THE EDUCATIONAL MODEL OF INDIA FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SRI AUROBINDO & MOTHER

The Mother always said that to be a successful teacher one must be both a yogi and a saint, because if you are to manage a group of students, you have first to learn to manage yourself. In other words, teachership is not a profession but a mission. A teacher was never looked upon as a professional member of the society. The important and fundamental principles that based on the Ancient Indian Educational Systems have to be preserved, adapted and given a fresh lease of life in modern conditions. Another principle which the Mother dinned into our ears is that a successful teacher is also side by side a keen student. You do not cease to be a student the moment you become a teacher. You do not cease to progress in spiritual life the moment you become a guru. A guru has also to progress, otherwise he stagnates and forfeits the trust placed in him by the disciple. The moment one becomes a teacher, it is not that he has arrived. It is a fresh start, he opens a new page.

MAN MAKING EDUCATION

“EDUCATION IS THE MANIFESTATION OF THE PERFECTION ALREADY IN MAN”

All knowledge and all power are within. What we call powers, secrets of Nature, and force are all within. All knowledge comes from the human soul. Man manifests knowledge, discovers it within himself, which is pre-existing, through eternity. No one was ever really taught by another. Each of us has to teach himself. The external teacher offers only the suggestion which rouses the internal teacher to work to understand things. Then things will be made clearer to us by our own power of perception and thought, and we shall realise them in our own souls. Teachers here are trained in a way that they can teach on various Ancient Indian methods and handle different kinds of accelerated learning systems. The key aim of Rishi Aurobindo Teachers' Training Institute is to train the trainers and since inception it has been successfully producing quality trainers or teachers for the school communities. RATTI program for raising teachers/Instructors to imbibe the cardinal quality & education. We not only raise teachers . We also raise Educationalist, Counsellor, Content writer, Curriculum designer, Child counsellor, Entrepreneur, Educational project developer . And they are placed in different schools and other educational field across the globe.

BASIC PRINCIPELS OF EDUCATION BY SRI AUROBINDO

“The true basis of education is the study of the human mind, infant, adolescent and adult. Any system of education founded on theories of academic perfection, which ignores the instrument of study, is more likely to hamper and impair intellectual growth than to produce a perfect and perfectly equipped mind. For the educationist has to do, not with dead material like the artist or sculptor, but with an infinitely subtle and sensitive organism. He cannot shape the educational masterpiece out of human wood or stone; he has to work in the exclusive substance of mind and respect the limits imposed by the fragile human body.”

1. The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher is not an instructor or task-master, he is a helper and a guide. His business is to suggest and not to impose. He does not actually train the pupil's mind, he only shows him how to perfect his instruments of knowledge and helps and encourages him in the process. He does not impart knowledge to him, he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself.

2. The second principle is that the mind has to be consulted in its own growth. The idea of hammering the child into the shape desired by the parent or teacher is a barbarous and ignorant superstition. It is he himself who must be induced to expand in accordance with his own nature. There can be no greater error than for the parent to arrange beforehand that his son shall develop particular qualities, capacities, ideas, virtues, or be prepared for a prearranged career.

3. The third principle of education is to work from the near to the far, from that which is to that which shall be.We must not take up the nature by the roots from the earth in which it must grow or surround the mind with images and ideas of a life which is alien to that in which it must physically move. If anything has to be brought in from outside, it must be offered, not forced on the mind. A free and natural growth is the condition of genuine development.