Tagore and Shantiniketan Education – Part 3 - Activites, Schools and Student Experience

 Activities at the Shantiniketan

Sahitya Sabhas -  These were literary and musical evening that took place every Tuesday. Students would present their own literary work, dance, music and short skits among themselves and the community. They were also given a chance to perform these plays at the annual Rabindra Saptaho event with all other bodies of the Visva Bharati University. The other activities were...

Importance to extra-curricular activities – Students engaged in lots of physical activities in their time there. There were annual competitions in the areas of music, dance and recitation held there.

Lectures by professionals – Various professionals in the fields of sciences were invited to the school and university. Evening discussions of contemporary scientific and social issues where held along with the students.

Travel – Excursions and trips were organized to parts of West Bengal including Bardhaman, Malda, Purulia and Chittaranjan. There was a yearly picnic (Barshik Bonobhojan) as well.

Student Committees – The school had several student run communities that make and govern decisions related to student body. These committess teach students to take their own decisions and take self-responsibility for themselves.  Some committees were:-
-Environment Committee ("Paribesh Bibhag"),
-Health Committee ("Swastho Bibhag"),
-Justice Committee ("Bichar bibhag")
-Food Committee ("Ahar Bibhag")
-Literary Committee ("Sahitya Bibhag") etc. that govern and make decisions on matters related to student body.

Student Publication – Students were allowed to express their opinions through a quarterly news-paper, “Resonance”, which is planned and exceuted by senior students

Tagore and Shantiniketan Education – Part 2 - Students from Shantiniketan

1.  Satyajit Ray – Satyajit Ray is an Indian Filmaker and winner of over 32 national Film awards and an Academy award. Satyajit Ray went to Shantiniketan after completing his BA in Economics from the Presidency College, Calcutta. He was very influence by the artist Benode Behari Mukherjee that he met at Shantiniketan and even made a documentary movie on him titled the Inner Eye. He also came to appreciate oriental art at Shantiniketan. His time there is described as such:- “ During this period, he discovered the oriental art- Indian sculpture and miniature painting, Japanese woodcuts and Chinese landscapes... Till then, his exposure to art had been limited to only the western masters. He also undertook a long tour of places of artistic interests in India along with three friends. For the first time, he had begun to appreciate qualities of Indian art. The tour drew his attention to use of small details in Indian art to signify a bigger meaning. A quality that his films would later demonstrate.” www.satyajitray.org  (http://www.satyajitray.org/bio/at_shantiniketan.htm). The other students were...

What Education can Learn from Music?

I was listening to some music at a literature festival in 2013, when a thought struck me.

The evolution of music is an interesting idea to discuss and has several useful lessons for Education and how it is normally done.

Ken Robinson described how the rock and roll did not come about as a result of some planned government strategy. It just emerged. Listening to those musical performance every morning, I thought about what lessons music could offer to Education and reflected on my personal relationship to the music of the world. These were some of the thoughts that came across my mind.

What can Educational Institutes learn from Music?

What Education can learn from Business?

Okay let us say, you as an individual are a well established company or a well established brand. Everything you are involved in is like a business transaction. This includes your personal life, family, work life and most importantly your education. Because you need immediate profit you cannot waste time on unnecessary transactions or unnecessary meetings. This includes the education you have received:-

So what can Educational Institutes Learn from Business?

What Education can learn from Travel?

Let us go back to the first day of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2014 again. I attended a session titled, ‘women Uniterrupted’ where Cheryl Staryed and Robyn Davidson described how they used travel to find a part of themselves they thought they had lost. Cheryl Strayed is the best selling author of the book ‘Wild’, where she described her experience walking alone eleven hundred miles of the west coast of America. She did this after her mother’s death from cancer, resulting in her family losing touch with each other. Her marriage also crumbled as a result of this. She thought it was the only way out.

Travel Writers and their stories

Cheryl also described how she always wanted to be a writer and did not want to write something until she knew she had something to say. Robyn Davidson described how at the age of 27, she set of from Alice Springs for the west coast of Australia with a dog and four camels. She faced several difficulties along the way but completed the journey eventually.

Robyn described how nine months on her own had changed her consciousness completely. It was like she became a completely different person. As two travel writers described their adventurous journeys, I reflected on the lessons travel had for me and I think may have for the self-directed learner.

I thought about the trips I was fortunate to go on in my life and what I had learned from them. There was plenty and it went as follows:-

How to Lifeschool? - Films

Watch Films to Explore the World

Pico Iyer, who is one of the world’s best travel writers and who writes for TIME Magazine. He spent many days of his youth at local cultural halls and learning centers in his city. Here he would watch many of the academy award nominated foreign films that would be screened at these places. Anurag Kashyap is an Indian director. As a youngster, he attended the Goa Film Festival where he saw over 55 films over the ten days of the festival. He then started making his own movies and now is one of Indian Cinema’s biggest directors.

Why I Love The Movies?

How to Lifeschool? - People

What is a Double Learning Model?

“When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.”

― Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work

This approach to learning has really influenced my thinking and learning approach. If I found an author whose books really spoke to something deep within me, I would then read the other books written by this author.

I would then find out who inspired this author and read the books of the people that inspired him as well. I would then finally read articles by the person and go through the person's website online. I would also watch videos of the person's talk online.

This way you get an idea of how the person thinks and not only how he writes one book or prepares one talk. This is the same with a speaker or subject expert that you really connected with. Find out about all the other work done by that person and study everything you can about the person’s work.

Why did you connect with this person?