Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Advanced Research in Teaching and Education
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Reading Nature: Rousseau, Tagore and Ankur, Maina Aur Kabootar (1989)
Dr. Ananya Ghoshal, Dr. Shomik Dasgupta
ABSTRACT:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile, or On Education, has been an influential text in Europe and North America since its publication in 1762, although non-western readers also know of it. In the South Asian context, one finds that Rousseau’s ideas have been frequently understood against the background of the educational thought of Rabindranath Tagore. Like Rousseau, Tagore also stressed the importance of an education unmoored from the stolid classroom and its rigid curricula. Tagore and Rousseau can be said to have reinvented the concept of the classroom by arguing for an education gleaned from travails in nature rather than the classroom. I propose an interpretation of the 1989 Indian film Ankur Maina aur Kabootar.The film is concerned with the conservation of a species of pink pigeon in Mauritius and argues that conservation should be seen as a form of education for children. Further, it notes that an education in conservation can only be acquired from the ‘great outdoors’ than a conventional classroom. The paper will show that when read in the context of Tagore and Rousseau, Ankur Maina aur Kabootar interprets nature as a living text.
keywords: Education, Rousseau, Tagore, Nature, Conservation