The Poet's Challenge to Schooling: Creative Freedom for the Human Soul
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The Poet’s Challenge to Schooling: Creative Freedom for the Human Soul A Generative and Critical Analysis of Rabindranath Tagore’s Innovations in Shiksha Written by: Shilpa Jain With contributions to a dialogue on Tagore from: Supriyo Tagore, Vasant Palshikar, Anand Dwivedi, Bratin Chattopadhyay, Sabu K C, R. S. Khanna, Selena George, Nand Chaturvedi, Vivek Maru, Munir Fasheh, Vivek Bhandari, Vachel Miller, Ron Burnett, Cole Genge, Fred Mednick, Christina Rawley, Steve Compton, Alberto Arenas, and Jock McClellan Table of Contents Preface — iii Innovations in Shiksha Series Introduction — 1 Methodology — 5 Section One — 7 Tagore’s Vision of the Human Being, the System, and Learning Section Two — 29 Tagore’s Experience in Santiniketan Section ThThreeree — 49 What Can We Learn From Tagore? Section Four — 60 The Road Ahead: Supriyo Tagore Vasant Palshikar Anand Dwivedi Bratin Chatterjee Sabu KC RS Khanna Selena George Nand Chaturvedi Vivek Maru Munir Fasheh Vivek Bhandari Vachel Miller Ron Burnett Cole Genge Fred Mednick Christina Rawley Steve Compton Alberto Arenas Jock McClellan 2 Selected Poems/Plays by Rabindranath Tagore — 125 References — 133 Annexes — 135 1: Schedule of Interviews in Santiniketan 2: Interview Questions 3: Places in Santiniketan 3 INDIAN INNOVATIONS IN SHIKSHA SERIES Preface Across the world today, people find themselves trapped in overwhelming socio- cultural, ethical, and spiritual crises. We see the distress signs: rapid increases in crimes, unemployment, environmental degradation, endangered species, loss of languages, poverty, malnutrition, disease, militarism, and violent death, especially in the last fifty years. Yet ironically, in this same span of time, the amount of money, capital, technology, and trade worldwide has increased manifold, as have the number of health facilities and schools. Clearly, the Utopia that these institutions (whether Capitalist or Communist) promised is very far from being realized. In fact, for the world’s social majorities they have made life much worse. The trade-offs are just too high. It is clear today that we cannot continue down this path of Development and Progress; it is neither morally just nor ecologically sound. But what are the ways to resist it, to dismantle it and to discover and create new directions? Visionaries of India’s past – Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo, and Krishnamurti, among others – have left us with several potent ‘seed-thoughts’. In their writings and their experiments, each tried to envision a better reality for India (and for the world): a reality unmarred by the greed, exploitation and dehumanization of Western-style Economic Development, by the competition and violence of the Nation-State and Nationalism, and by the intellectual colonization and paralyzing dependency of Western-style factory-schooling. They believed that India could only regenerate itself to face the challenges ahead by seeking out those beliefs, values, languages, relationships, cultures, knowledge systems, technologies, conceptual frameworks and wisdoms, which had organically grown from her local communities. At the same time, they were careful not romanticize the past. Rather, they engaged in processes of critical traditionalism, believing that the injustices and problems within traditions and customs required continuous self-reflection and self-correction. Thus, in their own unique ways, these innovators tried to catalyze counter-visions and paths for living, learning, sharing and growing together in India. Why are we focusing on these four individuals? After all, a multitude of thinkers and experimenters have emerged throughout India’s rich and diverse history. However, what distinguishes Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo, and Krishnamurti from the rest is their effort to situate human learning in larger spiritual, political, socio-cultural, and economic vision-processes of resistance and regeneration. 4 For them, schooling germinated from a certain context and it was just as important to question/challenge this larger context, as it was to create more meaningful spaces of learning. To varying degrees, all four were engaged in India’s freedom struggle, and their experiences around this struggle inspired them to imagine a different conception of freedom and, with it, a different India. They beautifully and forcefully expressed themselves in writings, poetry, speeches and meditations, and their ideas are illustrated in very different parts of India: Gujarat/Madhya Pradesh/Maharashtra; Bengal; Pondicherry; Andhra Pradesh/Karnataka. The great tragedy today is that while many people still refer to them, few really know what they envisioned, and even fewer know how to evolve their ideas/experiments in human learning