This may seem obscure but it will become immediately clear if we go somewhat more into detail: the child has a type of mind that absorbs knowledge and instructs himself. A superficial observation will be sufficient to show this. The child of two speaks the language of his parents. The learning of a language is a great intellectual acquisition. Now who has taught the child of two this language? Is it the teacher? Everyone knows that that is not so, and yet the child knows to perfection the names of things, he knows the verbs, the adjectives etc. If anyone studies the phenomenon he will find it marvelous to follow the development of language. All who have done so agree that the child begins to use words and names at a certain period of life. It is as if he had a particular time-table. Indeed, he follows faithfully a severe syllabus which has been imposed by nature and with such exactitude that even the most pains-taking school would suffer in comparison. And following this time-table the child learns all the irregularities and different syntactical constructions of the language with exacting diligence.
The Vital Years
Within a child there is a very scrupulous teacher. It is he who achieves these results in every child, no matter in what region he is found. The only language that man learns perfectly is acquired at this period of childhood when no one can teach him. Not only that, but no matter what help and assistance he will get later in life if he tries to learn a new language, he will not be able to speak it with the same exactitude as he does the one acquired in childhood. There is a psychic power in the child that helps him. It is not merely a question of language. At two years he is able to recognize all the things and persons in his environment. The more one thinks about it the more it becomes evident that the construction the child achieves is immense: for all that we possess has been constructed by the child we once were, and the most important faculties are built in the first two years of life. It is not merely a question of recognizing what it is around us or understanding and dealing with our environment. It is the whole of our intelligence, our religious sentiment, our special feelings of patriotism and caste that are built during this period of life when no one can teach the child. It is as though nature had safeguarded each child from the influence of human intelligence in order to give the inner teacher that dictates within, the possibility of making a complete psychic construction before the human intelligence can come in contact with the spirit and influence it.
At three years of age the child has already laid the foundations of the human personality and needs the special help of education in the school. The acquisitions he has made are such that we can say the child who enters school at three is an old man. Psychologists say that if we compare our ability as adults to that of the child it would require us 60 years of hard work to achieve what a child has achieved in these first three years. And they express themselves by the strange words that I have mentioned above: at three a child is already an old man. Even then this strange ability of the child to absorb from the environment is not finished. In our first schools the children came at three years of age; no one could teach them because they were not receptive. But they gave striking revelations of the greatness of the human mind. Our school is not a real school; it is a house of children, i.e., an environment specially prepared for the children where the children absorb whatever culture is spread in the environment without any one teaching them. In our first school the children who attended came from the lowest class of people; the parents were quite illiterate. Yet these children at 4 years knew how to read and write. Nobody had taught them. Visitors were surprised to see children of so tender an age writing and reading. “Who has taught you how to write?” they asked and the children would look up in wonder and answer, “Taught? no one has taught me,” This seemed at the time a miracle. That children so small could write was in itself wonderful, but that they should do so without having received any teaching seemed impossible. The press began to speak about spontaneous acquisition of culture, Psychologists thought that these children were special children and we shared this opinion for a long time. It was only after some years that we perceived that all children have this power of absorbing culture. If this is so, we reasoned, if culture can be taken in without fatigue then let us put different items of culture for them to absorb. So the children absorbed much more than reading and writing, subjects like botany, zoology, mathematics, geography and so on were taken with the same ease, spontaneously, without any fatigue.
So we found that education is not what the teacher gives: education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual. It is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher then becomes not one of talking, but one of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity spread in a specially prepared environment. My experiences have lasted for 40 years now and as the children developed, here and there, in different nations, parents asked me to continue the education for older children and so we found that individual activity is the only means of development: that this is true for the preschool child as well as for the young people in primary and other schools.
The New Man Arises
In front of our eyes arose a new figure. It was not a school or education. It was Man that rose; Man who revealed his true character as he developed freely; who showed his greatness when no mental oppression was there to restrict his soul. And so I say that any reform of education must be based upon the development of the human personality. Man himself should become the center of education. And it must be remembered that man does not develop only at the university: man starts his development from birth and before birth. The greatest development is achieved during the first years of life, and therefore it is then that the greatest care should be taken. If this is done, then the child does not become a burden; he will reveal himself as the greatest marvel of nature. We shall be confronted by a child not as he was considered before a powerless being an empty vessel that must be filled with our wisdom. His dignity will arise in its fullness in front of our eyes as he reveals himself as the constructor of our intelligence, as the being who, guided by the inner teacher, in joy and happiness works indefatigably, following a strict time-table, to the construction of that marvel of nature: Man. We, the human teachers, can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. If we do so, we shall be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul, to the rising of a New Man who will not be the victim of events, but who will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society.
Chapter II
Education For Life
The School and Social Life
It is necessary from the very beginning to have an idea of what we intend by an education for life that starts from birth and even before birth. It is necessary to go into detail about this question, because recently, for the first time, a leader of the people has formulated the necessity not only of extending education to the whole course of life, but also of making ‘defense of life’ the center of education. I say for the first time when I refer to a political and spiritual leader, because science has not only expressed the necessity of it, but from the beginning of this century it has given positive contributions which show that the conception of extending education to the whole life can be done with certainty of success. Education, as a help and protection to life, is an idea which certainly has not entered the field of action of any ministry of education, neither in America North or South nor in Europe. Education as conceived up to today is rich in methods, in social aims and finalities, but it takes hardly into any consideration whatever life itself. There are many official methods of education adopted by different countries, but no official system of education considers life itself or sets out to protect development and help the individual from birth. If education is protection to life, you will realize that it is necessary that education accompany life during its whole course. Education as conceived today prescinds from both biological and social life. If we stop to think about the question we soon realize that all those who are undergoing education are isolated from society. Students must follow the rules established by each institution and adapt themselves to the syllabus recommended by the ministry of education. If we think about it we find also that in these schools no consideration is given to life itself. If the high school student for instance has not enough food,
