Category: Biography

Tagore Gallery and Blog: Featuring Original Work by Tagore and Information About His Esthetic and Life

Pictures of Rabindranath Tagore, his family and matters related to his life will be added to this page gradually.  These pictures are offered for the reader’s enjoyment.  It is hoped that more people in the West will become familiar with the work of this writer, artist, philosopher.

Tagore's_family public domain tag
Rabindranath Tagore posed with his son, his two daughters and his daughter-in-law for this picture in 1909. From the book, Rabindranath Tagore
Tagore with Astronomer Karel Hujer 1935 public domain
Here Tagore is pictured with the astronomer Karel Hujer. Hujer was a Czech who settled in the US after fleeing from the Nazis in the 1930s. An avowed pacifist, Hujer was an admirer of Gandhi and Tagore. In 1949, after both Gandhi and Tagore were deceased, he organized the World Pacifist Meetings in India. The photo was taken in 1935, by an unknown author; it is in the public domain.
Rabindranath_Tagore_Man_and_Woman3
Tagore’s painting, entitled Man and Woman. Tagore started painting after the age of 60. His brief career as a painter is discussed in the book, Rabindranath Tagore.
Einstein_and_Tagore_Berlin_14_July_1930 public domain tag
Tagore and Albert Einstein posed for this picture when they were in Berlin, 1930. From the book, Rabindranath Tagore
Santiniketan tagore gandhi 1940
This picture of Tagore and Gandhi was taken in 1940 at Santiniketan, India. Santiniketan was the site of a university Tagore had established years before. Tagore died a year after this picture was taken; Gandhi was assassinated in 1948
Rabindranath Tagore Untitled Dancing Girl scaled
Tagore once said of his career as a painter that he was “secretly drawn” to work that came to him “least easily”. Perhaps one of his challenges was the fact that he did not see colors the way most people do. Tagore had difficulty distinguishing reds from greens. Some observers theorize that this color confusion may have explained some of the artist’s dramatic color schemes. However, with a man as complex as Rabindranath Tagore, this explanation likely oversimplifies the creative process. This picture is labeled “Untitled” and is described as being a portrait of a dancing girl. The date of the painting is unknown; it was uploaded from Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain.
Tagore On Education
Rabindranath_Tagore_with_Mahatma_Gandhi_and_Kasturba_Gandhi_in_Shantiniketan

Rabindranath Tagore was a philosopher, artist, poet, playwright, musician and social reformer.  In 1913, he became the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Despite this distinction, Tagore never earned a formal academic degree.  When referring to his own education, Tagore spoke about  ‘freedom’,  not ‘discipline’.  He described his childhood home, which inspired his point of view,  as one in which “freedom in the power of our language, freedom of imagination in our  literature.. ” prevailed.  Rote learning and routinized instruction were stifling and counterproductive, in his view.

Tagore believed that education was an organic process in which the individual responded to the environment. Much in his philosophy of education resembled that of another Nobel Laureate, Marie Curie.  Both Nobel Prize winners placed strong emphasis on nature.  Both insisted on the importance of physical exercise.  And both believed that exposure to brilliant minds and brilliant work would elevate, not frustrate, a child. Both were certain that bombarding a child with structured lessons was more likely to kill an appetite for learning than to stimulate it. They believed that acquiring knowledge should be as effortless as acquiring language is for a toddler.

While Rabindranath Tagore and Marie Curie  believed that children should live in a harmonious relationship with nature, Tagore carried the theme of harmony further. He believed it was a function of education to foster harmony between people. He wanted children to be taught arts, especially music, because he thought that would enable them to develop sympathy for others. He thought that education should emphasize the progress of nations and not focus on wars and territorial conquests.

Rabindranath Tagore did not simply aspire to educational ideals: he gave them life. In 1901 he founded a school, Patha Bhavana, which embodied his principles. After he won the Nobel Prize, he invested in his school and expanded it into a university. That campus is now the site of one of the most prestigious universities in India, Visva-Bharati.

Were Rabindranath Tagore’s ideas about education misguided? Many people who work in education today apparently believe so. Increased emphasis on standardized learning and objective testing seems to be proof of that. Schools today are  laboratories in which competing theories of education are tested. As the experiment with today’s children proceeds, so will the dialogue about their future continue.

