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Towards a New Model of Education (a Consciousness-based Approach)

Knowledge Base

by Roy Posner and MSS

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The new model of education supports the development of the true Self of the individual, of self-learning, of bringing out his/her spirit without memorization, testing, forcing knowledge. It enables every child to become a genius.

 

Introduction Definitions, Meaning, Benefits of Education Limitations of Current Education Potential and Principles of a New Education Self-Learning On the Development of Thinking Enabling Genius Soul-based Learning Experience in Life Beyond Knowledge Success and Accomplishment in Life

Character & Personality Building Developing the Inner, Higher, Spiritual Consciousness The Role of the School The Role of the Teacher Child Education Other MSS Articles on Education The Education Center (Growth Online portal)

 

 

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INTRODUCTION
(top)

In this section of the Growth Online Knowledge Base, we present our original thoughts, as well as links to our original articles on the Society's Growth topic of "Towards a New Model of Education." (If you wish, you can see our other Society's Growth categories.)

 

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Definitions, Meaning, Benefits of Education
(topics)

Education
Education is the social organisation of knowledge. (MSS)

Education
Education helps the next generation to acquire all that the past generations have accumulated as practically usable knowledge. (MSS)

On Education
The system of education brings to posterity the entire knowledge of the past in essence in a decade or two. Education overcomes Time. (MSS)

The Nature of Education
Education is the psychological inner organisation that effectively operates upon the outer mechanical organisation of the society. (MSS)

Definitions of How We Are Educated
-Education is the experience of thoughts that by their transparent depths reach the substance of the Mind so that it can powerfully move the body to action.

-Mind getting knowledge on its own and offering it to the vital and body is Education

-Education is the descent of information, skill, capacity down to the body for it to act upon. (MSS)

Society Raises the Average Man
Suppose a primitive man who had admired a genius of his times appeared today in a university convocation either at Oxford or Harvard, he would find the first graduate he meets a genius. And going round the campus he will exclaim that 'everyone here is a genius.' As times change and several centuries pass, the society subconsciously tries to raise the average man now to the level of the greatest of men of earlier times. (MSS)

Education Enables Empowerment of Common Men
Toynbee says the intelligentsia produces revolutionary changes in 136 years. Before that, leaders of the society, including administrators were chosen by experience or birth. Education usurped that position. Experience is abridged by education. (MSS)

Education Enables Self-Respect and Self-Confidence
Education develops self-respect as well as self-confidence. (MSS)

Untitled
Education is the experience of the Mind  (MSS)

Related MSS Articles on Education
Education

Education the World Does Not Know

School that is Miniature of Future Society

Notes on the 200 Points of Education

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Limitations of Current Education
(topics)

General Limitation of the Current Education

Education Enables Conscious Preparation of Student
The success of the educational system is in its ability to help the pupil cross the line between the unconscious and conscious preparations. (MSS)

Horizontal Expansion vs Quality of Growth of Education in Last Hundred Years
In the last hundred years general education has moved in horizontal expansion and not in vertical growth of quality. (On a scale of 1 to 1000 one hundred years has succeeded in moving education from point 7 to point 8, from memorization to understanding.) (MSS)

 

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Education Potential in India
-In the last hundred years general education has moved in horizontal expansion and not in vertical growth of quality. On a scale of 1 to 1000 one hundred years has succeeded in moving education from point 7 to point 8, from memorization to understanding. India, in view of the inner light, has the opportunity to jump to 80 from point 3 if only she links the present to the potential of the past heritage. If all the progressive schools in India, about 100 or 500 of them, UNDERSTAND the above truth, overnight they can devise a method for implementation. I can do it readily if anyone wants it. Should any school fulfill the prerequisites and need a syllabus for Spiritual education, it can be readily supplied.

-To link the Spiritual heritage of India to Indian education is a stupendous task not attempted till now. (MSS)

Western System of Education
The Western system of education can produce and has produced wonderful technology. It is a system that organizes arch Ignorance. [i.e. there is a lack of knowledge of all the other domains of existence, such as nature of self-power, true self, infinite potential, spirit, subtle laws of life, etc.] (MSS, with addition)

Memorization that Holds Back
One endowed with a capacity for original thinking or one who is trained by meticulous education to turn out to be a great mind, will escape that Grace, lost in the power of memory or a plethora of facts, a misnomer for general knowledge. (MSS)

 

 

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Potentials and Principles of a New Education
(topics)

Overview of the New Education
The New Education enables full development of personality and character of the individual, the development of full capacities necessary for achievement in life, the ability to truly think instead of parroting information, the ability to self-learn and be infinitely self-motivated to learn, the enabling of the emergence of the full and True self of the individual, the acquisition of a knowledge that is dynamic in that it also has the full experience of that knowledge, the ability to have the knowledge and a lifetime's experience of a seventy year life at a young age through a few years of learning, an understanding of the infinite potentials of life, including the acquisition and utilization of the vast power of the spirit. 

Principles of A New Education

• Education should seek out the soul in each student.

• Education should give the student the freedom to discover his/her own soul and thus his/her deepest interests.

• No memorization, no testing.

• The teacher is there to guide, not to instruct.

• No punishment at any level, including psychological is permitted.

• The teacher must find his own inner being in order to recognize the true self of the student.

• Each student by realizing one's Self can very rapidly acquire knowledge.

• Each student can in this way become a genius.

• Schools organized around these principles will produce endless geniuses in their communities.

• These approaches will give students enormous advantages in life.

• Students can learn to bring the spirit into the becomings of their lives, instantaneously releasing the infinite potentials of life.

 

• The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher is not an instructor or taskmaster; he is a helper and a guide. His business is to suggest and not to impose. (Sri Aurobindo)

• The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself, which is best, and make it perfect for a noble use. (Sri Aurobindo)

• To learn for the sake of knowledge, to study in order to know the secrets of Nature and life, to educate oneself in order to grow in consciousness, to discipline oneself in order to become master of oneself, to overcome one’s weaknesses, incapacities and ignorance, to prepare oneself to advance in life towards a goal that is nobler and vaster, more generous and more true … (The Mother)

• The finest present one can give to a child would be to teach him to know himself and to master himself. Essentially, the only thing you should do assiduously is to teach them to know themselves and choose their own destiny, the path they will follow; to teach them to look at themselves, understand themselves and to will what they want to be. (The Mother)

• The school should be an opportunity for progress for the teacher as well as for the student. Each one should have the freedom to develop freely. (The Mother)

• The wise teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed, which will grow under the divine fostering within. (Sri Aurobindo)

• It is not through uniformity of programmes and methods that you will obtain the unity of education. (The Mother)

• The true, the supreme Unity expressed itself in diversity. It is mental logic that demands sameness. In practice, each one must find and apply his own method, that which he understands and feels. It is only in this way that education can be effective. (The Mother)

• School is just a preparation to make the students capable of thinking, studying, progressing and becoming intelligent if they can - all that must be done during the entire life and not only in school. (The Mother)

Social Evolution of Young Adults through Education to Have the Ripeness of Maturity

• Socially my aim is to produce a child (through education) at the age of 18 or 20 with the potential maturity of one at the ripe old age.
• It is an abridgement of Time apparently, but in fact it is hastening the ripeness of experience --  maturity.
• Maturity, ripeness are not aspects that can be hastened, but that which enables them -- Freedom, awareness, choice, direction, better still self-direction, etc. -- can be given to the maximum possible extent. (MSS)

 

The New Education
Examinations test the level of memory equipment.

Going into the world, the student discovers what he remembers and why.

The student allowed to pick up facts himself at school will be socially mature on leaving school.

Original thinking is not [currently] the aim of education.

Schools fostering it become the society to young children.

The emphasis usually falls on one aspect.

It usually falls on Money.

Money can be replaced by Man.

Society, then will be addressing the root causes of all evils.

An education to equip the student to become an integrated Man is possible today, especially with the Internet. (MSS)

Using the Force to Bring the Future into the Present in Education
-Now that the Force that can abridge evolution of 30,000 years into one lifetime is there in the atmosphere, it is possible to raise the quality of education sky--high and spread it all over humanity.

-I should say the atmosphere now carries the Golden Force which was not there before 1956.

-As a first step, our aim is to prepare the student who leaves school at 15 to be as fit as one of 50 or 60 years. Our aim is turning out a student who will have the mental age rather than social age of 50 or 60.