or how to re-contextualize them to make sense in today’s rapidly changing world. In fact, when interpreting their ideas and experiments, two things typically seem to happen: either their words are taken very literally to produce standardized, static prescriptions and lifeless action; or they are starkly misinterpreted/manipulated/co-opted to fuel particular agendas. Part of the impetus for this series therefore is to re-open the space for interpreting Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo, and Krishnamurti. While our interpretations will certainly not be exhaustive, they do carve out spaces for us to re-explore and question the relevance and significance of what these revolutionaries said and did, as well as, reflect on how we might apply/evolve their ideas and experiments for the crises we face today. Indeed, the current ‘crisis of the schooled’ and the monopoly of the ‘culture of schooling’ requires radical new thinking, new dialogue, and new actions. Efforts towards constructing this radical discourse are presently being driven by thinkers in other parts of the world (mainly from industrialized countries), who have come to terms with the fact that schooling cannot be reformed. However, exploring and learning from the radicalism of these four visionaries could do much to resuscitate the intellectually-vapid discourse on education in India. It could uplift us out of the dull, stillwater of education reform that is currently submerging the country and propel us towards the more vibrant, pluralistic currents of transformation of shiksha. Here, we must note the use of the term ‘shiksha’. We are consciously differentiating between modern education and shiksha, as in the series name, “Indian Innovations in Shiksha”. Although in today’s discourse shiksha has been widely translated as ‘education’, we know that the epistemological and 5 ontological roots of these terms are vastly different. Each is guided/driven by distinct conceptual and philosophical frameworks of how human beings should live, relate to each other, be with Nature, and struggle/grow as individuals and in collectives. Each also has a different understanding of human and societal learning processes. However, instead of describing a priori what these differences are, we hope that they will reveal themselves through the explorations of the ideas/experiences of Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo, and Krishnamurti. Therefore, in part, the purpose of this series is to de-colonize the concept of shiksha and regenerate its meanings for the present context. By deeply probing into and interrogating these four individuals’ critiques, frameworks and experiments in shiksha, we hope to provoke the educational community to established lines of thinking as well as to offer fresh insight into the development of learning societies for 21st century India. Finally, while we think it is best for the purposeful uses of this research series to germinate organically, we do have a few ideas for its application. For example, we envision the research could be used to: !"design interactive learning workshops with policymakers, teachers and curriculum designers on some of the innovative concepts emerging from one or all of these four visionaries, such as freedom, self-discipline, creativity, the integrated human being, satyagraha, etc.; !"promote organizational self-analysis and assessment by considering the importance of reflection, dialogue, and action, and by addressing the potential obstacles to organizational growth and accomplishment; !"initiate new learning process-projects in different parts of the country, drawing upon and re-contextualizing these four visionaries as appropriate; and/or !"produce new thought-provoking media/publications on innovative and meaningful learning, utilizing as many different media as possible (poetry, plays, songs, short stories, essays, lectures, etc.). We invite and encourage your ideas and responses on this paper and on the others that will follow in this series. 6 - Manish Jain Coordinator Shikshantar 7 “Either we shall all be saved together, or drown together into destruction.” — Rabindranath Tagore Introduction What lies at the root of the crises — environmental destruction, dehumanizing poverty and exploitation, increasing frustration, stress and violence — experienced around the world today? In the interest of brevity, people often point to the System: a set of attitudes and values, a particular meaning-making system, a distinctive group of processes, structures and institutions, all which seem to propagate a view of the materialistic, self-gratifying, aggressive, and mechanistic human being. A whole set of economic, political, social, educational and religious structures/institutions support this human being – rewarding and rationalizing the ones who take, abuse, and exploit the most and crushing the ones who try