SAIIER 2014:Last School

Future School		Scholarship and Educational Fund
Last School

Goal / Objective

A second Secondary and Higher Secondary level school facility, Entity::Last School is unique in following the “Free Progress” approach by inviting the students to define their own program of development. This approach has a demonstrable structuring effect on their personality and increases their autonomy, self-confidence and capacity of innovation. The school offers a curriculum designed to develop each child integrally their mental, vital, physical, psychic and spiritual.

The teachers assist the students in finding what they truly are and want to become, and to build in themselves a rich multifaceted personality, through a great variety of learning activities.

Program details

The program of includes literature, art, social sciences, natural sciences, philosophy, mathematics, languages (including Tamil and Sanskrit) and sport, but also extra-curricular activities, like dance, theater, trekking, so that all the parts of the being are awakened and developed.

This year we had 12 teachers. 10 were on maintenance: 5 full-time, 4 part-time and 1 apprentice. Soon our school will be relocated to its new building in the Cultural Zone (from July 2014 onwards).

We had 23 full-time students during the year and 3 apprentices. In addition, courses were offered to young Aurovilians and adults on Indian Culture and Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy. Moreover, the Pyramids Art Center is being used by 50 students who are part of other Auroville schools’ programs as well as by adults.

Outcomes

Personality development

The fact that the spirit of Auroville’s ideals is very much present in the school, creates a process of personal and genuine assimilation of these idea-forces, not only for their own sake but also in relation to the issues of the contemporary world. A lot of autonomy is given to the students to develop along their own line of progress as soon as it is possible.

Mental development

The main domains covered have been stress on literature, whether English, Indian or French, for the development of complexity into the cognitive capacities. The faculties of understanding and of speech have been combined in a special training of the capacity to analyse and summarize long articles followed by oral presentations on contemporaneous issues.

Sri Aurobindo is being studied, not as a normative knowledge, but as a means to open new doors of comprehension, to deepen and widen the mental faculty of synthetic understanding.

Development of the Vital Being

We keep observing how much the tapasya of art can carry ethical as well as aesthetical values: the search for harmony and perfection, the discipline involved and the need to go through all the phases of expression, from the original concept to material realisation, is a powerful means of self-education and a simulation of life situations they will meet in the future. Through harmony and beauty, Art offers also one of the best means to bring the life force under the control of the more conscious parts of each one’s being.

Development of the Physical Being

The students have been following several types of physical activities: sports program and dance, swimming, Aikido and others. In addition to physical health and balance, there are many psychological qualities involved in physical activities, which are being established in the physical consciousness with a stability that the mental and vital beings cannot offer.

Psychic and Spiritual Development

Although this part is not an object of teaching, it underlies in all our activities as the background that supports and gives sense to the rest. The awakening to the psychic element in human beings is the real aim of our education, the school activities offering the occasion and materials for it. Once this aim has become conscious in them, a lot of the educational effort is taken up by the students themselves. Its natural outputs are a growing capacity to self-determination, an aspiration to grow and to progress, a happy learning as well as a sense of togetherness.