-The Force that is there in the atmosphere can raise everyone in the population to be a genius. (MSS)

New Consciousness that Will Emerge in the New School of Education
We have to accept the New philosophy and create new attitudes that will  express the new consciousness.  That is our work in the school. (MSS)

Education from Within
In America, the two most famous businesspeople are Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple. They are both legendary college dropouts, as they sought knowledge within themselves, gained it, and changed the course of technological and world history. Wherever knowledge is found is Education. It is best when it originates Within, and the information needed to fulfill it comes from whatever resource is available -- formal or informal. That dynamic is also an indicator of the emergence of the True Individual.

Ultimate Spiritual Definition of Education
The Individual Divine learning of the Transcendental Spirit is education proper. This is not an idea the world is familiar with. (MSS)

Raising Intelligence through Subtle Education
Knowledge is power, Intelligence brings knowledge, as does education. Education can also raise intelligence, if it is subtle education. (MSS)

 

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The Process of Creation in Education
The process of education is the process of creation, which is still not only not known to the world but the world has not raised that question yet or formulated it. (MSS) [It is a process that moves from a conception and direction that is a force that is turned into a power through the organization of that conception which manifests as great results. This can be applied at the level of the educator and the educated.]

Education is "Yoga" of Collective
The individual can follow principles of consciousness to evolve. Those principles are formulated as methods of yoga in the East. For the modern organized society that "yoga" of (much more limited) understandings about life come through the system of education. In that sense we can say that education is the yoga of the collective. One day education can truly become yoga (i.e. a knowledge of the highest high) for all people. (Paraphrase of MSS)

Education & Values
Education has a vast scope for enabling values to spread throughout society.

Education, Values, and Life Response
Education can organize unorganized energies of youth through dissemination of knowledge, including the knowledge of values. Education itself however needs to be organized to comprehend and explain those values. In the business world, the value of values is appreciated. It produces results, and profits. Now it needs to come to education, where the scope is greater. Educators can learn from the experience of businesses, and teach the benefits of values, look around, and see the benefits when applied to the wider life and its various disciplines.

Experience of, perceptions of, and a knowledge of Life Response would be very helpful here because it shows how transitions towards values quickly produce results. Such knowledge can be disseminated through education. Educators themselves experiencing the wonders of life response as a result of making the inner transitions that attract its sudden and abundant appearance would not only champion values, but a knowledge of the various triggers that enable life response to occur -- including higher levels of cleanliness and orderliness, a switch from a negative to a positive attitude at a crucial moment, accepting what life gives, knowing what one truly wants, greater psychological strength, etc. These can be taught as values.

Related MSS Articles on Education

Education

Education the World Does Not Know

School that is Miniature of Future Society

Notes on the 200 Points of Education
 

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Self-Learning
(topics)

The Third Way in Education
Rarely do we find the educational system fostering the natural process of spontaneous, self-motivated self-education in which children learn just as they play and as a form of play out of their innate curiosity and urge to acquire knowledge of the environment. Internationally, there have been many efforts to find a 'third way' that suffers neither from the sad neglect all too common in low quality public education or the compulsive pressures exerted even on very young children by competitive, career-conscious school systems.

Self-Learning
-Ultimately education for the Individual is what he learns on his own. This is evident in the genius who has nothing to learn from outside.
-When the educator SEES that "All learning is self-learning", he ceases to be a teacher and begins to be an educationist. (MSS)

Self-Learning
-We have arrived at the position that self-learning is the only significant learning.
-It is possible to show that when the child does it herself she does it better. So, "Do it yourself" is a great rule. It can be raised to "Do it by your inner best". That never fails. (MSS)

Child's Interest in Learning
Why is the child interested? The in-gathering energy interests itself. Why should the energy gather in the child? Because it is a growing organisation.

Education from Within
In America, the two most famous businesspeople are Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple. They are both legendary college dropouts, as they sought knowledge within themselves, gained it, and changed the course of technological and world history. Wherever knowledge is found is Education. It is best when it originates Within, and the information needed to fulfill it comes from whatever resource is available -- formal or informal. That dynamic is also an indicator of the emergence of the True Individual.

The New Education
Examinations test the level of memory equipment.

Going into the world, the student discovers what he remembers and why.

The student allowed to pick up facts himself at school will be socially mature on leaving school.

Original thinking is not [currently] the aim of education.

Schools fostering it become the society to young children.

The emphasis usually falls on one aspect.

It usually falls on Money.

Money can be replaced by Man.

Society, then will be addressing the root causes of all evils.

An education to equip the student to become an integrated Man is possible today, especially with the Internet. (MSS)

Serving the Soul/True Self of the Individual
If an individual's soul is served, then he can learn completely on his own. The more we tend to the individual's depths down to his True Self, or the more one finds it on one's own, the more one is capable of realizing the truths of life on our own.

Developing Capacities of Self-Discrimination
-Children can be made to see for themselves what is elevating and what is depressing. Self-discrimination is best.

-Education of the child can be directly organised so as to create the faculties of suggestion, discrimination, inspiration and revelation.
-The seat of Genius is in the Intuitive Mind where the intuition is of the object outside. When that intuition shifts to inside, the intuitional knowledge changes into Supramental knowledge.

-Developing faculties of discrimination in ourselves is a help to pass it on to the child. (MSS)

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On the Development of Thinking
(topics)

Thinking and Understanding in Education
In today's educational world which aims at thinking as a goal seriously, the best they reach is understanding. The faculty of thinking is still left to the individual in the unorganised sector. (MSS)

The Future is for Thinking
The future is for thinking, not for memorization. (MSS)

Memorization to Understanding to Thinking
We have moved from memorization to understanding. The child understands what it is taught or reads. That is understanding. That is not thinking. The child that questions thinks. Shifting from understanding to thinking will be a great thing. Though this is the unconscious basis of Western education, they have settled for understanding. Let us move to thinking. Understanding explains how. Thinking tells us why. (MSS)

 

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Memorization that Holds Back
One endowed with a capacity for original thinking or one who is trained by meticulous education to turn out to be a great mind, will escape that Grace, lost in the power of memory or a plethora of facts, a misnomer for general knowledge. (MSS)

On Memorization
When people speak against memorization as a method of teaching, we are told all the stalwarts in the arena of world politics, especially Indian politics are the products of a system of which memorization is an essential part. It is true that memory is a great desirable power with astonishing results that astound us.

But as a tool of teaching, it is more a bar than a help. (MSS)

Absorbing Child's Energies in School by Thinking
A thinking child is slow in speech. Teach the children to think, their energies will be blotted out. Feeling does it more. No excess energy will be on the surface if the child learns to think and feel.

Understanding Over Rote Memory in Child Learning
The child becomes dependent on memory when memory is fed. The child overcomes that dependence when the understanding is addressed. (MSS)

Conditioning in Current Education
One's capacity of education is mutilated, oppressed, and tyrannized into learning what is taught. Education is thus converted into conditioning. (It is not wrong for children to be conditioned at home, at school, at the work spot and the society at large. Till now it was necessary and inevitable in the circumstances. But that is not education.) (MSS, slightly modified)

From Memorization to Understanding to Thinking in the West
Just now we see the West has emphasized UNDERSTANDING [in Education] in preference to memorization. It is great. That understanding has yet not risen to thinking.  (MSS, with slight addition)

From Rote Leaning to Child Endlessly Wanting to Learn
It is a job for the mother to compel her child to sit down and do its homework. It is equivalent to punishment. There are schools which give no homework. They help children to learn reading at the age of 4 or even 3. Such a child, as soon as she wakes up, takes a book and starts reading. All day long that child is found reading. The job of the parent is to continue to supply books. This is not only true in learning. If you teach workers the right skill of doing their work, they won't go home until their work is perfectly done.

