1.2 Indian educational thinkers notes

1. 1.2.1Mahatma Gandhi: basic education and Nai Talim

   Gandhi defined education as the all-round drawing out of the best in body, mind and spirit, and his basic education (Nai Talim), adopted at the Wardha conference (October 1937) and worked out by the Zakir Husain Committee, offered seven years of free, compulsory, craft-centred, self-supporting schooling in the mother tongue.

   Standard · 16 min · Full course
2. 1.2.2Rabindranath Tagore: Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati

   Tagore (1861–1941), poet and the first Asian Nobel laureate (1913), built an open-air school at Santiniketan (1901), the world university Visva-Bharati (1921) and the rural centre Sriniketan (1922); his education is naturalist, humanist and international: freedom, harmony with nature and with all humanity.

   Standard · 14 min · Full course
3. 1.2.3Swami Vivekananda: man-making education

   Vivekananda (1863–1902) took his education from Vedanta: education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man, and its goal is man-making and character-building, carried to the masses and to women.

   Standard · 11 min · Full course
4. 1.2.4Aurobindo, J. Krishnamurti and other Indian educators

   Sri Aurobindo wanted integral education of body, life, mind, psyche and spirit, with three principles of teaching ("nothing can be taught"); J. Krishnamurti wanted education to free the mind from conditioning, fear and comparison (Rishi Valley, near his birthplace Madanapalle); the Phules and Fatima Sheikh opened schools for girls and the oppressed (Pune, 1848), Radhakrishnan chaired the University Education Commission (1948–49) and Zakir Husain drafted the Wardha scheme of basic education (1937–38).

   Standard · 24 min · Full course

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