Learning with the Mother

DICTATIONS

I have been able to trace all the dictations from my notebook, in which the Mother wrote Herself and also some missing ones from the notebooks of the children who took the dictations in the Mother’s class. Some of these have not been recorded in the Mother’s own handwriting as She would sometimes give a dictation spontaneously. But to keep the record complete we reproduce here the entire collection.

In the beginning, when the children were few in number, the Mother would correct each child’s notebook Herself and give points according to the number of correct words written by the child. If there were twenty words in the dictation and the child got eighteen words right, he would get eighteen points which She would put down in her own handwriting in the child’s little notebook.

The Mother’s correction of a child’s notebook

The Mother correcting a child’s notebook

Interestingly, the notebooks were all made out of the cuttings and scrap from the Ashram Printing Press. After the 2nd World War, due to shortage of paper, Mother had little notebooks made out of discarded or cut paper from the Ashram Press. These were distributed to the children for their dictations and a few extra notebooks were always in my wooden almirah to be given to the new children or to children who sometimes lost or had filled up their notebooks. The Mother would often write each child’s name on these little notebooks.

Baba needs a notebook to write his dictation

The Mother also frequently helped the children to improve their handwriting work when it was too bad. For this, She gave them cursive writing books to take back home and practice or She would give a lesson in cursive writing in the child’s notebook itself.

The Mother’s lesson to a child in cursive writing

As the number of students increased, She stopped correcting all the notebooks but continued to correct only four of the senior and most serious children’s notebooks (Chitra, Ranganath, Namita, and Bharati). The rest of the notebooks were corrected by some of us captains who attended the class and also others, like Nirod Da, Amiyo, Debu, Prithvin etc. But She would still see every child’s notebook to give the final points based on the number of correctly written words in her own hand. thus showing us how to maintain the enthusiasm and interest of every child. By these methods, She also taught us how to bring perfection into every little detail of any work without taking shortcuts.

These dictations started in 1951 for children of four to ten years of age but as new children of four years kept joining in, the age gap kept increasing. By the end of 1952, there were children of four to twelve years in the same class. In November 1952, the Mother then divided the class into two sections which she called “Grand” (big) and “Petit” (small). For the little ones she gave short dictations of a few words only, which they would prepare in advance. But for the older children, She started giving the dictations without their prior preparation.

Many of these dictations are quotations from famous saints and authors. While writing these, the Mother never consulted any book. She knew so many by heart!

The dates below the quotations are the dates on which the dictations were given. The dates on which the

Mother wrote the quotations are different but we are not giving those dates here.

Given below are the dictations given by the Mother from 8th April 1951 to 28th February 1954 after which She discontinued the dictation classes.