The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore
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The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) by Kalyan Sen Gupta (z-lib.org)
Education
We have already seen both in ‘Hindu and Muslim’ and ‘Hindu Marriage’ an emphasis on education: education to terminate the rivalry between Hindus and Muslims, education to make married life more rich by enabling the wife to become a more accomplished and informed companion of her husband. Hence it is time to consider in more detail how Rabindranath regards this topic. The questions to which he devotes himself are: ‘What is the aim of education?’ and ‘How are we to achieve it?’ The aim of education, as Rabindranath sees it, is to give one a sense of one’s identity as a ‘total man’, and to bring education in harmony with life. A ‘total man’, in his opinion, is the one who thinks of himself first and foremost as a human being. What ultimately matters to him is not his birth and social status. What crucially matters to him, rather, is the conviction that he is above all a man, irrespective of his socio-economic placing, of his caste, creed and religion. To initiate one into this sense is, according to Rabindranath, the primary aim of education. The implication is that there will inevitably be social discrimination unless we are trained to think of ourselves as, before all else, human beings. We are born in a particular family, and are moulded by the customary outlook and conventions of the family to which we belong. Consequently, we tend to consider ourselves exclusively as members of our respective families, and find no other identity of our own outside of these. The child of a rich family grows up with vanity or arrogance, the child of a poor Society, Marriage and Education 29 family with shame or an inferiority complex. This creates a yawning gap between the two. Evidently what creates this distance is one’s inability to regard oneself as human above all else. As a result, however educated an individual may be, he does not learn how to establish a well-balanced relation with others belonging to different social strata. So what is urgent is a training that enables discovery of one’s real identity as a human being. This will enable us to realize our bond with others qua human beings, independent of any social and political differences. In the words of Tagore: When a child is born, he is not born already with a silver spoon in his mouth … the parents ought to have initiated their children into the fundamental sense of their being human, before bringing them up in affluence. But this does not happen. Their children learn to think of themselves as wealthy, before acknowledging their basic identity as man. 41 To foster this sense of being human is what counts most to Tagore, and constitutes the basic aim of education. Now what is the basic identity of a human being? The answer lies in the distinction Tagore draws between human beings and non-human species. The most important distinction is this. The animal is bound within the limits of its bare necessities, while there is a ‘surplus’ in man which constitutes his spiritual make-up. This ‘surplus’ in man overflows the pragmatic need for bare necessities. It indicates a vast excess of ‘wealth’ in human life – a fund of emotional energy which is not regulated by self-interest. It is in this ‘surplus’ that we find the true identity of a person; and it is in virtue of this ‘surplus’ that people seek union with others beyond individual interests. The primary aim of education should be to initiate the child into his real identity qua human being so as to ensure the transcendence of egoistic impulses and thereby self-expansion through a feeling of alliance with others beyond the boundaries of social, family or religious affiliations Now if education aims at promoting awareness of our human identity, it means that we must also recognize the role of education in those lived situations where we come into relation with others. It means that the end of education is to initiate us into how to live meaningfully vis-à-vis the people around us. In other words, it implies an intimate tie between education and life. This explains why so many of Tagore’s criticisms are, as David E. Cooper says of Nietzsche’s, ‘aimed at the dry scholar, devoted to learning with no end beyond itself’. 42 Tagore highlights the futility of mere scholarship, of the idea entertained, for example, by J.F. Herbart, that ‘to present the whole treasure of accumulated research in a concentrated form to the youthful generation, is the highest service which mankind … can render to its successors’. 43 He elevates wisdom over arid theoretical knowledge – the wisdom which, in the words of Nietzsche, ‘displays itself in the applicability of its results to life’. 44 And this accounts for Tagore’s contempt towards any education system whose accent 30 Download 467.3 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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