Aligning Education With the Future

Some years ago, some parents in the USA had an interesting conversation with their local elementary school administrator. They were concerned about the type of education their children would receive so they set up a meeting to interview the administrator, with the idea that they were prepared to undertake ‘home schooling’ but did not feel competent themselves to teach some of the more technical subjects such as mathematics or science, nor the character forming subjects such as art or music. They were also concerned about the question of socialization of the children if they were too isolated.

The seminal question they asked was whether the administrator could realistically affirm that the school was teaching the “future” rather than the “past” in terms of preparing the children for life in the modern world. The administrator admitted that their entire curriculum was based in the past and realistically they were not actually preparing children for the world that everyone could see was taking shape for the future.

As a result of that conversation, the parents and the school developed a new model where the students would be home schooled, but would be scheduled into specific classes that the school could provide, without formal enrollment and without ‘graduating’ from the school. The children received the benefit of both aspects, while the school had the opportunity to observe students who were clearly awake, motivated to learn and forward looking in the way they dealt with issues. Everyone felt that the program thus devised was a step forward.

Our educational systems, and even parental expectations are set to make children ‘fit in’ to society, and thus, we inculcate the habits and world-view prevalent at the time, which automatically act as an impediment to the process of development and evolutionary change. We expect children to be what their parents have been, and anything new or different meets with resistance both from the society and from the parents who are afraid of the child potentially failing in the society or being ‘different’ and thus, not accepted.

Children carry these expectations into their youth and later into their adult life. In many cases, dreams and ideas they had get pushed aside and they take on duties and relationships as expected, and suffer from depression, boredom and a sense of purposelessness. Instead of moving the entire society forward, we are fixated on maintaining the status quo, regardless of its limitations, drawbacks and obvious failures.

Today we see a new generation of children being born who clearly have a different vision and purpose, even at a very early age. One is reminded of Sri Aurobindo’s vision in Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol: “I saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth; Forerunners of a divine multitude, Out of the paths of the morning star they came Into the little room of mortal life. I saw them cross the twilight of an age, The sun-eyed children of a maravellous dawn, The great creators with wide brows of calm, The massive barrier-breakers of the world And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will, The labourers in the quarries of the gods, The messengers of the Incommunicable, The architects of immortality. … Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth And justify the light on Nature’s face.” [Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Book III, Canto IV pp 343-344]

The Mother writes: “This is what it should be, instead of making children ordinary, with that dull, vulgar common sense which becomes an inveterate habit and, when something is going well, immediately brings up in the being the idea: ‘Oh, that won’t last!’, when somebody is kind, the impression, ‘Oh, he will change!’, when one is capable of doing something, ‘Oh, tomorrow I won’t be able to do it so well.’ This is like an acid, a destructive acid in the being, which takes away hope, certitude, confidence in future possibilities.”

“When a child is full of enthusiasm, never throw cold water on it, never tell him, ‘You know, life is not like that!’ You should always encourage him, tell him, ‘Yes, at present things are not always like that, they seem ugly, but behind this there is a beauty that is trying to realise itself. This is what you should love and draw towards you, this is what you should make the object of your dreams, of your ambitions.”

“And if you do this when you are very small, you have much less difficulty than if later on you have to undo, undo all the bad effects of a bad education, undo that kind of dull and vulgar common sense which means that you expect nothing good from life, which makes it insipid, boring, and contradicts all the hopes, all the so-called illusions of beauty. On the contrary, you must tell a child — or yourself if you are no longer quite a baby — ‘Everything in me that seems unreal, impossible, illusory, that is what is true, that is what I must cultivate.’ When you have these aspirations: ‘Oh, not to be always limited by some incapacity, all the time held back by some bad will!’, you must cultivate within you this certitude that that is what is essentially true and that is what must be realised.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XVI Body, pp. 125-126