Education and the Aim of human life

EDUCATION

AND

THE AIM OF HUMAN LIFE

Publisher's Note

This book is a study of the educational ideal of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and of the educational method being developed at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. Its author, Pavitra, was the first director of the Centre of Education. In the first section of the book he affirms the need of an "integral" education - one aimed at developing all the faculties of the human being, including the soul and spirit - and outlines the character of such an education. In the second section he explains the new system being attempted at the Centre of Education. In the third he summarises the educational theory and method of the Centre of Education.

Pavitra (so named by Sri Aurobindo) was one of the early disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Born Philippe Barbier Saint-Hilaire in Paris in 1894, he graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique with a degree in engineering. After serving in the army in the first World War and working briefly as a junior engineer in Paris, he set out on a spiritual quest that led him to Japan, China, Mongolia, and finally India. There in Pondicherry in 1925 he met Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and remained with them for the rest of his life. In 1951 the Mother appointed him director of the newly-founded Sri Aurobindo International University Centre (later renamed Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education). He served in this position for eighteen years, until his passing in 1969 at the age of seventy-five.

. . . they should be children of the past,
possessors of the present, creators of the
future. The past is our foundation, the present
our material, the future our aim and summit.

SRI AUROBINDO

Introduction

For the last few decades a growing need of reforming the old system of education has been felt. Insufficiencies in the intellectual alertness and in the character of the students, the spread of dissatisfaction and indiscipline, defects of a method of selection almost exclusively based on examinations, have become apparent and imposed a reappraisal of the whole system.

Theoretical criticism and experimental research in new methods of teaching have been carried out in several countries with interesting but hitherto inconclusive results. This partial failure is probably due to the fact that the search has not touched the root of the problem.

The object of this essay is

1. to show that the purpose of education at a given time is closely connected with the general conception of the aim of human life prevalent at that time;

2. to analyse the conception of progress as the main drive of the modern world, and to show that, as it is generally understood, it does not satisfy all the aspirations of the human being and that this insufficiency is at the root of the present cultural crisis and the shortcomings of education;

3. to show that it is possible to arrive at an understanding of the present crisis, not primarily as convulsions of a dying age of civilization, but rather as birth pangs of a new age, thus placing before man a fresh source of inspiration and a conception of progress more comprehensive and more satisfying;

4. to outline the views of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on an integral education and to show their relation to this new outlook.

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