Sometime I would
like to know, Mother, Your intentions with regard to regrouping these classes
in the new year, whether with an examination or without.
I consider an examination as quite
necessary. In any case there will be one in French.
My
love and blessings.
29 October 1946
*
It is not by conventional examinations
that students can be selected for a class. It is only by developing in oneself
the true psychological sense.
Select children who want to learn, not those who want to push themselves forward.
29 October 1965
*
The only solution is to annul this test
and all that are to come. Keep all the papers with you in a closed bundle—as
something that has not been—and continue quietly your classes. At the end of
the year you will give notes to the students, not based on written test-papers,
but on their behaviour, their concentration, their regularity, their promptness
to understand and their openness of intelligence. For yourself you will take it
as a discipline to rely more on inner contact, keen observation, and impartial
outlook.
For the students it will be the
necessity of understanding truly what they learn and not to repeat as a parrot
what they have not fully understood. And thus a true progress will have been
made in the teaching.
With
blessings.
21 July 1967
21 July 1967
*
I find tests an obsolete and ineffective
way of knowing if the students are intelligent, willing and attentive. A silly,
mechanical mind can very well answer a test if the memory is good and these are
certainly not the qualities required for a man of the future.
It is by tolerance for the old habits that I consented that those who want tests can have them.
It is by tolerance for the old habits that I consented that those who want tests can have them.
But I hope that in future this
concession will not be necessary. To know if a student is good needs, if the
tests are abolished, a little more inner contact and psychological knowledge
for the teacher. But our teachers are expected to do Yoga, so this ought not to
be difficult for them.
22 July 1967
*
Naturally the teacher has to test the
student to know if he or she has learnt something and has made a progress. But
this test must be individual and adapted to each student, not the same
mechanical test for all of them. It must be a spontaneous and unexpected test
leaving no room for pretence and insincerity. Naturally also, this is much more
difficult for the teacher but so much more living and interesting also. I
enjoyed your remarks about your students. They prove that you have an
individual relation with them—and that is essential for good teaching. Those
who are insincere do not truly want to learn but to get good marks or
compliments from the teacher—they are not interesting.
25 July 1967
*
The immediate impact of these events and
remarks made by the Mother was a radical change in the attitude and
organisation of the school.
Briefly, consequences were:
All quarterly tests were abolished once
and for all.
The secondary classes were restructured
as the consequence of some interaction with the Mother by some teachers
The Higher Course organisation was
radically restructured.
Source:
Kittu Reddy, published in Overman Foundation e-Newsletter in 2014.
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