Ideals of Education by Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore had a philosophy of life, and his theory of education was accordingly shaped. Tagore regarded education as the basic of the true, the complete life. He felt that the education of a child is the most important work in building up the life of the nation. He wanted to train human beings for freedom, for peace, for justice. Accordingly, in his school he brought about an atmosphere of freedom, of sympathy and of service and these are Tagore’s cardinal ideals of education.

Tagore believed that the provision for the training of the children must begin from the earliest stage. He turned to this vital task unaided and he began his experiments at Santiniketan. According to him, true education is the basic of all constructive work. He enunciated that the aim of the school should be the highest degree of individual development in each of its pupils. . Free minds, nurtured on free criticism, must seek for profound changes in the foundations of society resulting in the triumph of reason over human conduct.

Tagore was an advocate of the medium of instruction through the mother tongue. In a speech read before the Rajshahi Association in 1892 which was published under the title of Siksher Her-Pher, he pointed out the folly of imparting education through the vehicle of a foreign language.

An educational institution, in Tagore's vision, should not exist in isolation; it should have a close contact with the socio-economic conditions prevalent in the locality. Knowledge acquired at the institution should be applied to improve the condition of the people around. It was this idea that led to the establishment of a rural welfare section at the Viswa Bharti.

Tagore and agricultural economist Leonard Elmhirst set up the Institute for Rural Reconstruction in 1921 (which Tagore later renamed Shriniketan) in Surul, a village near the ashram at Santiniketan. Through it, Tagore sought to provide an alternative to Gandhi's symbol- and protest-based Swaraj movement, which he denounced. He recruited scholars, donors, and officials from many countries to help the Institute use schooling to "free village from the shackles of helplessness and ignorance" by "vitalizing knowledge".

The basic principles guiding the rural reconstruction project were to sustain the work without outside help, and to integrate the approach to rural work by involving intellect, manual labour and emotional satisfaction in work undertaken.

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