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For more on Rabindranath Tagore visit our page: Rabindranath Tagore
 

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Quotes:

“It is still difficult for me to realize that I have no absolute claim to keep up a close relationship with things, merely because I have gathered them together“. From: My Reminiscences, 1917

“He (my father) also knew that truth, if strayed from, can be found again, but a forced or blind acceptance of it from the outside effectually bars the way in”. From: My Reminiscences, 1917

“The west seems to take a pride in thinking that it is subduing nature; as if we are living in a hostile world where we have to wrest everything we want from an unwilling and alien arrangement of things.” From : Sadhana : The Realization of Life, 1916

by Categories: Biography, Education, History, Home Schooling, LearningTags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

A Book for Today and Tomorrow: Reflecting

Digital StillCamera  

The desire to memorialize one’s life, to put everything down in writing, tends to grow with age.  But many people do not feel up to the task of creating a book.  Reflecting is designed to enable these people to satisfy their very human impulse to remember, and to be remembered.
The inspiration for the project began with the misfortune of one woman. The woman had suffered a stroke; it seemed her ambition to put together a book that chronicled her life would never be realized.  But a way was found to see this ambition achieved.  Miscellaneous essays, poems and photos were collected. These were organized into an anthology, which was published.
The simple act of publishing cheered the author as no one and nothing had managed to do up to that point. The lesson learned was this: ministering to the body may be a doctor’s work but ministering to the heart may require attention of a different sort.
And so Reflecting was born. It grew out of the conviction that with guidance, just about anyone can write a book, and writing the book can be richly rewarding. The challenge was to design a template that would gently lead the novice author through different stages of recollection and recording. This template would have to be accessible, so that even individuals with limited function could follow its many small steps on  to crafting a cohesive document.
On its most basic level, the Reflecting template requires an individual to provide simple answers to simple questions.  In the aggregate these answers and questions will offer insight into the author’s life.  Photos, sprinkled throughout, will complement verbal responses.
At a more advance level, completion of Reflecting provides opportunity for explanation, exploration and illumination of an individual’s life.  And, at its most ambitious, Reflecting will be the foundation for a comprehensive, traditional memoir.
One of the most important goals of Reflecting is to encourage communication. Remembering a life need not be a solitary exercise. Family and friends can be drawn into stimulating conversations about events long forgotten. Moments that might have been spent in awkward silence can now be invested in completing the book. When it’s completed, the book will be a gift to all who participated in its creation, and to those who did not but are heir to the legacy described in its pages.

by Categories: Autobiography, Biography, Community, Creative Writing, Family Legacy, Health, Memoir, powerful languageTags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Salk or Sabin Polio Vaccine?

 

 

 

 

salk sabin vaccines picture

By A. G. Moore

The following is adapted from the Rhythm Prism publication Jonas Salk.  Although Jonas Salk was written with young readers in mind, there’s a lot in the book that may be informative to more mature readers.  For example, until I researched this book, I didn’t understand why the Salk or Sabin vaccine would be used in specific circumstances. Now I do understand: each vaccine has different risks and benefits

Adaptation from Jonas Salk:

Both the oral and injectable forms of the polio vaccine have been in use for more than fifty years. This has given the global community enough experience to understand risks and benefits of each.

Since the Sabin vaccine uses a live, though weakened virus, there is a slight chance that vaccination will actually give someone polio. This has happened in a small number of cases. Because of this risk, the Sabin vaccine was discontinued in the US and only the Salk is administered.

However, there is also a risk from the Salk vaccine. With the Salk vaccine, a very weak immunity is produced in the gut. If someone who has been vaccinated is exposed to wild polio, there is the possibility that the wild virus will multiply in the gut. Though the vaccinated individual may not become ill with polio, they can shed virus in their excrement. This shed virus then becomes a source of contagion for others in the community.

Because of the way the Sabin and Salk vaccines work, they are generally used in different places. If there is good vaccine coverage in an area, and most people have immunity to polio, then the Salk vaccine is used. This is generally considered safer because the vaccine cannot make the individual sick, and virus shed in excrement will not be dangerous to others who have been vaccinated.

On the other hand, if a polio vaccination campaign is conducted in an area where there are many unvaccinated people, the oral vaccine might be considered preferable. With the oral vaccine there is no risk of shed virus infecting unvaccinated people.  However, the risk remains that in a small number of cases, someone may actually contract polio from the vaccine itself. Not only can these people become ill, but they can infect others who haven’t been vaccinated.

One more consideration in the selection of vaccines is cost. Giving the Salk vaccine is about five times more expensive than giving the Sabin vaccine. In areas where resources are scarce, this is an important factor.

by Categories: Biography, Health, Medicine, Science, VaccinesTags: , , , , , 1 Comment