Auroville:

A new venture in education

First step

Auromodel

A copy of this document (which has been re-typed here so as to be more easily readable) was sent to Navajata on 5.4.69 with this note in Yvonne Artaud’s hand:

Navajata,

This is not a very nice copy but it has the latest correction

Yvonne

Table of Contents

  1. True education: an adventure to fulfilment
  2. Three successive phases of a centre for planetary education
  3. First phase Auromodel
  4. The educational park of Auromodel
  5. The first group of pavilions
  6. Financial evaluation
  7. Plans, drawings, annexes

  1. True education; an avenue to fulfilment

Auroville, the first planetary city, conceived as a homage toSri Aurobindo, is projected as an entirely new concept of educationand urban living. It is a city university, in the sensethat all its citizens are dedicated to education and evolution without end.

Auroville is planned as an open, dynamic centre of learningand teaching, where, ideally, all residents are both students and teachers. Thus most of theactivities of the town –industrial,scientific, service, systems management, as well as those of the craftsmen and artists – will offer to the students a fieldwhere they can experiment and participate. Banks for example will be run by the students of businessand economics under the guidance of specialists in accounting and banking; most Aurovilians will eat in cafeterias managed by aschool of catering; and so on.

The basic economy of the town, theeconomic relations among its members, will not be a money economy, but an exchange of knowledge, an economy of teaching and learning. Even the so-called service professions, the personnel will be members of the Planetary Service School either as teachers or as students.

To be a student in Auroville, one will be expected to workhalf of his time for the community. Education will not be sold,but neither will it be given away. It must be worked for. Thisexchange is necessary not only for the inner poiseand socialhealthoftheindividual and thecity, but alsoinorderto give back to knowledge, which a money economy has deprived ofall majesty, her secret character of aspiration and initiation. But it will not be necessary, in order to receive aneducation in Auroville, to frequent any particular one of the many centresof education, because the whole city will be a school.

Auroville our school

The whole of Aurovillewill be a school, for those who are building it as well as for those who will 1ive in it, for adults as well as for children. The education received in Auroville will not be the kind that we received – apassing on of knowledge– eventhough there will be an immense field of information at everyone’s disposal, but above all it will be a learning in the art of living, of living together in an evolutionary, planetary, truly human society.

The first sign of the existence of a planetary society will be a common acceptance of beings and things as they are and asthey compose our world, based on an intimate knowledge of the oneness out of which the universe manifests and renews itself. This oneness, once recognised, willgive to such a society the capacity not only for embracing all races, all activities and all states ofconsciousness, but also for enriching itself from a diversity more and more free, harmonious and powerful, and from an inexhaustible creativity, to become finally an immense, vibrant and living organism, master of it own destiny.

This society Sri Aurobindo has called ‘human unity’, but one may also call it a planetary or laser society. One thing is certain: it represents a state of consciousness which cannot be attained by external rules or even by a single great inner leap, but which will be the result of a common, conscious and voluntary experience, a total education which will be synonymous with evolution itself.

Thus Auroville will not be a society organised by powers external to itself, whether a money economy, administrative regulations, or a constitution. It will be based on a power inherent in each human being, but one rarely activated: the power to fulfil oneself within the framework of a society, not against others but with others. In line with this purpose, everyone must be helped to find his proper place and his true role that will make him happy and at the same time useful to society, inviting him at every moment to surpass himself. Each one in his true place will be a king, just as in a good football team the goalkeeper is a king in his goal, the inside-left is a king in his position, and the fullback one in his. The role of the team leader is to make each one of the team a king. Here, then instead of the long pyramidal chain of commandments which we have been accustomed to for longer than man can remember, from the pharaohs down to the last chain-gang boss shouting ‘heave-ho!’, we may have a society in which each has his royal place an says ‘heave-ho’ to himself.

Auroville intends to offer to each of its members his very own path, and the first thing which will disappear in such a system of education will be the system itself. That will be replaced by respect and by love. For education can no longer be mere instruction, but must be a way of being and of becoming essentially oneself.

Each child will have a much more important place than that which has previously been his on a school bench; the art of the educator will be to help him find reasons for being in it san for becoming something more than he is now: a first place which will prepare him in a natural way for all the other more important places which await him in society, to propel him towards his own summits. To find our true place, which will lead us to become really ourselves, is the best stimulation and the highest education we can get. A society in which each member is in his true place is necessarily one of a golden age.

Each one will know intimately the greater social body surrounding him and how to exchange his knowledge, his discoveries, his joy will all others. A day will come when the progress of each individual being will benefit the whole society. Thus the personal happiness of each individual will be protected and exalted by a fraternal humanity. The spiritual adventure of the individual is also the spiritual adventure of mankind, which is itself a spiritual adventure of the universe.

