Promesse’s Ideal of Education

21.05.68

My dear Pitaji,

…Being a teacher I feel that I know too little about how to teach and now I am wondering about what I should teach. Mother has quite definitely said that the important thing is not the subject but the inner growth. To understand this is very difficult and from there to be able to do it is still more difficult….

…This year we were a batch of teachers and we had 30 students under us. The aim we decided on was to throw off all subjects or rather unite all subjects and teach them as one. Naturally you would be thinking that it would be a nice jumble and the students would learn nothing, but that is why I must first clarify what our aim in teaching is. Our main aim is to widen the consciousness of the student so that he can face the new world with an open mind and leap into it and not get held back by the ideas of the past. It is true that most of the subjects help you to widen your consciousness but these are mostly taught from the point of view of accumulation of knowledge which is totally false and valueless for us.…..

24.9.70

In this letter my main aim will be to try and tell you what we mean by education here and how we hope to follow it.

To educate a child is to help him to bring out the best of himself or otherwise to widen his consciousness so that he is ready to receive new ideas without difficulty.

If this is the aim, the role of the teacher as I believe is only to enter in contact with the student, watch his interests and try and help him to follow them up as best as he can. Many teachers come up with the problem that some of these students show no interest in anything; by anything they mean the given 8 classical subjects of English, French, Maths, etc.. This is absurd because I believe that only a handful of students may show interest in their lives, most will not. The work of the teacher is often to be able to place new subjects, new choices before him. The interest of the student may be very strange in nature, but I believe that still the teacher must follow it up. For instance, if a student is interested in the world of cinema, I believe that the teacher must find out what in this line attracts him. It may often be the fame you get, often the beauty, often the colorfulness, each of these attractions are basically healthy and the teacher can show the student by guiding him correctly new regions of colour (like the conquest of the moon), new regions of beauty (like nature), new regions of color (like the study of crystals and their breaking up of light), thus, step by step the student is led deeper and deeper into different realms which helps to widen him and also to fulfill his desire or interest. If the pupil is told not to take interest in cinema and forced out of it, his desire for that will be stronger, he has to look through the cinemas into a new world which is better and greater. This will reveal to him a new mode of looking into things, which helps him also to see beyond them and not get caught into its web.

On the practical plane, these ideas present quite a few difficulties, but I believe they can easily be overcome. The first condition for such a method of teaching is that the teacher himself must be perfectly fit to take it up and must believe in it fully. The second is the question of knowledge or wideness of the teacher. The third is the needed materials to suit his ideas, but this I believe, if the teacher is ingenious he should manage with less material, because the important point is the spirit in which the student must progress.

I believe I have given you a general outlook on my ideal of education so I will stop here and wait for questions from you to explain further if necessary.

Your loving son,
Promesse

02.03.76

…The system of Education here is slowly evolving and I am personally concerned that finally what we will have will be a system of learning Yoga; that is to say a system which insists primarily on self-realization and self-perfection….

Most of the teachers here are now convinced that for a better educational system, the first and foremost point is that we ourselves must be Yogis. So, I feel I cannot talk much about my work but must go on doing it…..

23.12.82

……My reason for moving out of the Centre of Education is quite different. I did not leave Education but what I left and still want to leave is the method of Education followed today. In this method one seeks to satisfy the needs of the parents, so that the child is like them. He should be able to establish himself in the social and economic world of today. I, on the contrary believe that we are here to build a new world where these standards have no value and that new valuations and standards should be put before the child. What these will be will get clearer as we seek for them or as we understand Mother and Sri Aurobindo in greater depth….