The True Teacher (Integral Education Series)

What is the single most important factor in the transformation of the individual and the society?

Without doubt, it is Education. But as yet, it has still not been explored to its full and utmost potential, resulting only in a fractured image and perception of what it means. To go beyond the obligatory demands from education, that is, the procurement of a job or respectable standing in society, we need to take a more integral approach.

Our series on Integral Education aspires towards this end and brings across different facets of education, all leading eventually to the desired transformation and fulfilment of the true ideal.

Educational researches throughout the world are agreed that the training of the teacher is of primary importance in any educational endeavour. To improve the quality of the teacher we must go to the fundamentals of education. These fundamentals are not something entirely new but were well-known to the ancient spiritual masters and were practised in the great spiritual centres of the world.

India was always rich in the establishment of these centres even in Vedic times where the first principles of educations are to be found in the Ashrams and Gurukuls and later on in the great universities of Nalanda and Taxila. In Europe these fundamental principles often issued from the Abbeys and Monastries.

The central effort in these great ancient centres of education was to evolve the potentialities of the child in the same way as Nature evolves a tree out of a seed. This is the eternal problem, challenge and principle of true teaching which has to be rediscovered or "re-searched" and reapplied to the modern environment. This is also the central theme of this book which is a collection of articles from eminent educationists and thinkers on the basic principles of true teaching.

We are grateful to the authors and publishers of the articles presented in this volume. We acknowledge specially the contributions of Prof. Norman Dowsett and Prof. S.R. Jayaswal who edited the first edition which was brought out in 1974. This second edition has been greatly revised and enlarged.