It is in these new dimensions that Auroville will venture on its great experiment in education.

  1. Threesuccessive phases of a Centre for PlanetaryEducation

With a background of forty years of exploration in the Sri AurobindoAshram and twenty years in the Sri AurobindoInternational Centre of Education, Auroville will not be a repetition of what has been done but a further developmentand a wide experimentation.

1. First step: Auromodel

The first step of the new venture in education that Auroville intends to be is the actualisation of Auromodel, which will bringtogether the first two thousand citizens of Auroville among whom the endeavour will be made todevelop this new type of education togetherwith this new type of society.

Auromodelwillparticipateactively in the development of Auroville’s surrounding economic zones, agricultural and industrial. These areas will be capable of filling the needs, firstof Auromodel and laterof the whole of Auroville. Pilot industries and pilotfarms will be created, aswell as centres where mechanical equipment will be available for the loca1 Tami1 population. In the end thiswill result in the modernisationof the whole region.

Auromodel will be a place to live and work for those who build Auroville.

2. Aurodevenir

In the second phase of development, Auromodel will be a part of Aurodevenir: an educational park of 350 hectares containing playgrounds, workshops, swimming pools, theatres, dynamic technical museums, a multitude of pavilions, and its zoological and botanical gardens – a paradise for the children of the future.

3. TheUniversity of Oneness

Aurodevenir itself, is planned, in the third phase of development, to become part of The University of Oneness: the ultimate spiritual centre of the different activities of the city.

  1. First phase: Auromodel

Auromodel will be the first attempt to create anenvironment suggestive of a new way of life anda new level of society.

All the residents will be connected by of the most modernmeans communication (walkie-talkie, closed circuit television, etc,); these will constitute the nervous system of this society.

The dwellings will be designed in suchaway as to re-enforce boththe privacy and the availability of the individual, and to favour the formation of new social units, more free and more highly evolved than the tribe or the family.

Numerous, well-equipped, places of meeting – beautiful hanging gardens, an immense forum and theatre, a relaxation centre, a free shop, a Mirror Club where this new societywilllearn to see itself, functioning – will foster the sharing of life in the community and serve as aide inexperimenter with new forms of collaboration, exchange and social life.

The progressive development of this freedom will be under constant statistical check with the help of a computer.

Education will take place in the frame of the societyitself, where all activities will be open to the curiosity of the young and their need to experiment and to create under the guidance of helpers and specialists.

Within the frame of a little educational park, equipped to receive about750 children, we will find a number of pavilions– multipurposeas well as specialised–which together will constitute what one might callan open school; that is to say a school open to all children without formal entrance examination, whatever their former schooling, and without the customarydistinctions of primary,secondary and university level. This open school will have no classes, only talents or interest groups which are built up of groups of four in which the one most advanced child is responsible for the other three.

Whoever has passed through this open school will know exactly what he can and what he wants to do, and will be capable of making the most of the circumstances and beings in his environment, for thegood of everyone.

Auromodel intends to start preparing enough young ‘teachers’ to meet the needs of the future town of Auroville and of the neighbouring villages.

  1. The Educational Park of Auromodel

We envisage the building of this educational park in two successive stages:

A)Constructionofafirst group of buildings necessary toform a smallcentreofeducationcapableof receiving approximately250 children. It includes:

  1. For childrenunder 6 years of age:
  1. a nursery: the Pavilion of the Milky Way
  2. a kindergarten: the Pavilion of the Golden Ball
  3. For childrenabove 6:
  4. sevenpavilionsdevoted todifferent subjects
  5. a multipurpose audiovisual hall
  6. For teachers and students:
  7. a hostel
  8. a cafeteria
  9. a health and first-aid centre
  10. a playground
  11. a technical centre
  12. a youth club: The Mirror.

B)Construction ofa second group ofbuildingsthatwillexpandthe capacity of the first stage to approximately750 children, triplingall previous facilities included in items 1-5;and in addition,provision of the following major services:

  1. a library: the Bank of Knowledge
  2. a planetary service school
  3. an administrative and research centre
  4. an open-airtheatre
  5. a 6-hectare recreational park
  1. The first group of pavilions

General remarks

Each pavilion will constitute a skeleton or base for thecreation of an inspiring environment, which will be conceived and, realised by artists and specialists with the full cooperationof the children themselves. It will be constantly changed orrenewed.

One day we may find special lighting effects or some stimulatingmusic. Another day an exhibition on some specific subjectwill be on display. And on yet another the Pavilion will betransformed into a huge stage where children are invited to comeandplay spontaneously, identifying themselves with the marvelsand mysteries of the universe.

