RABINDRANATH TAGORE

BIOGRAPHY
Date of Birth: May 7, 1861
Birthplace: Kolkata, India
Death: August 7, 1941 (aged 80)
Other Names: Rabīndranāth Ṭhākur, Gurudev
Nationality: Indian
Father: Debendranath Tagore
Mother: Sarada Devi
Wife: Mrinalini Devi
Awards / Honors: Nobel Prize
OVERVIEW
● Multi-talented personality with a great desire to learn new things.
● Contributions to literature, music, and his several works are unforgettable.
● Awarded the most prestigious Nobel Prize for his great contribution to Indian
literature (Geetanjali). first person from Asia to receive this award
● Composed the National Anthem of India and Bangladesh

LIFE
● At the age of 8, he started writing poems
● In 1878, he went to England to become a barrister to fulfill his father's wish. He was
not much interested in school learning and he dropped this and learned various works
of Shakespeare on his own.
● He also learned the essence of English, Irish and Scottish literature and music.
● 1901, established an open-air school. It was a prayer hall with marble flooring and
was named 'The Mandir'. It was also named 'Patha Bhavana' and started with only
five students. Classes here were held under trees and followed the traditional Guru-
Shishya method of teaching. This trend of teaching revived the ancient method of
teaching which proved beneficial when compared with the modernised method.
● His works started growing and became more popular amongst the Bengali as well as
foreign readers. In 1913, he gained recognition and was awarded the prestigious
Nobel Prize in Literature
● Rabindranath Tagore was a great philosopher, poet, novelist, dramatist and a
prophet.
● Tagore got his education mostly at home through tutors and private readings.
● He had started writing articles for Bengali magazines very early in life.
● Gradually, love of learning increased by leaps and bounds in him and he wrote many
stories, novels and poems which earned repute and appreciation for him.
● Rabindranath Tagore developed into a renowned poet, writer, dramatist, philosopher
and painter soon that people began to address him reverently as Gurudev.
THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION
● He stood for the development of a free mind, free knowledge and a free nation.
● He regarded schools as mills of rote learning with no freedom for creativity. Schooling
almost had no influence in his life.
● Tagore’s major contribution to education is the establishment of shantiniketan which
eventually grew into a world university called viswa bharti.
● There are four fundamental principles in Tagore’s educational philosophy; naturalism,
humanism, internationalism and idealism. Shantiniketan and Visva Bharathi are both
based on these very principles.
● He insisted that education should be imparted in natural surroundings. He believed
in giving children the freedom of expression.
● He condemned the British system of education saying that it killed the natural desire
of the child to be creative.
● He said, “Children have their active subconscious mind which, like a tree, has the
power to gather its food from the surrounding atmosphere”. He also said that an
educational institution should not be “ a dead cage in which living minds are fed with
food that’s artificially prepared. Hand work and arts are the spontaneous overflow of
our deeper nature and spiritual significance”.
● The main objective of his school – Shantiniketan was to cultivate a love for nature, to
impart knowledge and wisdom in one’s native language, provide freedom of mind,
heart and will, a natural ambience, and to eventually enrich Indian culture.
● True education is to realize at every step how our training and knowledge have an
organic connection with our surroundings
● Apart from physical activity, nature teaches a man more than any institution.
Educational institutions should realize the importance of this fact and inculcate co-
curricular activities to good effect.
● The aim of education is to prepare the individual for the service of the nation and
education stands for human regeneration, cultural representation, harmony and
intellectualism.
● Educational institutions should build on the power of thinking and imagination in an
individual and help turn herself/himself into a self-sustained building block of human
society and a creative canvas of nation on the whole.
● He supported teaching and learning through debates and discussion which develop
the power of clear cut thinking.
 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF RABINDRANATH
TAGORE