In a school where rote memory was insisted upon, writing composition was a punishment. In a year the students used to write twelve compositions of half a page each. Then they were taught to write English. The whole atmosphere changed. Every boy was anxious to write. That year they all wrote 45 compositions of 1 pages each. About ten students started summarizing retold stories. Most of them did so for ten or fifteen books. Two boys each wrote 600 pages summarizing 52 retold stories. Work has a spirit in it. To evoke that will give great results. (MSS)

How to Produce Thinkers in Education
To produce a thinker the system must prepare to draw upon the social wisdom that already exists in the social atmosphere. (MSS)

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Enabling Genius
(topics)

On Bringing Geniuses to the Fore of Society
We can nurture the genius individuals that are emerging in life, and help bring them to the fore of society, collective, or group. If we were to search for such individuals we should look out for the following market indicators:
-Behind, it will lurk as essence of talent, a conceptual comprehension of the field hitherto unknown.
-Such people would be ridiculed in their own work spot.
-The potential candidates will be, more often than not, QUIET and will be lost inside themselves.
In essence such genius is the Spirit emerging in that individual in a new form. He or she are potential pioneers of the NEW, embodying the ever-new, i.e. creative manifestations of the Divine Spirit in forms of Force in life. (Expansion on ideas of MSS)

Mental Education and Development of Genius
Mental education gives the understanding of the relationships between ideas which when formulated from below makes one a Genius. This formulation can receive the powers of genius from above if the faith is not in the formulation. (MSS)

Primrose School in India
'Every child is a potential genius...' (MSS)

To visit the Primrose School, click here.

Drawing Out the Genius of the Child
"Educate" has a Greek root, meaning to draw out. The genius is there in the child. It has to be drawn out into play.

Recognizing the Genius in the Child
The child of the society is the cream of the ascending social progress that is material success, educational enlightenment. Progress in society is initiated by pioneers, not the elite. Here is an appeal, to pioneer the social progress in education. It is to recognize the Genius in every child. To start with, it is your own child. (MSS)

Intuitive Mind as Seat of Genius
The seat of Genius is in the Intuitive Mind where the intuition is of the object outside. When that intuition shifts to inside, the intuitional knowledge changes into Supramental knowledge. (MSS)

Tending the True Self that Fosters Individuality

Individuality begins at the point where we psychologically and outwardly express who we truly are. Moreover, those who are truly conscious of their own uniqueness will more readily bring it to the surface, creating real benefit for themselves and the world at large. Finally, the society that fosters that indwelling true self and individuality of the person will create a multiplying effect of ever-increasing creativity and accomplishment in the world.

In the recent powerful Indian film ‘Like Stars on Earth (Every Child is Special),’ we see this latter dynamic in action. There a young boy with dyslexia becomes an outcast from his peers and the school system. And yet one progressive teacher steps forward, sees beyond the surface and into the depths of the child, fostering his individuality as a painter with a genius-like artistic temperament. This, it turns out is the complete opposite of the mass education system that operates on a hierarchical structure, with the teacher all knowing; departing knowledge to a strained or reluctant classroom of children. A better system would therefore be the opposite; where the teacher begins by discovering the true essence, spirit, and aspirations of each child, drawing it out, which allows it to flow and expand through a process of self-discovery. This approach not only energizes the child to no end, but turns learning into a joyful experience.

This approach to education -- and indeed to life itself -- suggests that there really is an essence and true self of each person. That somehow we are here to express our True Individuality, which not only expresses through our own creative, individualistic path, but has a unique influence and impact on the world. Some go a step further and see true individuality as our ‘spirit,’ our spiritual essence; even our evolving soul that has a mission and purpose trying to express through the unique capacities and potentiality of the person it inhabits.

In sum, the person who becomes consciously aware of his or her true self will facilitate the expression of his or her individuality, thereby accelerating the process of personal accomplishment and growth for themselves and the world. Moreover, social organizations where facilitators like teachers and leaders bring out the true essence and potential of individuals will foster an ever expanding community of entrepreneurs, creative artists, and free thinkers. One could even imagine a society where the number of geniuses expands a thousand-fold through this dynamic. In fact, one Indian school taking this approach advertised its goal as “every child a genius.”

Albert Einstein, Leonardo D Vinci and others were not only infinitely creative individuals expressing their individuality, but had a conscious or semi-conscious sense of their essence and purpose. We too can come to know out true selves and purpose; our inner mission, by looking deep within, which will release powerful energies that will become a springboard for infinite realization and accomplishment in life.

Genius Rejects Education
Genius is one who rejects the school and seeks education on his own. (MSS)

Genius Ultimately Learns on His Own
Ultimately education for the Individual is what he learns on his own. This is evident in the genius who has nothing to learn from outside. (MSS)

Serving the Soul/True Self and Genius
To the degree that the individual's soul is served, genius will emerge.

The Force and Genius
The Force that is there in the atmosphere can raise everyone in the population to be a genius. (MSS)

Spiritual Personality and the Genius
Can schools create this Personality and develop it? Here there is a selfish personality, selfless personality, social personality, psychological personality and finally Spiritual Personality. To create a grade scheme or syllabus to develop these levels of personality is not a difficult task. The teaching community should realise the TRUTH of these values. The crown is the Spiritual Personality that creates the GENIUS. As the mass of people do not believe in this possibility, this subject remains unexplored. (MSS)

Untitled
That teacher who sees this uniqueness in a child will have discovered the potential genius of human Mind. (MSS, slightly added to)

The New Education
Examinations test the level of memory equipment.

Going into the world, the student discovers what he remembers and why.

The student allowed to pick up facts himself at school will be socially mature on leaving school.

Original thinking is not [currently] the aim of education.

Schools fostering it become the society to young children.

The emphasis usually falls on one aspect.

It usually falls on Money.

Money can be replaced by Man.

Society, then will be addressing the root causes of all evils.

An education to equip the student to become an integrated Man is possible today, especially with the Internet. (MSS)

Related Thoughts on Genius, Original Thinking

MSS Articles on Education

Genius of the Child 
The Energy Behind the Genius

 

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Soul-based Learning
(topics)

 

Soul-Based Learning at NewSchool

[In the following imaginary story, we consider what a future, soul-based education might be like.]

Several youngsters walk into the large classroom. There they observe the teacher -- sometimes known as the “team leader” -- sitting in a chair, awakening from what looks like a deep meditation. As Jake Randolph overhears the students filing into the room, his eyes begin to open, and a smile forms across his face. After all, he has just experienced a deep stillness and presence within. He even came in contact with his True Self and Soul.

From such inner excursions, Jake invariably feels a heightened sense of awareness -- a communion with the depth and breadth of his own being, as well as a deep connection with the world around him. This also gives him a keen sense of others, including an ability to perceive their wants and interest, as well as a capacity to intuitive their deepest aspirations emanating from their soul being. As a result, Jake -- as teacher, mentor, and friend -- has developed the capacity to guide others towards meaningful knowledge. And that includes the young students who are now filing in. Jake Randolph is about to begin another day of education adventure at NewSchool.

When Jake scans the room, the first person he recognizes is Amy Johnston. She has a bright face, and an infectious positive attitude. As usual, Amy is just bursting to get to work on the day's agenda. In fact, she and her friend Alicia have recently been talking about the new Negotiating software they recently discovered, which is used to create harmony between disagreeing parties. Though an app of this sort might seem a bit advanced for ten year olds, it was clear that Amy Johnston was ready to tackle the art of helping others find common purpose and get along.

It is 8am and all of the students in Jake Randolph’s “Exploration” class are eager to get started. This is a special class where people are exposed to new areas of knowledge based on their own individual propensities and interests. This also turns out to be one of Jake’s personal classes, since it affords him the opportunity to perceive the deepest aspirations of this young group of NewSchool students.

And so after several opening comments about changes in the cafeteria menu, and notifying the group about upgrades to the OS of their tablet PCs, Jake asks the youngsters to begin their learning activities.

While Amy opens up the negotiating app on her device, David Slovine plunges into a new user-friendly application language he recently discovered built for Smartphones. When he opens the app, he views an alluring video that makes the process of using the software language very clear. Though his parents were a little hesitant about their son tackling such complex software, David assured them it was actually quite simple. He also understood at that moment that sometimes he and his parents lived in two different worlds. Still, he loved them all the same.

Jake then reminded the students who were using the computer devices to put on their headphones so not to disturb others, otherwise the class would turn into a cacophony of noise. Once he received assurance from the students, Jake sat down, glanced over at Amy, leaned back, and suddenly started thinking about the advice he had given her in the past.

He recalled that one day after a long meditation in which he felt his “psychic center,” he had a heart to heart talk with Amy. When she surprisingly came forward and expressed her deepest aspirations about things, -- something extraordinary for one so young -- Jake began to sense her True Self.

From her remarks, Jake could tell that Amy was a real individual; one who thought for herself, not following the herdal view. She was bright, creative, insightful, and intuitive. All Amy needed was someone to help find her way amongst the endless opportunities offered by of NewSchool; to direct her aspirations towards a suitable area of study that would absorb her considerable creative energies.

