Education in the Village and the World:

1
Education in the Village and the World

• Rabindranath Tagores
• Educational model
• for the
• Twenty-first Century
• Chris Marsh, 2009

2
Who is Rabindranath Tagore?The Poet
1861-1941 Gitanjali, 1912awarded Nobel Prize
for Literature, 1913.
3
Who is Rabindranath Tagore?

• Bengali Poet and polymath,1861-1941
• managed family estates, 1890s, short stories
• founded Santiniketan school, 1901
• led campaign against partition of Bengal, 1905
• Gitanjali, 1912 Nobel Prize for Literature,
  1913
• rural reconstruction project and Visva-Bharati
  international university, 1920s
• world celebrity (also notoriety Nationalism,
  1917) 1912-1929
• conversations with Einstein, 1930
• final years in Santiniketan.

4
Rabindranath Tagore,environmentalist,
world-changer

• I first heard of Tagore from Marjorie Sykes
  (1905-1995), the Quaker Gandhian
• (myself with Marjorie in 1990)

• Marjorie wrote this quote in my copy of her
  book on Gandhi. Later I tracked down the City
  and Village essay in Towards Universal Man

5
Studying Rabindranath Tagore

• 2003 research on Tagore and rural
  reconstruction, in the Leonard Elmhirst papers
  in the Dartington Archive
• 2006 MA Dissertation The Village and the
  World A Political Reading of Rabindranath
  Tagores Prose Fiction
• 2008-9 PhD Thesis Rabindra-Radicalism
  Re-reading Rabindranath Tagore for the
  Twenty-first Century.

6

• Rabindra-Radicalism
• Re-reading
• Rabindranath Tagore
• for the
• Twenty-first Century
• PhD Thesis title
• What is Tagores Radicalism?

7
Tagores RadicalModel of the World

• The World then now
• global economy and politics (and culture?)
• nation states, top-down decision-making,
  representative democracy, has power-over entire
  nation due to centralised funding
• cities as dominant and most vigorous units
• suburbs, including towns and villages.

• Tagores conception
• villages as dominant and most vigorous units,
  locally self-reliant, rooted in local ecology,
  grassroots consensus decision-making
• market towns serving villages
• national and global centres of education and
  culture serving villages.

8
Studying Tagores Radicalismhis English
Writings, and by Topics

• philosophical anthropology, for material related
  to Tagores model of alternative local and global
  society
• education, re Tagores ideas on what is wrong
  with modern Western education and his alternative
  model
• feminist theory, re Tagores conception of
  womens role in the kind of society he advocated
• theology, re Tagores understanding of Eastern
  spirituality.

9
Education topicTagores ideas on what is wrong
with modern Western education and his alternative
model

• Young children today are subjected to a
  standards agenda, at the expense of the arts,
  the humanities and the pursuit of knowledge in
  its fuller sense.
• (Cambridge Primary Review, 2009)

10
Efforts to improve primary schooling, May 2009
11
The government recommends measures to improve
primary schoolingSir Jim Rose, Ofsted inspector
says

• all four-year-olds to have a school place in
  September term after their birthday
• or a funded full-time nursery place
• IT to have equal status to English and maths
• all children to learn 1 or 2 foreign languages
  from age 7
• minimum of 2 periods of history.
• Will that fix it?

12
Guarded approval in the media(Richard Garner,
Independent 1 May 2009)

• The major complaint is that children have become
  bored, with the rigid concentration on testing,
  so
• good idea to have a curriculum which
  concentrates more on delivery through arts and
  drama, such as role playing in history and acting
  out plays and books in English lesson.
• good idea that dance will also be a feature
  playing a dual role in making learning more
  enjoyable and helping to keep pupils fit as part
  of the Governments anti-obesity drive.

13
But teachers urge more drastic action
14
Tagores alternativederives from his painful
experiences of Western style education in India
and England
15
Tagores school

• Suppose a child were to sample the meagre and
  oppressive schooling which society provides, and
  then refuses to go, and finds a richer source of
  learning at home.
• Suppose years later he establishes his own
  school what would his school be like, and could
  those alternative ideas on education provide the
  remedy needed today?

16
Rabindranath Tagores school

• was in natural surroundings, with lessons
  outdoors even up in the trees
• with a curriculum emphasising the spirit of
  self-help, the skills of community life in a
  family and in a village
• the freedom and joy of their natural artistic
  powers, the excitement of poetry, music and drama
  in performance
• and a hospitable and tolerant philosophy and
  spiritual practice.

17
Tagores RadicalismThe Village and the World

• Tagores village model
• villages as dominant and most vigorous units,
  locally self-reliant, rooted in local ecology,
  grassroots consensus decision-making
• market towns serving villages
• national and global centres of education and
  culture serving villages.

• village education
• local schools with curriculum and teaching
  methods decided by pupils and teachers
• focus on local self-reliance and culture
• wider area for special resources and cooperative
  educational and cultural activities
• national and global centres of education and
  culture to facilitate local schools.

18
Is this possible?Change what comes first?

• Cambridge Primary Review Young children today
  are subjected to a standards agenda, at the
  expense of the arts, the humanities and the
  pursuit of knowledge in its fuller sense.
• Does society need to change first, at least
  aspire towards a world where such an education
  makes sense?
• Or does recognition of societys defects provide
  an opportunity for education to lead the way?

19
Tagore and Philosophical Anthropology

• Tagores conception of the nature of human
  nature
• The Religion of Man The Hibbert Lectures for
  1930
• what kind of Religion?
• what is Man?