Abstract

“Our call is to young India. It is the young who must be the builders of the new world.” Sri Aurobindo India was always rich in the establishment of centers even in Vedic times where the first principles of education were to be found in the Ashrams and Gurukuls and later on in the great universities of Nalanda and Taxila. The term education usually refers to the technical sense and is generally limited to the context of teachers instructing students. Teachers may draw on many subjects, including reading, writing, mathematics, science and history. The true aim and principle of national education according to Sri Aurobindo is to take our culture as its foundation while not ignoring modern truth and knowledge. Education provides conditions for all human beings towards their divine perfection and to achieve the power, the harmony, the beauty and joy of self-realisation. According to him education brings out, “to full advantage, makes ready for the full purpose and scope of human life all that is in the individual man, and which at the same time helps him to enter his right relations with the life, mind and soul of the people to which he himself is a unit and his people or nation a living, a separate and yet inseparable member.”(Sri Aurobindo, Vol.17, p.198) In this approach we can study his ideas on the nature of education and objectives of education, its basic principles, how we develop curriculum for students, methods of teaching etc. Besides this we can also study the role of students and responsibility of a teacher to student’s education. Because according to him the teacher is only a guide and he shows the pupils how to perfect their instruments of knowledge and helps and encourages them in this process. Instead of imparting knowledge he shows how to acquire knowledge for himself. A teacher must be a student, so that he can understand student’s problems, motivate them to solve their problems and helps in the development of successful life.