, perversity, worst, intellectual,
express, skill
If you want to read the next lesson of this unit please click the link below:
Lesson 2: Access to Higher Education in Bangladesh
If you want to read the next lesson of this unit please click the link below:
Lesson 2: Access to Higher Education in Bangladesh
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