As these thoughts consumed Jake, Sandip suddenly walked into the room, followed by his friend Carter. It was clear by their faces that they were upset; apparently in the midst of some sort of dispute. After hearing both sides of the matter, Jake made a few suggestions to resolve it, but neither boy responded. In fact, they just stood there with their arms folded over their chest with a vacuous look on their faces.

Then suddenly and most surprisingly Amy spoke up, and proceeded to explain the problem from her perspective, which she followed with a startling resolution to the problem. After listening to her suggestions, Sandip and Carter looked at one another rather sheepishly, but then surprisingly agreed to Amy’s course of action. They then shook hands and walked out of the room.

After Jake watched the two boys walk down the hall, he slowly turned back toward Amy. He then stared at her for a moment in a state of wonder, as a bright light washed over his face. In a somewhat startled state, and in a voice half muted, Jake asked Amy to take a seat. He then proceeded to tell her straight out that “she had a gift.“

“What gift?” asked Amy. ”I believe you have an innate ability to settle disputes between people.” A small smile mixed with a frown formed on her face. “I’m not sure. I don’t know, maybe that’s true.” “No. I really feel it is,” said Jake.”Do you think so?“ said Amy. “Definitely.  I have seen you do similar things in other situations with the kids over the last few months. You seem to have a knack for smoothing things out among people, for overcoming arguments and conflicts, for bringing kids back to a state of harmony.” Amy was taken aback by Jake’s remarks and could hardly breathe, let alone respond.

Jake considered the matter further, and then continued. “Listen, we have the Explorations class coming up. It’s where we expose NewSchool students to new possibilities, and discover their deepest interests; to find out what really stimulates them.  Amy, why not attend the class. In fact, while you are there, you can explore some of the material on the web on solving disputes and creating harmony between people, which you seem to be very good at. In fact, while you’re at it, why not take a look at the ‘Negotiating for Teens’ software we recently acquired from Harmonee.”

Jake then realized how serendipitous it was to obtain this software at a time when Amy was showing interest in that area. Though the app was intended for older NewSchool students, Jake was sure Amy could tackle it.

After recalling these moving events with Amy, Jake’s attention slowly turned back to the room. When he looked around, the first person he saw was in fact Amy, who was quietly but intently exploring the very same negotiating software he had discussed with her the previous month.

A moment later, Jake noticed that Alicia had come over to join Amy at her workstation, after which they navigated the ‘Negotiating for Teens’ demo together. When the app’s virtual teacher asked them to solve a hypothetical problem, the two worked as a team to come up with an effective solution. Jake observed how focused and energized the two of them were during that twenty minute session.

In fact, everywhere he turned in the Explorations class, he noticed how actively engaged the youngsters were; how their minds and emotions were fully absorbed in their work. Jake smiled within as he understood how this level of concentration and intention was like catching lightning in a bottle. No amount of standard teacher-led classroom presentation, or homework assignments, or testing, or urging from parents, or scolding could ever match the deep aspiration, focus, and will of the students before him.

Because Jake had discovered the True Individuality and Self of each child, he was able to ascertain and bring out their deepest aspirations; their secret heart’s desire. By unearthing their soul’s purpose, he was able to show each child a potential path to their future. As each student responded by taking an interest in one or more chosen areas of knowledge, he was able to guide them further on their individual paths; to mentor them and encourage them at every step along the way.

After the students completed their activities in the Explorations class, Jake reached for his jacket, left the room, and then slowly walked down the corridor of NewSchool. About twenty meters down, he came to a familiar plaque on the wall, and once again stopped to read its content. “At NewSchool we look into each student’s heart and soul being to help them determine their deepest aspirations and interests in life. Doing so, we guide them on a course of infinite discovery. As their hearts soar and their minds expand, they garner a great depth of knowledge, reminding us of our ultimate mission and goal: “Each child a Genius. Each child a Fulfilled Human Being.”

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Experience in Life Beyond Knowledge
(topics)

Student Must Experience Truths
A teacher can only explain so much to a student, to aid in his conception. At some point the student must experience the veracity of the truth of the idea as his or her own perception and sensation.

Educations vs. Life Experience
Education is a process of descent. Experience is ascent. (MSS)

Education and Conception, Perception, and Sensation
Conception of ideas, such as we get through education or learning anything for that matter, will always be useful, even before we have the experienced perception and the embodied sensation. Perhaps the best education we can get can also provide perceptual and sensational experiences as well. We would wish to make the education as representative of the society he is entering as possible; in all dimensions of life.

Untitled
A teacher can only explain so much to a student, to aid in his conception. At some point the student must experience the veracity of the truth of the idea as his or her own perception and sensation.
 

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Success and Accomplishment in Life
(topics)

Attitudes, Understanding and Psychological Values for Accomplishment
Formal education and training programs focus almost exclusively on imparting physical, social and mental skills. They place very little conscious emphasis on the attitudes, the mental understanding and decisiveness, and the psychological values needed for these skills to result in accomplishment and fulfillment. Therefore, the overall effectiveness and accomplishments of the individual and the society are extremely limited compared to the opportunities that are available. If the requirements for success in each field of life are analyzed, most people would be found possessing only 25% of what is required for high achievement. Thus, the scope for improving personal effectiveness is enormous.

Values represent the highest and most powerful individual capacity for accomplishment. As skills direct the use of physical energy, values direct the use of the psychological energy of the personality. Therefore the highest levels of individual and social accomplishment demand very high values.

It is possible to evolve a formal curricula that does impart the values, attitudes, understanding and decisiveness necessary for achievement and personal fulfillment. In order to do so, it is necessary to fully understand the process of value formation and the ways in which values are acquired. (MSS)

Education, Values, and Life Response
Education can organize unorganized energies of youth through dissemination of knowledge, including the knowledge of values. Education itself however needs to be organized to comprehend and explain those values. In the business world, the value of values is appreciated. It produces results, and profits. Now it needs to come to education, where the scope is greater. Educators can learn from the experience of businesses, and teach the benefits of values, look around, and see the benefits when applied to the wider life and its various disciplines.

Experience of, perceptions of, and a knowledge of Life Response would be very helpful here because it shows how transitions towards values quickly produce results. Such knowledge can be disseminated through education. Educators themselves experiencing the wonders of life response as a result of making the inner transitions that attract its sudden and abundant appearance would not only champion values, but a knowledge of the various triggers that enable life response to occur -- including higher levels of cleanliness and orderliness, a switch from a negative to a positive attitude at a crucial moment, accepting what life gives, knowing what one truly wants, greater psychological strength, etc. These can be taught as values.

Education on the Principles of Life
Let us learn these laws of life in an organized fashion through education. We now go through an entire life to learn but a handful of these principles, when there are thousands to be gained. It is like picking up a handful of sand on the beach when we need to absorb the entire shoreline. If systematically taught, absorbing the multi-faceted Truth can even become easy!

Enduring Success through Education, Training
Success can be acquired through one's own natural capacities. Enduring success however is insured through education and training that transcends one's native abilities; where the secrets of a work, a field, a skill, etc. are fully acquired. (Paraphrase of MSS)

Child Education that is Life Education
An education that equips the child to avoid failures in life as much as possible is desirable. Whether he fits into this society or not, he must live. He must successfully live in good health, if possible avoiding sorrow and depression. It is Life education based on health education. As we do not raise fundamental issues, let us continue to teach what we are now teaching and within that scope try to develop in the child good health, mastery of circumstances as well as mastery of his lower emotions.

Life education has several layers. First, it offers successful survival. Next, a freedom of mind. Third, it enables the child to have smooth relations with other children. Finally, in his human relationship with other children he can have a certain mastery that is not domination. It goes further when the child is able to have the same mastery over the events and environment. This appears miraculous, but we witness it all the time in a sporadic form. All that I am pleading for is to organise such a capacity as a permanent one. The rules are too many but the central theme is when one is right and quietly strong, life at once acts positively. When a child who wants to go with a friend to his house to fetch a book from there proposes it to his friend, instantaneously someone brings that book to his friend for some mysterious reason. This is not unknown, but to give this power to the child as a permanent possession in all his affairs is to elevate the child to such a level of life as does not exist now. The gain here is not the walk to his friend's house. The child will develop strong, quiet, innate GOODNESS.

The main principle is the active initiative of the school to bring the child into live contact with all facets of social life so that when he goes out he will not find any social situation utterly fresh.

