Education for Life: Tagore and Modern Thinkers (An Old and Rare Book)

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This book Education for Life is a new approach to the field of reorientation of Indian Education. It throws interesting light on the system of education which caters to the needs of life in modern times.

It is replete with some such new ideas of reconstruction of education as would be helpful for national development in regard to eradication of illiteracy and poverty.

It brings out author's breadth of vision, universality of out-look and originality of thought. The exposition is as lucid as it is illuminating. To read this book is indeed to enjoy a new taste and flavour of a life- centric education that has been experimented and advocated by the great educators of India and abroad. The introductory and concluding part of the book contain many such constructive suggestions and programmes related to the needs, life and aspirations of the people of Modern India and form an interesting study for all- students and guardians, administrators and educators.

It is a great pleasure to introduce Dr. Manindra Jana's work on Tagore's educational thoughts 'Education for life' based on his thesis on the subject. Dr. Jana, an old student of the Department of Teachers' Training, Calcutta University, now Rector, Namkhana N. Vidyamandir (xii) and Director, Banga Bharati Training Institute, worked hard under the able guidance of Prof. K. K. Mookherjee, an eminent educationist of our country to discover Tagore's relevancy in the present context as far as his educational ideas are concerned.

On Tagore's educational ideas some good works written by some prominent educationists heve already been published. Dr. Jana's book though a new addition to the list, may claim some special attention. Probably it is Dr. Jana who has drawn our attention to Tagore's educational ideas in the context of modern educational thoughts. He compared Tagore with some Eastern and Western Educationists and tried to place before us the relevancy of Tagore's educational ideas.

Tagore can be compared to a vast ocean full of gems and valuables. In every bent of human creation, Tagore has put his immortal touch. His creative genius has placed its imprints on all whether they are poems or arts and songs or stories. But he is known to the world as a poet, a Nobel Laureate. He is being described as the Poet of the World, the 'viswakabi'. But his contribution to other life needs, especially on educational reforms require some special mention. He has spent most of his life's energy as well as his earnings to nurture the abode of peace at Santiniketan which after its embryonic start in 1901, has grown up to be a Banaspati that is a big tree with multitude of branches to nest the budding humanities in an atmosphere of peace and tranquility. For his educational thoughts and experiments he was addressed as the Gurudev-the little bestowed on him by Brahmobandav Upadhyaya-a great revolutionary of Bengal.

The book as it is published under the caption "Education for Life: Tagore and Modern Thinkers" forms a significant part of my Doctoral Thesis named "Educational thought of Tagore and its relevance to the current educational thoughts", for the merit of which I had been awarded the degree of Ph.D. from the University of Calcutta in the year 1976 working under the guidance of Prof. K. K. Mookerjee, the then Dean of Faculty of Education of the said university.

The most modern trend in education all over the world is to relate education to the needs of life. The needs of life may be said to be fourfold, namely, social, political, economic and moral. From another stand point the bare necessities of life consist of food, cloth, shelter and amusements. Tagore pertinently remarked that education cut off from life's essential needs is quite meaningless; education which has no close relation with daily living is not fit to be called education in true sense of the term; for he realised full well that the very word 'education' implies proper rearing of children being derived, from the Latin 'E' and 'duco' or 'Educare.' The rearing of children in a proper way in the lap of mother Earth has been aimed at by all the educators of the world prominently since the time of Rousseau. Rousseau who is called to be the father of Modern Education held a very robust view that children should be given ample liberty upto the age of twelve to eat, drink and play; they will never be confined within the four walls as they are being kept at present; they will learn the secrets of living by living in nature observing the natural phenomena around him, hearing the sweet sounds and seeing the splended sights of nature. In a word or a phrase, his education should be 'according to nature'. Foreign educators like Froebel, Dewey and others are of the same opinion. Indian educators like Tagore, Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo also are unanimous on this point. They, of course, added many things according to the needs of the time and circumstances. The advancement of civilization demands many new things for better living in the complicated modernised societies.