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| Tagore Bust in the courtyard at AlphaMax Academy |
From its inception in September 1998, teachers and students of the Academy have recited, often daily, those memorable words which first appeared in Tagore’s world-famous and respected collection of poetry, "Gitanjali."
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 towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary dead sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of free, my dear beloved God, let us all awake”.
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| First Lady of Suriname speaking at the unveiling of Tagore monument |
On June 4th 2011 Suriname’s First Lady Ingrid Bouterse Waldring unveiled the Tagore monument, a sculpted bronze figure of Tagore, which has a plaque that bears this inspiring prayer.This monument, a gift from India to Suriname, is one of several worldwide. AlphaMax Academy is proud to be the custodian of Tagore's bust for the people of Suriname.
In 1918, Tagore founded Visva Bharati University – an international center of Culture and Humanistic Studies.
Tagore considered the lack of education to be the main obstacle in the way of national progress and at the root of all its problems. He thought that the basic objectives of any worthwhile national education system were to promote, creativity, freedom, joy, and an awareness of a country’s cultural heritage.
Therefore he worked assiduously towards developing an appropriate system of national education. He felt that each nation was different and this fact should be reflected in its system of education.
Some of his salient thoughts on this topic were:
“In every nation, education [should be] intimately associated with the life of the people.”
“Let the students gather knowledge and materials from different regions of the country, from direct sources and from their own independent efforts.”
“We must try to understand how [our native] genius express[es] itself… Unless we try to put these together and discover the integrating factors behind these diverse streams of thought and make them a subject of study at our universities, we would only be borrowing knowledge from abroad. The natural habitat for knowledge is where it is produced. The main task of universities is to produce knowledge, its dissemination is its secondary function. We must invite those intellectuals and scholars to our universities who are engaged in research, invention or creative activity.”
To help foster and enrich the holistic formation of its young scholars, from its inception, the Academy has devoted four of its five school days to left-brain academic and ratiocinative development and activities, and one full school day to right-brain creative endeavors.
An unswerving resilient insistence on the latter is vintage Tagore, who like his Occidental contemporaries, Rudolf Steiner and Maria Montessori deplored lop or one-sided child/human development at the expense of a willful fostering and guidance of creative gifts and skills. Indeed it is through the latter that the inner ‘child’ is nurtured and brought to a ripe maturity.
An unswerving resilient insistence on the latter is vintage Tagore, who like his Occidental contemporaries, Rudolf Steiner and Maria Montessori deplored lop or one-sided child/human development at the expense of a willful fostering and guidance of creative gifts and skills. Indeed it is through the latter that the inner ‘child’ is nurtured and brought to a ripe maturity.
To illustrate how important contact with nature was to the life of the educator and poet, during one of his many travels to lecture in the West, Tagore wrote:
“I wish I could be released from this mission. For such missions are like a mist that envelops our souls – they seem to shut us off from the direct touch of God’s world… The springtime has come – the sky is over-flowing with sunshine. I long to be one with the birds, and trees and the green earth. The call comes to me from the air to sing, but, wretched creature that I am, I lecture – and by doing it I ostracize myself from this great world of songs to which I was born.”
New York, March 18th, 1921.
On Mat 7th 2014 there will be a garlanding of Tagore's Bust at AlphaMax Academy.
On Mat 7th 2014 there will be a garlanding of Tagore's Bust at AlphaMax Academy.