The whole life of the school can be organised as a miniature of the society outside. (MSS)

Developing Talent of Children for Life
Talents come from training. No school can train children in all talents or in many talents. But any talent is created by one skill getting fortified by the entire capacity of the Individual. To convert one skill into a talent by the general capacity, one needs that ability.

The school instead of giving academic education, must endeavour to give life education where the child will have acquired the ability to create any talent life needs. (MSS)

Social Evolution of Young Adults through Education to Have the Ripeness of Maturity

• Socially my aim is to produce a boy (through education) at the age of 18 or 20 with the potential maturity of one at the ripe old age.
• It is an abridgement of Time apparently, but in fact it is hastening the ripeness of experience --  maturity.
• Maturity, ripeness are not aspects that can be hastened, but that which enables them -- Freedom, awareness, choice, direction, better still self-direction, etc. -- can be given to the maximum possible extent. (MSS)

Releasing the Energy of the Child in Education for Achievement
Release the energy in the child, teach him to direct it for full use, let him organise it into a power of achievement. Let us give him the skills to turn it into results.

Energy is released by interest, attention, freedom. Negatively it may release wild energy.

The interest, attention, freedom can rise in the scale of physical, vital, mental, spiritual, supramental, Mother. (MSS)

Forging Links with Society
The job of the school is to forge conscious links with all the LIVE points of the society that matter to the future of the child.

Education of Youth on Principles
Could you imagine if all we have suggested for improvement [i.e. a complete life knowledge] were known in full by the time we were 16? That would be a true education for an infinite-results type life.

Uncovering the Secrets of Human Consciousness to Uplift Education
-To uncover the ways of the growth of human consciousness in the process of acquiring knowledge and capacity, the twin aspects of Personality, is a rewarding work of a lifetime for about a few hundred researchers in education and yoga.

-To organise that project, one needs to know The Life Divine in greater thoroughness and needs to practice it in the life of a student.

The one great student available is oneself. Until we become conscious of ourselves, we can do so in the students. (MSS)

Development of Mental to Spiritual Capacities for Student

• Education can produce candidates for survival, growth, development or evolution.
• As social self-conception is drilled in psychological self-conception too can be trained. Spiritual self-conception cannot be trained. The boy must become spiritually conscious.
• Facts taught faithfully produce salaried employees. Education that gives isolated facts prepares men for social survival.
• To teach the relation between things -- rainfall and harvest -- creates thinking through understanding. Thought is born as he sees the cause leading to effect. It enables one to produce on his own. It is productive capacity, not producing for another. It makes him an entrepreneur.
• Observation of relation between things generates thought through understanding and thinking as he observes causes leading to effect. Thought generates productive capacity of the entrepreneur.
• To see the effect issuing out of a cause is Reason. Reasoning learnt at school makes one an entrepreneur.
• Using leads to accomplishment. They become thinkers; if sentimental, they become poets. Logic at early stages of the mental development appears subtle. To lead the student through the stages of development silently and wait for him to comprehend the right logic is the best method.
• Children can be taught insight by a teacher who has intuition.
• Self-Conception: We can give facts, thoughts, ideas or logic. But what assimilates is his personality, which is presently the social personality. Social personality issues out of social self-conception which the boy takes in implicitly or unconsciously. It can be consciously trained. Even the conscious training of the school or family is unconsciously accepted by him. To make him conscious is great. It is a great subject for teachers who are conscious...  As social self-conception is drilled in psychological self-conception too can be trained. Spiritual self-conception cannot be trained. The boy must become spiritually conscious. (MSS, extracts)

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Character & Personality Building
(topics)

Academic results vs. Character a School Can Produce
Academic results are the least a school can produce. Character is the highest a school can give the pupil. [MSS]

The Role of Education in Personality-building
What is generally considered in general knowledge is Information. Information depends upon memory. Ideas are superior to information. It is said children will understand ideas only after the age of 14. Mother says sometimes they do so even after the age of 7. If information develops memory, ideas develop Thinking. Beyond these two lies the Personality of the child. An old Tamil proverb says a litre, even when dipped in the sea, can contain only a litre, not more. How much one receives does not depend upon the amount given but the quantity one can contain and retain.

Modern schools are becoming nationally famous for the attainments of their children. Such attainments are information and ideas. The personality of the child grows, if it grows, by itself, not by any effort of the school. The growth of the child's Personality is NOT a conscious aim of any school anywhere in the world, nor is the world conscious of such a phenomenon. In my view, all good schools can successfully try this.

What then is this mysterious element of Personality? It is not an endowment like intelligence of the mind or a skill of the body. It is the endowment of the entire Being, still not fully formed, but ready to take shape when it is challenged by a situation character cannot handle. A carpenter acquires physical skill. It is remembered by the PHYSICAL memory. Mind memorizes formulas. Neither is knowledge; both are skills. Deep ploughing takes the roots down, preserves moisture, gives a great yield. This is not merely information, but an idea based on information. The Westerner discovered that pleasing the customer increases business. Though selfish, it is another man's point of view, a spiritual idea, as the Spirit considers the other man's profit as one's own welfare. What acquires this value is NOT manners, behaviour or even character. It is the Personality of MAN which new-creates and expands endlessly.

Can schools create this Personality and develop it? Here there is a selfish personality, selfless personality, social personality, psychological personality and finally Spiritual Personality. To create a grade scheme or syllabus to develop these levels of personality is not a difficult task. The teaching community should realise the TRUTH of these values. The crown is the Spiritual Personality that creates the GENIUS. As the mass of people do not believe in this possibility, this subject remains unexplored. (MSS)

Raising the Personality of the Child at Home, in School, in Society
Information, opinion, attitude, motive are graded instruments of Personality. So the greater, the higher the opinion, attitude, and motive are, the greater is the ability of Personality to benefit by new information, fresh energy or greater physical strength.

Families and schools can raise the level of the child's Personality. In a school experienced educationists can even devise a curriculum and a syllabus that consciously aims at this goal. At home, culturally sensitive parents of high education can very well attempt it.

The first rule of raising the Personality is NOT to try to give it to the child. It has to be done through the information, knowledge, skill, capacity and especially values that emanate from the school, parent, and society. Their goals should not be to force it on the child, but to themselves live it, all the while giving the child utter Freedom. (Paraphrase of MSS)

Further Thoughts on Manners, Behavior, Character, Personality

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Developing the Inner, Higher, Spiritual Consciousness
(topics)

Education that Enables the Discovery of the Inner Truth

• Integration of the outer with the inner is one essential part of education.
• To be able to go inside and discover the Truth first inside is the first step of education.
• To discover that inner Truth in outer experience is Education par excellence. (MSS)

New Consciousness that Will Emerge in the New School of Education
We have to accept the New philosophy and create new attitudes that will  express the new consciousness.  That is our work in the school. (MSS)

Teaching Ideas of Consciousness
The school can give, as part of the curriculum, all the details of consciousness for the child to acquire before he leaves school. (MSS)

Ultimate Spiritual Definition of Education
The Individual Divine learning of the Transcendental Spirit is education proper. This is not an idea the world is familiar with. (MSS)

Serving the Soul/True Self of the Individual
If an individual's soul is served, then he can learn completely on his own. The more we tend to the individual's depths down to his True Self, or the more one finds it on one's own, the more one is capable of realizing the truths of life on our own.

Exploration of the Invisible in Education
Formal education should desert the individual as early as possible, initiating him into the exploration of the invisible. (MSS)

Education from Within
In America, the two most famous businesspeople are Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple. They are both legendary college dropouts, as they sought knowledge within themselves, gained it, and changed the course of technological and world history. Wherever knowledge is found is Education. It is best when it originates Within, and the information needed to fulfill it come from whatever resource is available -- formal or informal. Tat dynamic is also an indicator of the emergence of the True Individual.

On the Benefit of Education, and the Great Benefit of Evocation of Spirit in Education
Every new technology closes the gap between the high and the low to some extent. Education is an institution that does so in a great measure.

Education is a divine organisation. It takes the past knowledge, extracts its essence discarding the superficial details, arranges it into a curriculum and syllabus and offers it to the pupil in an easily digestible form. As a result, the student in twenty years gets the social wisdom of 2000 years.

The more educated a country or a community is, the more prosperous it is.

Now that the mind of the society is awake, educational methods advance by leaps and bounds.

