Last School/Super School

A unit of the Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research (SAIIER), located in Auroville, India, Last School/Super School emerges from the understanding that education is not confined to the transmission of knowledge, but a living process of inner discovery, progress and becoming. Last School/Super School students are generally 14 to 18+ years and when older at the Super School stage from around the world who aspire to a higher, truer life, a thirst for progress and have already developed within themselves a certain capacity for self-determination.

Students who are in this programme come from around the world and are those who aspire to a higher, truer life who have a thirst for progress and have already developed within themselves a certain capacity for self-determination. In the Last School/Super School stage they are generally in the age group of 14 to 18+ years; and when older, at the Super School stage where the subjects are of the higher levels of human thought and action and are treated in a holistic manner.  

This learning environment relocated in July 2014 to its permanent home in the Cultural zone and has been in active existence for teenagers and young adults since 1985. 

Beginning with “Last School” and ending with “No School”, this programme links with the second point of the Auroville Charter, which sees Auroville as a place of “unending education, constant progress and a youth that never ages”. 

A new type of school for the world of tomorrow. A living field of learning.

The contemporary world is becoming far too complex and chaotic to be easily understood by human thought from the level of its present mental status.

The world is an intricate totality evolving at a rapid pace while the mind remains trained to long, exhaustive and limited analysis of details quite separate from the whole. When those who are students today reach the fullness of their learning process, their over-specialized knowledge and their manner of conceiving the world may well be already obsolete. 

Last School/ Super School’s educational process wants to develop the student’s faculties of the mind, the powers of the will, the refinement of the aesthetic and emotional being, and build all of this upon a strong and balanced physical being. There is an attempt to address each of these elements of the youth’s psychological nature as consciously as possible in the given circumstances. 

The teacher’s task is to suggest, not to impose, and a broad process of consultation is fundamental to the school’s approach. The participation of the youth in their own growth and development is encouraged as much as possible while preparing the learning programme and timetable.

Last School/ Super School brings together students, educators, and researchers.

The activities are worked out for students individually with the choice of subjects and teachers. The older and more self-governing the child, the more individualized and particular his or her time schedule. The students, therefore, need to be self-motivated, so that they may be involved in the decision-making process and changes that affect their learning. In class, the feedback of the students is respected, and they are helped to build their own view of the world. Many classes use the ideas of Mother and Sri Aurobindo, according to the level of interest.

A new approach requires a conscious evaluation of the tools and materials used in the educational process. Textbooks have subtle orientations that create determinisms and psychological types that perpetuate the social, cultural and national order. Many artificial mental constructions and prejudices, unnecessary determinisms that limit the being, can be avoided if there is alertness in this regard.

In a free progress approach, the artificial pressures which are generated by the need to be successful in certificate and exam systems are removed. It becomes thus most important to awaken a fundamental commitment to the joy of progress. 

An answer to a need

There is the need to develop newer capacities in our educational systems: a universal thinking, a synthesis of knowledge and cultures, a rapidity of intuitive insight and discrimination as well as the rich potential for adaptation.