● Tagore’s brothers and sisters were poets, musicians, playwrights and novelists and
thus, Tagore’s home was filled with the musical, literary and dramatic pursuits. As
such Tagore got his education mostly at home by self-study.
● Education prevalent in the days of Tagore was rigid and lifeless that it did not
confirm to the needs of individual and demands of society. Hence, he deadly
opposed the current education and insisted that education should acquaint the
child with the voice and mission of individual as well as international life and
achieve a harmonious balance between all the factors being free from all
compulsions and restrictions.
● Tagore recommended that education should be provided in the
company of Nature which will strengthen the ties between man and Nature.
● Both man and Nature are the creations of one and the same God. He
considered Nature as a powerful agency for the moral and spiritual
development of the child exerting a very healthy influence upon the heart, mind
and body of the child.
● Under the natural and healthy environment, pupils can find a natural outlet for
their capacities and great chance of their development.
● He advocated that education should be according to the realities of life. Any
education cut away from life is useless. Hence, any plan of education should
involve both nature and needs of man in a harmonious programme.
● Tagore was not in favor of mere intellectual development.
● He stressed that education should promote creative self-expression.
● He suggested that creative self-expression can be promoted through subjects
of life crafts, music, drawing and dramatics. The environment of freedom given
to the learner and then creating situations for him will automatically make the
learner do something original.

TEACHER - Tagore gave a very important place to the teacher. He assigned an important
role to him in the education of child believing that only man can teach another man.
● To him, the teacher is a Guru like ancient Indian Rishis who is to keep the students
on the right track by remaining a learner throughout his life.
● Believing in purity and innocence of child, the teacher should behave with him with
great love, affection, sympathy and consideration.
● Tagore also stated that the teachers and students are considered to be
learners together, seeking truth and following the right path of pure simplicity as well as
renunciation. The teacher should always be busy with motivating the creative capacities
of children so that they remain busy with constructive activities and experiences.

Classroom Teaching: Tagore did not approve the traditional methods of class-room
teaching.
● He recommended those methods which provide knowledge of concrete situations.
● He favored frequent excursions and tours, during which the pupils with their senses
alert might observe and learn various facts of interest.
● Education must be given in geographical, historical, economic and cultural
perspectives.
● In order to enable children to learn new things, it is necessary to maintain an
educative atmosphere where children are not compelled to learn things from text-
books, but from the natural surroundings which are most educative.

Educational Aims as propounded by Rabindranath Tagore:

1. Education should aim to develop the child physically. Tagore believed that a healthy
mind lives in a healthy body.
2. Education should enable the child to acquire the knowledge through independent efforts
and critical examination of ideas.
3. Education should inculcate moral and spiritual values in children.
4. Chief aim of education should be drawing out all the latent potentialities of child.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE AS SOCIAL REFORMER

● When the Bengal Partition took place on October 16 in 1905, Rabindranath Tagore
wrote the song Banglar Mati Banglar Jol (Soil of Bengal, Water of Bengal) to unite
the Bengali population.
● He started the Rakhi Utsav where people from Hindu and Muslim communities tied
colourful threads on each other's wrists.
● When India was struggling to find the right language for the freedom movement, Tagore
advocated the idea of global integrity. The purpose of the freedom struggle changed
from protest to progress as Tagore explained the universality of man. The identity of
India after independence was closely based on Tagore's ideology of peace and universal
brotherhood.
● He started Sriniketan for revi-ving and reconstructing rural Bengal.
● He apprehended many of the contemporary social evils and even aberrations (for
example, communalism, honour killings, caste atrocities, and dowry deaths, inflation,
tribal displacements etc.)
 ● Tagore rejected violence from the British as well and renounced the knighthood that had
been given to him by Lord Hardinge in 1915 in protest of the violent Amritsar massacre
in which the British killed at least 1526 unarmed Indian citizens.
● He viewed British rule as a symptom of the overall “sickness” of the social “disease” of
the public.
● The cornerstone of Tagore’s beliefs and work is the idea that anti-colonialism cannot
simply be achieved by rejecting all things British, but should consist of incorporating all
the best aspects of western culture into the best of Indian culture.

TAGORE’S FAMOUS WORKS

● Gitanjali
● The home and the world
● The postmaster
● Chokher Bali
● Fireflies
● The post office
● Gora
● Waiting
● Friend
● On the nature of love
● Paperboats
● Ghare baire

Name of the Participants:

• Aditi
• Khushboo Rawat
• Priya Mehra
• Mridula
• Shikha
• Lavanya
• Vedika Kohli
• Yashab Urooj