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SMRITI GRANTH
was the Greek ideal of education, which has reappeared in the modern West, and which influences the modern educational thinkers in India. It is also recognised that there have been systems of education laying a great stress on the building up of the character and on the inculcation of the moral virtues. In some systems of education, an attempt has been made to provide for the study of some religious texts and for some religious practice. There is also a tendency to suggest system of education in which all the above elements would in some way be incorporated
The system of integral education as being experimented in at the Ashram accepts the truths and values underlying all the above-mentioned systems of education but it is identical with none of them. It does stress the harmonious development of the physical, the vital and the mental; but the harmony is sought to be achieved not by any mental or moral or religious idea system, but by an uncompromising stress on an inner seeking and discovery of the psychic and spiritual principles in the personality. Again, this stress on the psychic and the spiritual is not conveyed through any religious doctrine, dogma, ritual or ceremony, but through spiritual example and influence, and through individual or collective spiritual guidance.
(ii) Such a system of education is unique and unprecedented, for even in ancient India in the Ashram of the Rishis, where spirituality was not life-negating and where there was an attempt at the integral development of the various parts of the being by the stress on the inner psychic and spiritual seeking even there the aim of the complete spiritualsation of life here on the earth was lacking or was not yet fully put forth. Indeed, the educational system of the ancient spiritual Ashrams has been a most valuable gift and, even when our aim is not absolutely identical and we have to hew out new paths in education, many of the characteristics of our endeayour will bear close resemblance or even show identity, both in spirit and form, to those which obtained in the ancient Ashrams. The integral system of education is thus in a sense a continuation and enrichment of the ancient Ashram system; but it is also a new cretion. with a more radical and perfect spiritual aim, and in the conditions of the modern world which are very much different from those of ancient times. French and more complex problems of education have to be met in this new endeavour and research. There is no doubt that if education has to reconcile the underlying val. s
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of modern Science, Technology and the dynamism of life with the spiritual ideals, it can be shaped only in this direction.
(iii) It is significant that there is at present a great drive towards experimentation in education. And some of the new methods of education, that are being proposed and experimented upon at the forward centres of education all over the world, seem to be leading straight to the right solution. The ideas of individual differentiation, the stress on multiple methods of teaching for different categories of students, recognition of the phenomena of genius, insistence on allround development of the personality, and an ardent attempt at implementing the idea of freedom and that of consulting the child in his own education-all this has created a new atmosphere which augurs well for a new creation.
In the experiments in education at the Ashram, all these movements have been taken into account, and an attempt has been made to give to all the new and significant idea in education their full value and work. out their extreme conclusions, so that in the final solution each truth of educational theory and practice may find its true place and complete fulfilment.
2. There has recently been in India a great deal of thinking on the problem of moral and religious or spiritual education. It has been strongly felt that even while "religious education" as such cannot be sponsored by the Secular State, education in moral and spiritual values can and should be made an integral part of the national system of education. There is also a serious inquiry as to the connotation of moral and spiritual values, and the methods by which these values can be inculcated-among the students. The inquiry is far from complete, and even serious doubts have been raised as to whether in the context of the present day educational environments, moral and spiritual education would at all be possible, or whether, even if attempted, it could be anything more than the teaching of moral and religious philosophy.
These doubts cannot be brushed aside, for what is very often suggested is not "religious education," or "spiritual education" or "moral education," but education about religion, spirituality or morality, and that too by means of a few standard and graded books, and in the environment of the classroom and schoolbenches. Even when better suggestions are being hazared, they do not seem to lead us far into the heart of the solution of the problem.
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