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The Abundant Life A Review Essay

By MARGARET WILEY MARSHALL

EDUCATION FOR FULNESS: A STUDY OF THE EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT AND EXPERIMENT OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE, by H. B. Mukherjee. New York: Asia Publishing House, I962. xvi+495 PP. $i6.oo.

This carefully documented study of the educational philosophy and practice of the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore is at once a challenging mani- festo of educational theory and an admirable introduction to the fundamental balance of the Indian mind. Tagore wrote and lectured about education for approximately fifty years, from I892 until his death in I94I. During the last forty of those years he experimented with education on all levels-elementary, secondary, university, and adult-at Santiniketan (near Calcutta), the site of the present Visva-Bharati Univer- sity.

In violent reaction against the joylessness, confinement, and wooden- ness of his own early education and in fulfillment of his groping desire to expand his poetic vision of the world to include all men, Tagore began in i9oi to expose a few "difficult" boys to very informal education in a forest setting reminiscent of the aframs of ancient India, where they could live in sympathetic harmony with nature, with their teacher, and with each other, and where learning could grow out of their shared life. This realization of kindredship [sic] with the vast Cosmic world through the senses, through the intellect, and through the spirit is, according to Tagore, India's unique- contribution to the world and is the highest attainment according to Indian thought.

This is the kind of fulness referred to in the book's title. " 'The aim of education is to realize fully through knowledge and action the entire pur- pose of human life.' "

The implementation of this broad aim fanned out from the co-ordination of the varied cultures of India with the cultures of all Asia, and thence to ultimate intercultural sympathy and understanding between East and West -and all this in terms not of the production of an intellectual elite (as encouraged by British educators) but of a pervasive and broad-based education which should reach the lowliest peasant in the village in proportion to his ability to take advantage of it. Because these were the educational aims of a poet, they do not sound like a mere reiteration of the general aims of all educationists (and indeed they contrast markedly in tone with the quoted statements of Western educators). For Tagore, his teaching was a kind of expanded lyrical poem, and thus an extension of his own ever growing personality.

The function of the tapovan or forest colony in education was to provide an atmosphere of purity, simplicity, and sublimity in which what was elsewhere intellectualized into science, art, and other disciplines could be seen in proper perspective and in relation to the oneness of the life of the universe -human and non-human. Truly creative activity, Tagore thought, pre-

462


REVIEW ESSAY 463

supposes a unity with all human beings as well as with the world of nature. For this reason he believed the atmosphere in which education was conducted to be of fundamental importance. He was realistic enough as both poet and educator to recognize the essential unteachability of the human mind, and therefore he relied upon the subtler influences which, as Emerson said, teach over our heads. "I believe," he observed, "that children have their subconscious mind more active than their conscious intelligence. A vast quantity of the most important of our lessons has been taught to us through this. Experiences of countless generations have been instilled into our nature by its agency, not only without causing us any fatigue, but giving us joy. This subconscious faculty of knowledge is completely one with our life."

Hence he leaned heavily upon "'the sub-conscious remembrance of some primeval dwelling-place' " (what Jung would call the temenos) and attributed to its calm beauty the unrest experi- enced in cities and amidst "'the complexity and costliness' " of modern life.

Central to this atmosphere of free- flowing life is the guru (teacher, pre- ceptor), who is " 'an ever-alert human mind, . . . always giving itself away, because it is always realizing itself. The proof of his joy of receiving lies in his joy of giving.'" The reader has the feeling that even if faced by a teacher shortage, Tagore would main- tain that unjoyous teachers should look for other jobs: "When one mind can establish true con- cord with other minds, spontaneous joy results. Such joy is creative. The education imparted in an asram is a gift of this joy. Those who are actuated only by a sense of duty without this joy should find other vocations. The reciprocal easy relationship between the teacher and the pupil has been regarded by me as the most important medium of education."

Set against this high standard, much of contemporary teaching seems a gloomy affair.

There are significant implications for the secularism which America shares, in principle, with India in what Tagore has to say about religious education, which he believes de- mands that we "'open the mind towards the universe.'" Mukherjee says, it is through the principle of joy that true religious education is possible; for true religious education, according to Tagore, consists in the realization of the principle of joy that subsists in the heart of the Universe. As God is the culmination and consummation of all joy, it is through joy that God can be realized. Therein lies true salvation according to the teachings of Indian philosophy. It is because of all these inestimable values that the central problem of education, according to Tagore, was how to wed joy to knowledge.

It is thus obvious that for him the highest and truest education is essen- tially religious, and needs for its im- plements little that is artificial or contrived. "What is really necessary is neither tem- ples nor external rites and rituals. We want the asram, where the clear beauty of Nature combined with the pure pursuits of the human mind has created a sacred site for worthy endeavours. Nature and the human spirit wedded together shall constitute our temple, and selfless good deeds our worship. . . . Such a spot, if found, shall provide the true atmosphere for religious education. For, as I have said before, according to the mysteries of human nature, religious education is possible only in the natural atmosphere of piety; all artificial means only pervert or obstruct it."

What, then, did Tagore think of books and their function in education? Like other great educational writers before him-Milton, Carlyle, Emer- son-he condemns the use of books, like clothes, when they come between


464 JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION

us and nature or between our minds and life, when " 'we touch the world not with our mind but with our books,'" and hence live out a joyless existence in a realm of shadows. Finally, Tagore recommends that the superstition about the importance and infallibility of books has got to be eradi- cated from the minds of children by leading them to learn directly from Nature and life or from lively teachers and to record their observations independently so as to write their own books.

The single most revolutionary, and yet the wisest, piece of educational ad- vice contained in this book (and one which turns up in several places) grows out of Tagore's recognition that ' 'life never travels in a straight line' "

and that the human being is educated by both sorrow and happiness, disci- pline and freedom. "'Under such conditions,' " he says, "'true education consists in giving man a violent pull towards the opposite direction when he is found to incline too much towards any particular side.'" This is not only the fundamental principle of Tagore's educational method but also the basis of his vision of East- West co-operation. . . . It is precisely in this synthesis of the claims of the flesh and the spirit, of the earth and heaven, of the so-called mate- rialism of the West and the so-called spiritualism of the East, that the value of Tagore's philosophy lies. His forceful acclamation that practical efficiency is never synonymous with true culture, and

that the mad pursuit of success in power and wealth in modern life has dehumanized man by starving his spirit-has evoked favorable response in thoughtful circles all over the world.

Thus throughout the book one can see Tagore, in true Indian fashion, balancing an emphasis upon method against a repudiation of methods, na- tional against international education, instruction in the mother tongue against retention of English, use of Hindu symbols against a campaign to uproot superstitions, the creative arts against scientific experimentation. In the case of each pair of opposites, it was the goal of fulness which guided him and the determination never to discard what could contribute to the enrichment of the human spirit. Hence it is understandable that Tagore should have differed with Gandhi concerning the practice of non-violence, which sometimes resulted in great violence, and the practice of non-co-operation in a world which was perishing for the lack of co-operation. Instead, Tagore turned to the Upani- shads for the reinforcement of his con- ception of "education for fulness": . . . He never remains obscure who regards all creatures like himself and finds himself reflected in all creation. . . . He lies lost who confines himself to his own self; he attains self-expression who realizes himself in all.

MARGARET WILEY MARSHALL is a professor of English at Brooklyn College.


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