Thursday, May 20, 2010

Beautiful poem by Rabindranath Tagore

I am sure I read this as part of my English textbooks when I was in school. But it was pleasantly and inspirationally reminded by Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan (Lok Satta) in the context of society, politics, but this is so true for any aspect mainly education.
Great poem and I would like to Kedaar to read this when he grows up.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action– into that heaven of freedom,
my Father,Let my country awake.


Also I read some thoughts of Ravindranath Tagore about education. Really true "especially" the highlighted aspect.

We have come to this world to accept it, not merely to know it. We may become powerful by knowledge, but we attain fullness by sympathy. The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence. But we find that this education of sympathy is not only systematically ignored in schools, but it is severely repressed. From our very childhood habits are formed and knowledge is imparted in such a manner that our life is weaned away from nature and our mind and the world are set in opposition from the beginning of our days. Thus the greatest of educations for which we came prepared is neglected, and we are made to lose our world to find a bagful of information instead. We rob the child of his earth to teach him geography, of language to teach him grammar. His hunger is for the Epic, but he is supplied with chronicles of facts and dates...Child-nature protests against such calamity with all its power of suffering, subdued at last into silence by punishment. (Rabindranath Tagore, Personality,1917: 116-17)

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