Sikśā - Learning and Education
स्वगृहे पूज्यते मूर्खः स्वग्रामे पूज्यते प्रभुः। स्वदेशे पूज्यते राजा विद्वान्सर्वत्र पूज्यते॥
A fool is worshiped at home, a chief in his town and a king in his kingdom. But a wise person is worshiped everywhere.
Learning in India through the ages had been prized and pursued not for its own sake, but for the sake, and as a part of Dharma. It was sought as the means of self-realization, as the means to the highest end of life. The individual's supreme duty is thus to achieve his expansion into the Absolute, his self-fulfillment, for he is a potential God, a spark of the Divine. Education must aid in this self-fulfillment, and not in the acquisition of mere objective knowledge. Indian seers and philosophers were held with utmost respect in society for their widsom rather than wealth or power. The Varna system encouraged a tradition where Brāhmins and monks could not possess wealth or weapons and had to survive through charity from rulers and the society at large.
India was home to the most ancient universities and hermitages in the world. Taxasila and Nalanda which stand in ruins today, were once prominent centers of learning and hosted students from around the world including Persia, China and Greece. Naimisha, a forest-university whose presiding personality Saunaka, was designated Kulapati - the preceptor of 10,000 disciples.
A Foundation for Education
The first necessity for the building up of a great intellectual superstructure is to provide a foundation strong enough to bear it. Those systems of education which start from an insufficient knowledge of man, think they have provided a satisfactory foundation when they have supplied the student with a large or well-selected mass of information on the various subjects which comprise the best part of human culture at the time. The school gives the materials, it is for the student to use them—this is the formula. But the error here is fundamental. Information cannot be the foundation of intelligence, it can only be part of the material out of which the knower builds knowledge, the starting-point, the nucleus of fresh discovery and enlarged creation. An education that confines itself to imparting knowledge, is not education. The various faculties of memory, judgement, imagination, perception, reasoning, which build the edifice of the thought and knowledge for the knower, must not only be equipped with their fit and sufficient tools and materials, but trained to bring fresh materials and use more skillfully those of which they are in possession. And the foundation of the structure they have to build, can only be the provision of a fund of force and energy sufficient to bear the demands of a continually growing activity of the memory, judgement and creative power.
- Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin 1909
Sikśak - Educationists
