Teaching, Learning, Evolving- An Invitation
Walking past a shelf full of books, a book caught my eye. I leaned down, lifted and opened the book. I do this often, open a book and read the page accepting the words as an invitation, as a gift.
I scanned and began to read this quote from Rabindranath Tagore:
“A child is in his natural setting admist the flowers and the songbirds. There he may more easily express the hidden wealth of his individual endowment. True education is not pumped and crammed in from outward sources, but aids in bringing to the surface the infinite hoard of wisdom within.”
The book I lifted from the shelf is an Autobiography of a Yogi, and the chapter, Chapter 29 is titled “Rabindranath Tagore and I Compare Schools.” The book was required reading for my 200 hour yoga teacher training. While at Sattva, each night, I would read a chapter before I closed my eyes. I recall reading this chapter; I was in awe, underlining phrases and parts, celebrating the words that appeared to be lifted from my mind and placed on the page. Beautiful. Simply. Profound.
Reading this quote, revisiting this chapter, I am reminded of the poems and musings that I have written about education. When I began sharing in a public form, I wrote questions that emerge for me, that rose in my field of awareness. The questions were, and still are meant to evoke, bring forth, elicit, stimulate and/or awaken something within the receiver and to invite a conversation around education and schooling.
The poems are invitations to do the same -to bring to awareness our values around schooling, education, learning, evolving. I share them here under the heading ROUSE, the intention is do to just that,
to rouse
to wake up, to bring out of sleep
a cause to be active, startle out of inactivity.
Enjoy the space you arrive to,
Sara
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 toward perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the minds is led forward by Thee into ever widening
thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country
awake!