Abstract
Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath who earned international acclaim for his accomplishments as a poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher, educationalist, political thinker, social reformer, and philosopher. This chapter focuses on Tagore’s contribution to education as it discusses his educational philosophy and vision, his influences and motivations, the key educational principles he espoused and lived by, and his continuing legacy. It particularly sheds light on his critique of the Western paradigm-informed education establishment of his time and his response to its excesses and shortcomings. It also elaborates on the educational projects he pursued as he aspired to afford Indian children vibrant, creative, and inclusive learning spaces. The establishment of three educational institutions under his tutelage, Santiniketan, Visva-Bharati, and Sriniketan, represented in many ways his commitment to enrich, enable, and empower learners through an experiential and holistic approach to learning. More importantly, they served as “meeting grounds” that helped children coming from different cultural and social backgrounds experience and celebrate diversity, forge fellowships, and learn to look after one another’s welfare. Through this chapter, readers are likewise made aware of Tagore’s quest to liberate the school from unfettered materialism, cultural prejudice, and exclusionary institutional practices by espousing freedom, kinship with nature, and the importance of creativity and imagination. They are also rendered cognizant of his endeavor to inculcate in learners the importance of promoting a common humanity through education. This chapter concludes by examining new ideas and areas for research that emerged as promising theoretical and practical offshoots of Tagore’s life’s work.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alam, F. (2012). Rabindranath Tagore and national identity formation in Bangladesh: Essays and review. Bangla Academy.
Alatas, S. F. (2003). Academic dependency and the global division of labour in the social sciences. Current Sociology, 51(6), 599–613.
Bhattacharya, K. (2014). Rabindranath Tagore: Adventure of ideas and innovative practices in education. Springer.
Chakravarty, A. (Ed.). (1961/2003). A Tagore reader. Rupa.
Collins, M. (2007). History and the postcolonial: Rabindranath Tagore’s reception in London, 1912–1913. International Journal of the Humanities, 4, 71–83.
Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Allen & Unwin.
Das, S. (Ed.). (1996). The English writings of Rabindranath Tagore: Volume 3, a miscellany. Sahitya Akademi.
Das, S. (2009). Looking forward through looking back: Rabindranath Tagore and the neo-Bengal school in the development of Santiniketan architecture. Journal of Heritage Studies 1(1), 161–183.
Das Gupta, U. (2004). Rabindranath Tagore: A biography. Oxford University Press.
Das Gupta, U. (Ed.). (2009). Rabindranath Tagore: Selected writings on education and nationalism. Oxford University Press.
Dillon, A. (2004). Education in Plato’s Republic. Paper presented at the Santa Clara University Student Ethics Research Conference.
Dutta, K., & Robinson, A. (2009). Rabindranath Tagore: The myriad-minded man. I.B. Tauris.
Dutta, K. & Robinson, A. (2014). An anthology. Picador.
Frame, D. M. (Trans.). (1958). The complete essays of Montaigne. Stanford University Press.
Fraser, B. (2019). Rabindranath Tagore. London: Reaktion Books Ltd.
Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of the heart. New York: Continuum.
Ghosh, R., Naseem, A., & Vijh, A. (2010). Tagore and education: Gazing beyond the colonial cage. In A. Abdi (Ed.), Decolonizing philosophies of education (pp. 59–72). Sense Publishers.
Gupta, K. S. (2005). The philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. Ashgate.
Hansen, D. T. (2002). Dewey’s conception of an environment for teaching and learning. Curriculum Inquiry, 32(3), 267–280.
Kripalani, K. (1962). Rabindranath Tagore: A biography. Oxford University Press.
Mukherjee, K. C. (1970). Tagore-pioneer in education. British Journal of Educational Studies, 18(1), 69–81.
Mukherjee, M. (2014). The possibility of a Southern theory of inclusive education in ‘An Other Tongue’. In The Australian sociological association annual conference Social theory thematic group. Challenging Identities, Institutions and Communities. Retrieved from https://www.tasa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Mukherjee.pdf
Mukherjee, M. (2017). Educating the heart and the mind: Conceptualizing inclusive pedagogy for sustainable development. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49(5), 531–549.
Nussbaum, M. C. (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton University Press.
O’Connell, K. (2010). Tagore and education: Creativity, mutuality and survival. Asiatic, 4(1), 65–76.
Quayum, M. A. (2011). A herald of religious unity: Rabindranath Tagore’s literary representation of Muslims. In M. A. Quayum (Ed.), The poet and his world: Critical essays on Rabindranath Tagore (pp. 68–95). Orient BlackSwan.
Quayum, M. A. (2016). Education for tomorrow: The vision of Rabindranath Tagore. Asian Studies Review, 40(1), 1–16.
Samuel, F. A. (2010). Tagore’s vision of international education: Relevance and implications for today. The Educational Forum, 74(4), 347–356.
Schöpf, C. (2020). The coloniality of global knowledge production: Theorizing the mechanisms of academic dependency. Social Transformations: Journal of the Global South, 8. https://doi.org/10.13185/3372
Tagore, R. (1906). The problem of education. In Towards universal man, 1961 (pp. 67–82). Asia.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Leviste, E.N.P., Lopez Wui, M.G. (2023). When Education Enriches, Enables, and Empowers: Rabindranath Tagore’s Experiences, Insights, and Contributions. In: Geier, B.A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Thinkers . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81037-5_112-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81037-5_112-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-81037-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-81037-5
eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education