Education can be spiritual, in the sense that the Spirit of the pupil awakens. There is the Spirit in the teacher. The system of education itself has its own inner Spirit. The nation, the community, the parents and the student have their own Spirit. When any one of them is awakened, the progress is significant.

A national spiritual atmosphere comes into existence when all segments or most of them awaken. In such a climate, poverty recedes and Prosperity flourishes. Experienced educationists are in the privileged position to devise a system of education which can almost close the gap between the high and the low. It will be a golden age. (MSS)

Development of Mental to Spiritual Capacities for Student

• Education can produce candidates for survival, growth, development or evolution.
• As social self-conception is drilled in psychological self-conception too can be trained. Spiritual self-conception cannot be trained. The boy must become spiritually conscious.
• Facts taught faithfully produce salaried employees. Education that gives isolated facts prepares men for social survival.
• To teach the relation between things -- rainfall and harvest -- creates thinking through understanding. Thought is born as he sees the cause leading to effect. It enables one to produce on his own. It is productive capacity, not producing for another. It makes him an entrepreneur.
• Observation of relation between things generates thought through understanding and thinking as he observes causes leading to effect. Thought generates productive capacity of the entrepreneur.
• To see the effect issuing out of a cause is Reason. Reasoning learnt at school makes one an entrepreneur.
• Using leads to accomplishment. They become thinkers; if sentimental, they become poets. Logic at early stages of the mental development appears subtle. To lead the student through the stages of development silently and wait for him to comprehend the right logic is the best method.
• Children can be taught insight by a teacher who has intuition.
• Self-Conception: We can give facts, thoughts, ideas or logic. But what assimilates is his personality, which is presently the social personality. Social personality issues out of social self-conception which the boy takes in implicitly or unconsciously. It can be consciously trained. Even the conscious training of the school or family is unconsciously accepted by him. To make him conscious is great. It is a great subject for teachers who are conscious...  As social self-conception is drilled in psychological self-conception too can be trained. Spiritual self-conception cannot be trained. The boy must become spiritually conscious. (MSS, extracts)

 

Tending the True Self that Fosters Individuality

Individuality begins at the point where we psychologically and outwardly express who we truly are. Moreover, those who are truly conscious of their own uniqueness will more readily bring it to the surface, creating real benefit for themselves and the world at large. Finally, the society that fosters that indwelling true self and individuality of the person will create a multiplying effect of ever-increasing creativity and accomplishment in the world.

In the recent powerful Indian film ‘Like Stars on Earth (Every Child is Special),’ we see this latter dynamic in action. There a young boy with dyslexia becomes an outcast from his peers and the school system. And yet one progressive teacher steps forward, sees beyond the surface and into the depths of the child, fostering his individuality as a painter with a genius-like artistic temperament. This, it turns out is the complete opposite of the mass education system that operates on a hierarchical structure, with the teacher all knowing; departing knowledge to a strained or reluctant classroom of children. A better system would therefore be the opposite; where the teacher begins by discovering the true essence, spirit, and aspirations of each child, drawing it out, which allows it to flow and expand through a process of self-discovery. This approach not only energizes the child to no end, but turns learning into a joyful experience.

This approach to education -- and indeed to life itself -- suggests that there really is an essence and true self of each person. That somehow we are here to express our True Individuality, which not only expresses through our own creative, individualistic path, but has a unique influence and impact on the world. Some go a step further and see true individuality as our ‘spirit,’ our spiritual essence; even our evolving soul that has a mission and purpose trying to express through the unique capacities and potentiality of the person it inhabits.

In sum, the person who becomes consciously aware of his or her true self will facilitate the expression of his or her individuality, thereby accelerating the process of personal accomplishment and growth for themselves and the world. Moreover, social organizations where facilitators like teachers and leaders bring out the true essence and potential of individuals will foster an ever expanding community of entrepreneurs, creative artists, and free thinkers. One could even imagine a society where the number of geniuses expands a thousand-fold through this dynamic. In fact, one Indian school taking this approach advertised its goal as “every child a genius.”

Albert Einstein, Leonardo D Vinci and others were not only infinitely creative individuals expressing their individuality, but had a conscious or semi-conscious sense of their essence and purpose. We too can come to know out true selves and purpose; our inner mission, by looking deep within, which will release powerful energies that will become a springboard for infinite realization and accomplishment in life.

Gradations of Learning for Student Culminating in Spirituality
We see a gradation in hearing, listening, understanding, assimilating, deciding, determining and committing oneself to what one listens to. Up to assimilation, it is the part of knowledge; beyond it is the work of will. A student can outgrow simpler strategies and end up in the final strategy of committing himself to the instructions he listens to. A further step is consecration, which culminates in surrender.

For consecration, the child needs to suspend understanding or commitment i.e. the child eliminates herself. It produces the result directly. An attitude of consecration or surrender, it can be seen, will directly help one acquire what arises in one's mind or what is spoken to one. (MSS)

Using the Force to Bring the Future into the Present in Education
-Now that the Force that can abridge evolution of 30,000 years into one lifetime is there in the atmosphere, it is possible to raise the quality of education sky--high and spread it all over humanity.

-I should say the atmosphere now carries the Golden Force which was not there before 1956.

-As a first step, our aim is to prepare the student who leaves school at 15 to be as fit as one of 50 or 60 years. Our aim is turning out a student who will have the mental age rather than social age of 50 or 60.

-The Force that is there in the atmosphere can raise everyone in the population to be a genius. (MSS)

Soul-Based Education (by The Mother)
 

Related MSS Articles
Educating the Child

Further Article, Thoughts on Developing Spirit

 

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The Role of the School
(topics)

Role of the School
The school is an intermediary between the family and the society. It is in a position to help the child equip himself with most of the outer and inner endowments. (MSS)

New Consciousness that Will Emerge in the New School of Education
We have to accept the New philosophy and create new attitudes that will  express the new consciousness.  That is our work in the school. (MSS)

Primrose School in India
'Every child is a potential genius...' (MSS)

To visit the Primrose School, click here.

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The Role of the Teacher
(topics)

First Principle of True Teaching
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 impart knowledge to him, he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself. (Sri Aurobindo)

Child Education of the Future
The best type of child education is where the teacher discovers and nurtures the inner aspiration and truth of the child through his perfect attention to it, which is ultimately only made possible through his own inner connection to his True Self. This is the education of the future, which it is now time to embrace.

Understanding the Student and the Subject
The teacher who understands the subject and teaches it well so that the interest of the class is awakened is the best of teachers. In the training colleges where psychology is taught, it is said that to understand the student is more important than understanding the subject. (MSS)

Teacher Can Explain Only So Much
A teacher can only explain so much to a student, to aid in his conception. At some point the student must experience the veracity of the truth of the idea as his or her own perception and sensation.

Untitled
A leader or a teacher or an instructor must allow difficult energies to work its way out among the participants without interfering. He trusts in their efforts and their truths. If he rallies the groups thereafter, they will invariably meet with progress or success.

Teacher Recognizing Values of Others; Not Recognizing Defect in Others
Schools can teach lots of manners, if the teachers are imbued with it and they issue from a felt emotion inside. The most important of them is to readily appreciate any value in others. More important is NOT to recognize a defect in others. When the school as a whole has learnt that attitude as an unwritten code or unspoken attitude, the very atmosphere will learn to appreciate what the children are and what we are doing.

Seeing the Uniqueness of the Child (for education)

• Uniqueness [i.e. diversity and multiplicity in creation] enables creation to reach perfection.
• Fingerprint experts, handwriting experts, astrologers, and philosophers  know this.
• The Buddha says the river is never the same from moment to moment.
• That teacher who sees this uniqueness in a child will have discovered the potential genius of human Mind. (MSS, slightly added to)

Teacher Must Live Values Preached
The school, i.e. the teachers have to accept all these values as their own personal values. Otherwise, the whole thinking will remain a dead letter.

The Role of the Teacher
Guiding the children to shape their own personalities along their own lines when they have attained that stage is the only thing the teacher can do. (MSS, slight modification)

The Ideal Teacher & Teaching Method for Children
Having completed two years of Ph.D. in one of the most famous American universities, a young man returned to Calcutta where he had been brought up from birth. He is a Tamilian whose parents are sophisticated and idealistic. On seeing an advertisement for teachers from a primary school and on learning how the school plans its syllabus, he was inspired by the idea of teaching there. And his parents endorsed his aspiration. He visited the school and found the educational environment exceeded his expectations. He stayed there for one year teaching. He entered the spirit of the founders more than others, perhaps better than the management and founders. At once, he became popular with the kids. His popularity was unparalleled. At the end of the year, he sought to continue his education back in the US. He was admitted into Ph.D. in the 3rd year in his parent institution.

