Progress in Education – Steps

1-07-2015

Progress in Education – Steps

Mother desired to take Sri Aurobindo to the world. She desired that someone should restore harmony in her organisation. She endeavored to prevent the 3rd War. It is a yogic project meant for Her. Education is to me, the yoga of the society. Mortals can exert without mortification in human avenues. He took a great trouble to validate the thought of the Vedas and Upanishads. She said the Vedas had a vague knowledge of Supermind. HE showed that Vedanta shows the future by its profound thoughts. To Him, the Gita stops short of His ideal. His Essays on the Gita is the most well read work. He pointed out how the concepts of Spirit, Brahman, Infinity, Freedom, etc. lend themselves to expansion. In this process in more than a hundred ways He touches upon the buried wisdom of the past. One of his very profound Secrets is to reveal what the future has in store in the past. In illustrating knowledge by identity, he cites Man’s awareness of his being alive. Explanation of substance as extension of Brahman has its own yogic philosophy to academic portals. Matter as delight of being, Matter can disappear by a change of view, Mind’s birth, creation of life as well as substance, pronouncing the aim of the being to be, He rises to further heights. These are all the guideposts in thinking about Education. Man’s self-education is subconscious. Even there he saw the subtle knowledge increases as it gives out. We can see that process underlying the success of banking. Banks are a creative medium to multiply Money for the society, to multiply its own capital by services not intended. Even the physical multiplies its productivity as creativity, though it is unapparent. What we see in Her consciousness is creation of self-confidence through self-perception which is a part of the process of creating Individuality. The leaders of the world have educated the public to achieve their goal. After all, it must not be difficult to look back at our past strength and avail of it. It is what FDR did. When someone acts on the belief that one should survive on his own, he is not profoundly original, he goes back to the first principles. Mankind has the greatest resourcefulness to surrender a hard won prize over a thousand years and label it as a rational decision. It is not without the inspiration to see what was hard won will be protected by the people as the apple of their eye. Of course, it must be delivered through a strategy within their reach but must resonate with the possibility of its success. Half wages, Red-headed league, copying Encyclopedia open the eyes of the observant. The Agent grudged his cooperation because of his rubber and was unwilling to tell him who knows all. The stepwise methodology, the right strategy at every step made John Clay say, “You have done it completely successful.” Every story of Holmes is worth reviewing. 

In the greatest possible detail, list out where Education is under 1) its mental strategy as understanding, 2) the structure of its administration, 3) its cost, 4) the goals it has served in the recent centuries, 5) the social context of those decades, 6) the material and moral tools of those ages, 7) the way in which the tools furthered and strangled the cause of education, 8) the goals of those periods, 9) how well the goals were served, 10) the positive and negative character of curriculum, teaching, learning, classroom, mentality of the teacher and the taught, 11) the various changes till now, 12) the unexplored endowments of the present tools as well as components of the world of education, 13) how well we can benefit from the religious, political, military movements of the past, 14) the various levels of the goals now conceivable, 15) give deep and full consideration to the element of Time as well as the creative social potential of education, especially creation of wealth from the beginning, 16) what fresh roles governments can play now, 17) which are the infinite fields of inexhaustible potentials for education, 18) note there is no field that cannot contribute, 19) there is no field that cannot benefit, 20) see how education is a partial instrument that can fully serve the whole.

These are vast fields. A little will go a long way. E.g. memorisation of facts replaced by memorisation of argument will reveal that the argument has the inbuilt capacity to remember itself. In India that will initiate a revolution which cannot exhaust itself in a hundred years. The western youth whose ace trump is productivity, when he sees his creativity of personality at the present level, he will not listen to anything for the next hundred years. Map out the territory between the present and the future. Subdivide it into 20 stages, if not 200. Devise an appropriate strategy for crossing each stage. Audio visual education did wonders in the 40’s and 50’s. They did not cross the fringes of the possibility. Miss no step. Describe to yourself each step in its positive and negative character. Choose that strategy everyone will choose. In your own Mind forge the right links all the way through from stage 2 to stage 20. The whole field will rush headlong along a bypath horizontally. It is irresistible, inevitable, but, in spite of that, discouraging phenomenon, if the link reaches the very top, with the same force it will crash back to the main stream. The present tools cannot be availed of even 5%. Try 10% in the beginning and insist on exhausting the rest of the scope. New avenues by the hundred will present soon. Be Patient, use Silent will, try not to accomplish, give up work, take to thought, give up thought as far as possible, see at least in part it accomplishes itself. Non-work achieves more than work. When can I be Quiet in pursuit of Ananda?