Even though some of the pavilions, are highly specialised, they will always be open through their specialisation to the whole body of students and the whole body of knowledge.

Architecturally speaking, each pavilionis planned so that it will facilitate individuals working separately or in groups offour or more. This necessitates a larger area than is needed for classical methods of teaching

The first pavilion to be built will have the shape of a 6-armed amoeba and will cover as area of 200 square meters. This shapeinvites the grouping of talents and is planned to accommodate 64children. The tables will also be shaped like amoebas, formingthe pieces of a big puzzlewhich children may at times put togetherto create a single central table.

The second pavilion will have an area of approximately 250 m². It will be a big hall with no walls, yet from outside no one willbe able to see what is going on within, as that will be hiddenfrom view by a wave of earth surrounding it. On the roof a gardenwill help to integrate the building with the surroundinglandscape.

Interior partitions will be movable, so that, according toneed, rooms of varying shapes and sizes will be available for avariety of purposes. When all partitions are removed the big 250 m² hall will become a conference room, a projection room or a theatre.

For the new-born there will be a completely air-conditionedPavilion of the Milky Way.

This building of 350 m²will consist of nine rooms:

1)a room for prenatal education

2)a room for baby-sitting, and education while the child isstill in the cradle.

3)a room for playand motor education for the 6-monthe to3-year-olds.

4)a big, multipurpose open hall

5)a kitchen

6)a wash room

7)relaxation room for workers

8)a consultation room

9)a waiting room

In addition there will be a small garden with a lawn, sand-pit and fountain.

In the Pavilionof the Milky Way the intention is tomakeavailablefor babies, in addition to the necessary food, rest andsleep, a non-stop show for their first impregnationof asmany aspectsof the universeas possible, from abstraction to 3-dimensional toys,from elementary to planetary life. They will be given the opportunityto touch or manipulate all that can be put within their reach: objects,animals, controls that work light displays or music or sound effects,communication devices, etc.

The GoldenBallPavilion is planned for 50 children from 3 to 6 or 7 years old, at Kindergarten level. It will be located in an oval-shaped garden, and divided into several parts. The largest will be a round, 100 m² all-purpose building. The other four parts of 35 m² each will be:

a cloak-room

asymbolic thought class

a music studio

a toy room.

In the garden will be found a kiosk for dancing, a merry-go-round, a big maternal; statue, a pool, signal station, and everything that can stimulate the child to exercise: to run, jump, climb, build, create, etc.

Amidst all this variety of opportunities and stimulations the child is encouraged to observe himself and his reactions and he will startto play with his consciousness, his golden-ball , as he may call itin the symbolism of fairy tales.

It is during these years that the child can become a trulysocial being, with a capacity to communicate by symbols, by dance,by mime, by music and painting, with other beings, and learn howto integratehimself into the larger social body of the town, the country and the planet, instead of that of the tribal, the religious or the language community.

The fifth pavilion will be a 300 m² building dedicated to general and practical knowledge. It will be the place where one specificallystudies allsubjects from the viewpoint of evolution. It is designedalso to prepare children to face active work and participation in the society.

Five other pavilions, ‘the pavilions of intelligence’, will be smaller,125 m² each. They will be dedicated mainly to the study of modern mathematics, symbolic logic and languages, but their true destiny will depend on the talent, groups themselves as they choose their venue, their teachers and their subjects.

It is obvious that we will need at our disposal elaborate and moderneducational equipment such as projectors, tape recorders, a multitude of educational games,programmed subjects for study, etc., and, eventually, a computer. Children can educate themselves by means of all that is put at their disposal, without needing the constant helpof a ‘teacher’. One of the major tasks of ‘teachers’ in Auromodel will be to design this basic equipment.

At the same time that the previous constructions are made, a health and first aid centre, a youth hostel and a cafeteria must be built.

The Health and First-aid Centre, 125 m² will include a shower room, a rest room, a first-aid room and a dentist’s office.

The Hostel, ismeant for children who do not stay with their parents,either because the parents are away or because the children do not want to livewith them. It is also for young ‘teachers’ and youth who cone temporarily.

Two types of rooms will be available: single and 4-person rooms. These groups of four will be the same talent groups mentioned earlier,not groups built on common nationality or language.

Two projectsare being studied at present. One is abig buildingwith small individual imbricated rooms widely open to the sky. The second project is called ‘the Maze’. It consists of a numberof small Tamil-style houses, each for four children. All thehouses will be located within a single garden, and their arrangementamong the trees and plants in the garden will create the maze. Atnight, programmes of sound and light will provide a gay atmosphere.