The school had only three standards. It had no formal exams. It did not believe in giving homework. Nor did they punish the children. This freedom opened up the educational potential of the children and was severally expressed, positively and negatively. No child in the class would sit properly.  They would take any lounging position that suited them. Nor would they listen to the teacher if he was not sufficiently interesting. Several types of behaviour which would be impermissible in any disciplined atmosphere were exhibited. But the sense of competition was largely absent. Young children could open the Junior Encyclopaedia and read fluently. They developed the capacity to think and understand on their own. The habit of memorisation was given the go-by. As soon as they were promoted to the 4th standard, and the parents bought the text books, the best boy in the class read his entire English textbooks in the week before school opened.

The ideal teacher gave an affectionate nickname to most of the students. At the year end birthday party held in his honour, he gave each child in 2nd and 3rd standard a personal gift and message. Even while he was here, his children were in correspondence with him through email. After he left, one girl started sending him email daily. He not only replies to the students without fail, but enters into email correspondence with any child who writes to him. Their birthdays are special occasions for him. He sends the birthday child a gift by courier and plans to do so to all the 50 children this year, even after joining his Ph.D. course. He wishes to find for this school as many teachers as possible who are of his type. He believes that anyone who comes to know of this school would prefer to work here in preference to his professional pursuit. Here he is known as Chari. Chari has discovered the Spirit of education in teaching. (MSS, with addition)

The Teacher Who Understandd the Parent of the Child
The teacher who understands the subject and teaches it well so that the interest of the class is awakened is the best of teachers. In the training colleges where psychology is taught, it is said that to understand the student is more important than understanding the subject.

The student has two sides to his personality. One is the human side that needs attention and affection. The other is the mental capacity to relate to the subject taught and absorb it with interest. Teachers' colleges deal with the latter.

The former is out of reach for the teacher. For, what is he to do with the knowledge of the student's affectionate home or broken home? In a higher sense of education, that matters, that alone matters.

The parent is result-oriented. He needs to know whether his child's career will be shaped by the school. The parent will not understand the psychological makeup of his son or daughter, but will expect extraordinary results. If the teacher understands the parent, it will help him deal with the student.

The child needs affection. Maybe that is the only thing he is looking for. At least, attention, a poor version of affection, is what he is looking for. Half the children get that affectionate attention at home.

For them, it is easy to learn. The other half do not get that affection. Knowing that, the teacher can offer him some attention. The boy or girl will read, not so much for the sake of the subject as for the attention that appears to him as affection. There are certain hard cases where the children are severely beaten at home, either by the father or the mother. It is too much for the teacher to expect that child to read.

That teacher who endeavors to know this fact of the home treatment is in a fortunate position with the child. The child may not want the teacher to know his condition at home. Knowing that, if the teacher extends an attitude of solicitude to the student, whatever her age, it will be heavenly balm to the student.

That student will fully respond to the teacher, whether it is in the lesson or outside. (MSS, slight modification)

Know One Self to Be Valid Teacher
To become a valid teacher, one must be able to know in himself, the conflict that is going on between ignorance and knowledge. (MSS)

To Be a Good Teacher
To be a good teacher, one must be a voracious reader and think for himself or herself. (MSS)

The Teacher, School Aiming at Whole of Knowledge
If the teacher or the school aims at the whole of knowledge, considering education as a whole, the atmosphere will pervade the school. It will create the conducive condition for the child to emerge out of its self-chosen imprisonment. (MSS)

The Teacher Turning Child Turbulence into Greater Patience
If the teacher responds to the turbulence of the child patiently, the turbulence will work itself out and settle down as greater patience, making the teacher reveal to herself that she is finite witnessing the emergence of the Infinite in the child. (MSS)

Disservice of Teacher Discipline
If the teacher conditions or disciplines the child into good behaviour, she will be doing a cardinal disservice to the cause of education.  (MSS)

Limitation of Teacher Excitement, Enthusiasm; Need for Love

• When a teacher makes the class excited, animated, pleasant to herself, expansive in the students, she is being a good teacher.
• It means she is closing all avenues of education in the children and in herself. Education is an emergence of knowledge from ignorance.
• Enthusiasm, expansiveness, animated behaviour are active enjoyment of ignorance.
• Attention matures into affection. Affection is physical when proximity is demanded.
• It is vital, when it is pleasant. It rarely becomes mental.
• Affection, though it contains the seed of spirituality (love) as we practise it, is the antithesis of love.
• Love is calm, strong, involuntarily giving, incapable of receiving, amoral, non-social, non-psychological.
• The animated teacher creates a wall between the aspiring student and the descending love for the simple reason that love is calm. Love is one of the three expressions of Ananda. (MSS)

MSS Articles on Education
Teaching is One Part of Education

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Child Education
(topics)

New Progressive Child Education Methods
Children's Low Speech in School -- Children shout and enjoy shouting. The children can learn speaking low with advantage. Life will respond positively to low speech. It is a fundamental principle of life response.

Absorbing Child's Energies in School by Thinking -- A thinking child is slow in speech. Teach the children to think, their energies will be blotted out. Feeling does it more. No excess energy will be on the surface if the child learns to think and feel.

Teacher Recognizing Values of Others; Not Recognizing Defect in Others -- Schools can teach lots of manners, if the teachers are imbued with it and they issue from a felt emotion inside. The most important of them is to readily appreciate any value in others. More important is NOT to recognize a defect in others. When the school as a whole has learnt that attitude as an unwritten code or unspoken attitude, the very atmosphere will learn to appreciate what the children are and what we are doing.

Teacher Must Live Values Preached -- The school, i.e. the teachers have to accept all these values as their own personal values. Otherwise, the whole thinking will remain a dead letter.

Forging Links with Society -- The job of the school is to forge conscious links with all the LIVE points of the society that matter to the future of the child.

Teaching Ideas of Consciousness -- The school can give, as part of the curriculum, all the details of consciousness for the child to acquire before he leaves school. (MSS)

Basic Prerequisites for Education for Children

• Self-learning -- Children should not be taught, they should be encouraged to learn on their own.
• No Discipline -- No discipline of any kind is to be imposed, except that which is required by hygienic and safety.
• No Scolding, Abusing -- Scolding or abusing or threatening is child abuse.
• No Evaluation, testing -- No attempt should be made to evaluate the level of learning.
• No Evaluation, testing -- Comparison is odious, ranking is rankling.
• Right Perception of Teacher -- A teacher who is unable to SEE that all children are EQUAL should not be employed. All children are learning from the environment all the time. The teacher is superstitious to wish to condition the child to learn what he teaches.
• Right Perception of Teacher -- Teachers should know that teaching is a PROCESS of their learning.
• Presenting Facts, Information --  Facts and information can be given. There is no harm. To consider that knowledge is stupid.
• Child's Organization of Personality -- What the child learns is to organise its personality and all the facts, information, and ideas go to that organisation.
• Right Personality of Teacher -- No teacher who does not understand her own personality can be a teacher, as she will NOT see the personality of the child.
• Overcoming Dark Influence of Parent, Teacher on Child -- How to protect the child from the dark influence of the parent is learnt by knowing the measure of the teacher's inner darkness.
• Teaching is Aspect of Education -- Teaching is not education, as the waves are not the ocean. (MSS, slightly modified)

Child Education that is Life Education
An education that equips the child to avoid failures in life as much as possible isz

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Other (includes article references)
(topics)

Effect of Generations Gap

Child More Advanced than Parent/Teacher Because of New Generation
Education is inherently contradictory because one generation tries to teach another which is more evolved.

• Times are changing, society is evolving day by day. It is a truism in all training that a man practices all his life what he has learned in the training more or less.
• Nowadays society is changing rapidly. Often the next generation is opposite to the previous generation. They may even be radically so. That itself partly is a cause of education.
• When the teacher and the parent belong to one generation, a forty year old parent or even a twenty year old parent is twenty years behind the requirements of the present child.
• The parent or the teacher knows and values only what he has learned twenty years earlier. He can teach only what he knows.
• More than the material, the method is important.
• As years pass by, society grows in freedom in its appreciation of human values.
• Children of today deserve greater freedom than their parents enjoyed or were denied.
• But the only possible thing is, the parent as well as the teacher can have only those attitudes with which they have been brought up. They value what they possess.
• They impose it on the child.
• To them, what they have is valuable and noble.
• Society is a living organisation. Constantly hundreds of new ideas are entering. It changes it attitudes towards criminals, money, property, government, institutions and education.
• Children of today are subconsciously receptive to those changes.
• Unless the parent is consciously receptive to those ideas, and takes full efforts to give up what they have inherited, they are not qualified to teach the child.  It is called generation gap.

