Education for Fullness

This volume is the first comprehensive exploration of Rabindranath Tagore’s works on education and pedagogy. It presents a valuable account of the creation of Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati, Tagore’s vision of social regeneration, and his rejection of the colonial scheme; while reflecting on significant events of his life and his ideas.

The book evaluates Tagore’s unique contribution to education and discusses his views on fundamental issues, such as aim, method, discipline, and medium. It reinforces for readers today the relevance of his experiments and activities in the field of education. Drawing from various sources, the book also offers bibliographic information on Tagore’s writing on education.

This new edition with a new Introduction and Foreword will be of immense value to educationists, teachers, policymakers, and those interested in modern Indian history and the philosophy of education.

H. B. Mukherjee was born in 1913 and had his early education in Kolkata, West Bengal. He received his M.A. degree in English Literature from University of Allahabad in 1934 and graduated in Education from Calcutta University in 1941. He was awarded the D. Phil. degree by University of Allahabad for his extensive research work, "Tagore’s Contribution to Education," conducted for nearly two decades. The present work is an updated and abridged version of his Ph.D. thesis.

Dr. Mukherjee taught English Literature as Senior Lecturer at Varanasi and Allahabad from 1941 to 1948. Between 1948 and 1961, he was Senior Lecturer in Education at D. S. Teachers’ College, Aligarh. In 1961, he joined Vinaya-Bhavana, the Department of Education at Visva-Bharati; he also taught undergraduate and postgraduate classes in the English Department. Dr. Mukherjee wrote extensively on educational and literary subjects in leading English and Bengali journals and participated in a number of educational conferences and seminars on English teachings.

After retiring from Visva-Bharati in 1975, he was awarded UGC Professorship to work on a comprehensive history of Visva-Bharati. With his death in 1981, that work remains unfinished.