Innovations in Education

Note: Suggestions for innovations in the Schedules I, II and III have been carefully pooled together from various sources and practical experiments which have been conducted in India and elsewhere. Further explorations and experiments will need to be conducted under the expert guidance of the Educational Commission for Innovations. New suggestions will be welcome.

Schedule I

Innovations related to Aims of Education

1.Aims of liberal education, vocational education and professional education need to be adequately addressed. For this purpose the following elements need to be harmonized:

Promotion of liberal education with its emphasis on scientific knowledge and scientific epistemology and rationality as also its emphasis on the study of art and science for promoting harmonious relationships between the individual, society and the universe at large.

2.Innovations need to be undertaken for the promotion of four higher aims of education which are related to:

(a)Nationalism, internationalism, peace, international understanding, universality and the ideal of universal fraternity in conjunction with the ideal of liberty and ideal of equality;

(b)Character development and man-making education in conjunction with integral development of

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personality and a special emphasis on value-oriented education that can develop and foster values in physical education (viz., health, strength, agility, and harmonious and beautiful symmetry of the human body), vital and emotional education (viz., courage, heroism, adventure, sympathy, mutuality and compassion), rational education (viz., pursuit of clarity, complexity, subtlety, truth, synthesis and comprehensiveness and mental quietude and silence), aesthetic education (viz., pursuit of beauty, sensitiveness and love and appreciation of vision, imagination and artistic expression through various forms of expression), ethical education (viz., pursuit of goodwill, goodness, self-control and self-knowledge through self-control), and spiritual education (viz., pursuit of universality, unity, integration, oneness, and infinite reverence for the highest expressions of truth, beauty and goodness);

(c)Learning to learn or learning to know, learning to do, learning to co-operate, and learning to be;

(d)Exploration of the highest aim of life, and exploration of human potentialities and exploration of the future in the context of the need of human survival and fulfillment of the highest aspirations of humanity.

3. Innovations relating to the Aims of education will underline the demands for skill-oriented education and the demands for study of man's skills related to agriculture and crafts as also skills related to machines, gadgets, techniques and technologies. These aims will be blended in a new system of education that will foster

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the faculties related to hand, heart, and head.

4.Innovations relating to the Aims of education will include professional excellence in the programmes of training various branches of science, philosophy, scholarship and various specialized professions.

5.At the highest level, innovations will aim at inspiring students to discover the highest purposes of the march of human civilization and to become devoted soldiers in the tasks of the highest aims of civilization and culture, - at the national level, international level and at the level of relationship between humanity and the universe.

The Commission will endeavour to formulate ways and means by which the above aims of education are interwoven in the entire system of education.

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