Sri Aurobindo
Early Cultural Writings
(1890 — 1910)
Part Three. On Education
Education [1]
The subject on which I wish to address you this evening, and if you are sufficiently interested and have sufficient patience to pursue the subject farther with me, for perhaps another evening or two, is Education. Some of you may ask yourselves, why this subject rather than another? It is not a new subject but rather quite a threadbare one; you have already heard and read much about it and probably listened to much better lectures on the subject than any I can give you; it has besides been handled by a great many men in high places of authority; most of all, it has been taken up by no less a person than Lord Curzon himself and measures are to be formulated and perhaps carried into execution for the reform of what is defective in the present system. “What more do you want,” you will perhaps ask, “or why should we trouble ourselves about it? The Government of India will in its own good time reform the whole business and of course when their new system is in force the Baroda Schools and Colleges will assimilate themselves to it. Meanwhile it is quite superfluous for us to bother our heads about the matter.” Now in answer to that attitude I have to say this that the Government of India is in the first place not the fit body to formulate the necessary improvements and in the second place not the fit instrument to put them into force. It is not fit to formulate them because it cannot realise and feel as we do where the shoe pinches us and therefore in mending it [incomplete]