After completing one year in Grad school and having read variety of articles on education, I find they all are an attempt to answer this question- What is the best way to teach children of today to prepare them for the World of tomorrow? Everyone seems to agree that old ways of teaching are not going to lead us on right path. Digital Natives cannot have an authentic learning experience if you ask them to sit quietly and listen to a teacher lecturing on a topic.
All this reminds me of a person born in India around 150 years ago, who also disliked the conventional methods of schooling, got educated by private tutors at his home (being a rich landlord’s son) started his own school and later a university where learners were not confined in the four walls of a classroom but were allowed to sit on tree branches and read, touch the flowers and leaves, chase butterflies….in order to learn science, literature, social sciences. Find it incredible?
Well, I am talking about Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Asia’s first Nobel Laureate (1913). As a young student he found formal schooling very boring because of its dull curriculum. He observed- We sit inert like dead specimens of some museum, while lessons are pelted on us from on high, like hail stones on flowers [1]. It’s not that he disliked learning; in fact he enjoyed learning at his own pace at his home which was a meeting place of intellectuals and artists from India as well as Western world. Dynamic learning environment of his home permitted him to experience an open model of education. He composed his first poem at the age of eight. By the end of his life he had written 25 volumes of poetry, 15 plays, 90 short stories, 11 novels, 13 volumes of essay, composed more than 2000 songs and that’s not all; after the age of seventy he created more than 2000 pictures and sketches.
As an alternative to the existing forms of education, he started small school at Santiniketan in 1901 that later developed into a University. Here he tried to develop an alternative model of education based on his own learning experiences. His concern with education got reflected in his writings, speeches, debates, and in his establishment of Santiniketan University.
Today I would like to share with you all a short story written by him- ‘The Parrot’s training’, which provides an incisive look at education. Let me know your thoughts on it and if you wish to read more about his thoughts on education then this is an interesting article to read!
References:
[1] Kalantzis, M. and Cope, B. (2012). Rabindranath Tagore’s School at Shantiniketan. Retrieved August 23, 2012 from http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-2-life-in-schools/rabindranath-tagore%E2%80%99s-school-at-shantiniketan/
[2] Macaw parrot on tree stump [Image]. Retrieved August 23,2012 from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=parakeet&ex=2#ai:MP900443978|
[3] O'Connell, K. M. (2003) 'Rabindranath Tagore on education', the encyclopedia of informal education. Retrieved August 23,2012 from http://www.infed.org/thinkers/tagore.htm.
[4] RabindranathTagore (2012). Retrieved August 23,2012 from http://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/content/rabindranath-tagore