....

• An ignorant father trying to educate his son can give him material support, moral encouragement, but cannot help him in the process of education. When the father insists on teaching the child what he knows, he is trying to reverse the evolutionary course when he becomes evil incarnate.
• From the days of inception of education, education has this character.
• One reason why geniuses drop out of schools every early in life is this. (MSS)

Untitled
In the measure a generation recognises the freedom necessary for the next generation to fully benefit by the changing times, education is effective. (MSS)

The Parent Cannot Educate the Child for True Education

• In the context of education, as the parent has a duty to rear the child into an adult, he also has the duty to know that he cannot educate his child.

• That is a freedom inconceivable to the parent.

• When the child is to be made into a fit member of the family, or a social success, the family can do it partially with ignorance.

• The great achievements of education today are seen as socially successful individuals.

• The help they have received from the parents and the family is social, psychological, physical, not spiritual.

• As long as a school is trying to create socially successful individuals, this wide theoretical knowledge is of great value, because with the greatest knowledge possible in the world we are trying to achieve a tiny goal.

• It is like a man living in a mango grove of a thousand trees, wanting to eat mango. (MSS)

On Creativity
Higher education enables more creativity. Creative education enables accelerated creativity. Creative self-knowledge enables vast creativity. Supermental lifestyle is ongoing infinite creativity.

Education in Mother Tongue
Teaching the mother tongue is a serious requirement for any school that wants the child to develop a balanced personality. The mother tongue gives a depth which no foreign language can give. (MSS)

The Knowledge or System of Education that enabled Stages of Historical Development
Mesopotamia led the world of civilisation. Greece, Rome, Europe, England and USA led the world in succession, Greece by knowledge, Rome by law, Europe by Reformation, England by sea trade and empire. Now USA leads the world by economic power, accumulated wealth and technology. It is noteworthy to see knowledge behind all these movements either in the shape of collective knowledge or system of education.  (MSS)

Infinity of God in Mathematics
The mathematics teacher asked his students  "What is zero divided by zero?'' Srinivasa Ramanujam was in that class. He rose and answered "Infinity''. To him zero is God and Infinity is Manifestation, the world. Bhaskaracharya proved that 0/0 is infinity. The concept of Infinity takes the subject mathematics to spirituality. (MSS, abridged)

The History Of Civilisation Can Be Written As The Record Of Progress In Education.

His physical body learned to survive by vital sensation.
That was the inheritance from his animal ancestors.

He lived in herds of men. He learned to value collective security.
Education of vital sensation to preserve the vital body is upgraded over centuries from Individual preservation to collective security.

The collective security gave the pride of place to physical prowess. Its other side was to destroy the weak, even if it is his own children.
Organised physical strength.

The physical coming into its own has thrown up the leadership of a BRUTE. The behaviour of a brute, the cruelty of the malicious, the tyranny of the vulgar became the culture of the period.
Physical strength becomes crude culture.

Physical withdrew into the immediate rear, giving place to vital pride that went along with ostentatious splendour. When the line is crossed by the equilibrium, brutality rises in full.
The physical with its splendour of cruelty lies in wait just below the surface.

Pardon becomes a way of life. Prior to that, physical punishment remains but the victim is allowed to choose the mode of punishment.
Crude physical acquires the 'magnanimity' of mitigation.

Fairness emerged in the physical crudeness -- Duel came into existence.
Fairness of the physical establishes its own superiority.

Duel is abolished in law, but flourished under the surface.
Physical dual gives place to vital annihilation without any semblance of right, good or honour.

Parliamentary democracy was the first occasion to replace might by right -- the right of the ignorant.
Today Parliaments are irrational, vulgar, crude, and false. Still this is the best available. To know their true character and suffer them is wisdom. To honour them is foolish.

The progress of the English language as expected of a gentleman has anticipated all the levels of progress mind has to go through for another thousand years.
Nothing in the world appears suddenly. Its true beginning is the beginning of creation.

Till 500 or 400 years ago, education meant experience, experience of age, except for the royalty and top echelon of aristocracy.
First discovery of descent.

To extend it even a little, the physical of the collectivity had to give up its possessiveness and recognise the reality of others' existence.
Selfishness relents, cracks show up.

Selfishness upgrades from vital selfishness to mental selfishness. It means those who approve of your idea are your friends.
Broadening selfishness into possible semblance of selflessness.

Reason is coordinating intelligence. It is EGO.
To know reason is the knowledge of Ego is worldly wisdom.

Intellectuality is efficient ego, going by the name of Reason.
Intellectuality is inert, is an efficient bar to knowledge.

Knowledge begins with insight and intuition. It matures when the intuition transfers itself from outside to inside.
It is supramental intuition. To it there is no evil.  (MSS)

 

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MSS Articles on Education

Education the World Does Not Know

Education

Notes on the 200 Points of Education

Children Education

Teaching is One Part of Education

Educating the Child

A Look at Experiments in Accelerating Education

Genius of the Child 
The Energy Behind the Genius
School that is Miniature of Future Society

Value Formation & Education

 

Related Articles

What Does Education Mean? (answered by children)

Santa Claus

Newspaper as a Tool of Teaching a Language

Information -- Spiritual Grace  (MSS)

On the Value of Reading Fiction

Reading and Writing

 

 

To Be Categorized

 

The New Education

On Soul-Based Education that Produces Genius

Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, and Karmayogi indicate the key to education is for the teacher to get in touch with his own Soul so he can then come in touch with the Soul of his student, which will help the youngster perceive his true interests in life. When the students acts and educates himself from his deepest purpose, learning and acquiring knowledge in those particular areas that reflect that Soul purpose, that child will be well on his way to becoming a genius in whatever interest area or field pursued. He becomes a True Spiritual Individual, guided by Soul, leading through powerful intuitions and perceptions of the essence and multi--sided truth of things in that area or field.

 

True Teaching by the Teacher

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 impart knowledge to him; he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself. (Sri Aurobindo) (2009-2011 Q1)

 

French Film 'The Class' and the New Education

The recent French film 'The Class' shows among other things how a teacher can probe the minds of his students so they can bring out that which is semi or subconscious to them. Repeatedly he asks the students to explain what they mean when they express a thought or idea, which enables them to become more aware and conscious before our eyes. This is an involved and engaged teacher who has deep respect for what is on the minds of his students. It is a technique and approach that any teacher or leader can benefit from.

Beyond this is a new approach to education; to discover the deepest psychological and soul aspirations of each child/student. When education caters to the individual needs, and gives that student the freedom to explore their deepest aspirations (whether formed or semi-formed), we will shift education from a social reward to putting the human being at the center of life. A teacher who recognizes the deepest interest of the student and supports the realization of that possibility will be his or her primary goal in the new education of the future. The teacher here was demonstrating this capability in the context of the old, traditional system.

Aside from this, the film was hypnotic, taking this genre to an entirely new level.  (2009-2011 Q1)

 

III I

Education Knowledge

Acquiring Knowledge Quickly through Education Time was abridged as one acquires knowledge by education and not by experience. (MSS)

III

Education

Over-Reading by First Generation of Well-Educated The first generation of good education superstitiously reposes its faith in extensive reading. It will certainly do good to below average children, not to kids educated very well. Such excessive reading will always tend to non-thinking reading material. The capacity to think will be the casualty. (MSS)

III

Education

No Dull Students In teaching, progressive methods do not admit that there are dull pupils. Only that we have not yet learned how to handle them. (MSS)

III

Education, Literacy USA Japan

Universal Literacy in Nations Universal literacy created such a stir in Japan and in many European countries. It played that role in great intensity in the USA. (MSS)

III	Education Culture	Education that Enables Culture: Poverty Prevents Education Culture is the best ingredient of Mind that makes it level headed or great. It is education that prepares the mind to receive culture. (MSS)
		Hunger & Poverty Prevent Education Man thinks of education when his stomach is full. Hunger prevents one from seeking education. (MSS)

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