Core Principles of Ancient Education System:
The aim of education to give a sense of one’s identity as a whole human and to bring education in harmony with life. It is self-realization. He believed that this realization was the goal of education. A whole human is the one who thinks of himself first and foremost as human being. What matters to him is not his birth and social status. What crucially matters to him, rather, is the conviction that he is above all a man, irrespective of his socio-economic placing, of his caste, creed, and religion.
Ancient Indian education is based on self-realization, which its process is as important as education itself. The more important thing is that the mentor must have faith in himself and universal self, underlying his individual soul. All those actions, which provide a natural sense of contentment, promote educational process. Contentment is a reaction of soul and hence different with merely satisfaction and pleasure. According to Ancient Indian education the mentor has to follow the three following principles:
Self-Control through Independence. Indian Sages believed in a complete freedom of any kind – intellectual freedom, satisfaction, decision, heart, knowledge, actions, and worship. But to achieve this freedom, the student has to practice a calm temperament, harmony, and balance. Through this process the student is able to distinguish between right and wrong, natural and superficial, relevant and irrelevant, permanent and temporal, universal and individual, etc. Consequently, after being able to make this distinction, the student can create a harmony and synthesis in what is right, natural, relevant, permanent, and the real element he has acquired and then turned to self-guidance. This independence is not to be confused with the absence of control, because it is self-control, it implies acting according to one’s own rational impulse. Once this level of freedom has been achieved, there is no danger of the individual straying from his path, because his senses, intelligence, emotional feelings and all other powers are directed by his inner self.
2. Self-Empowerment by Practicing Perfection. Perfection implies that the student must try to develop every aspect of his personality, all the abilities and powers he has been endowed by nature. Therefore, academic learning is not merely to pass examinations, acquiring degrees or certificates with which he fulfils his livelihood. The sole aim of education is development of the child’s personality which is possible only when every aspect of the personality is given equal importance, when no part of the personality is neglected and no part is exclusively stressed. The whole effort was to empower students to face all challenges of life.
3. Self-Enlightenment by Becoming One with all, that is also called Universality. Universality implies the important aspect of an enduring faith in the universal soul, which exists within himself. It is thus important to identify one’s own soul with the universal soul. One can search for this universal soul not only within oneself, but in every element of nature and environment. This search is achieved by knowledge, worship and action. Once this realization of the universal soul is achieved, it becomes easier to progress further.
It is, thus, evident from the above principles that the aim of Ancient Indian education is independence, perfection, and universality. The mentor creates an environment in which the personality of the student undergoes a free, perfect, and unrestricted development.
