LETTER TO A TEACHER

My dear friends... a must read.

Pls download a copy of this book from the below link.

http://magazine.crimsonfeet.org/IMG/pdf/LTAT_Final.pdf

Eight young Italian boys from the mountains outside Florence wrote this passionate and eloquent book. It took them a year. Simple and clearly, with some devastating statistical analysis of the Italian education system, they set out to show the ways in which attitudes towards class, behavior, language and subject-matter militates against the poor. They describe too, the reforms they propose, and the methods they use in their own school - the School of Barbiana, started under the guidance of a parish priest and now run entirely by the children.

This remarkable book was written for the parents of the Italian poor. But it is about poor everywhere: their anger is the anger of every worker and peasant who sees middle-class children absorbed effortlessly into schools as teacher’s favorites.

Letter to a Teacher was a best seller in Italy and has been published subsequently in many languages. The School of Barbiana was awarded the prize of the Italian Physical Society, usually reserved for promising physicists, for the statistical achievement involved in the book.

Image: Don Lorenzo Milani(1923-67), founder of the school of Barbiana.

The Soul of Sabarmati Ashram – Maganlal Gandhi.

In 1915, following a plague outbreak Gandhi decided to take his group of over forty souls to a plot of land at Sabarmati, where ‘there was no building … and no tree’ and house them at canvass, he(Gandhi) admitted that ‘the whole conception about the removal was mine, the execution was as usual left to Maganlal.’ – lbid.,p.616

Under Maganlal’s leadership the prickly shrubs, rocks, sand and cacti were removed from the river bank and vegetables and neem trees were planted, and ‘in very short time the barren land became green with vegitables’ – Narayan Desai, The Fire and the Rose[Biography of Mahadevabhai], Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1995, p.85.

Maganlal designed and supervised the construction of all the buildings, he systematized the management of the ashram, introduced discipline and took control of ashram craft work.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the ashram at Sabamati was Maganlal’s creation and that to a large degree he was the ‘soul’ of the ashram.

Who's Maganlal Gandhi?

Maganlal and his elder brother Chhaganlal were the sons of M.K Gandhi's older cousin Kushalbhai.

Gandhiji’s referred to Maganlal and his elder brother Chhaganlal as nephews.

In 1904 South Africa, Maganlal decided to leave his business for good and joined Gandhiji to look after Phoenix Settlement(Ashram).

Maganlal was not just a gifted organizer and tireless worker, he was also the embodiment of Gandhi’s spiritual and moral quest, in the Mahatma's words, ‘a living example of the saying: “Practice as you preach”’ –‘Magankaka’, Navajivan, 5 August 1928

Gandhiji didn`t coin the word 'Satyagraha'

Gandhi was leading a mass moment against laws which discriminated against Indians in South Africa and he originally used the term passive-resistance for the struggle, but soon came to realize that this could lead to misunderstandings and was searching for Indian word.
On 27 December 1907, in a competition announced in Young India, Gandhi offered a £2 prize to the person who came up with a suitable name. Maganlal Gandhi sent in the best entry. He suggested ‘sadagraha’ (sad-good, agraha- firmness in). Gandhi modified it slightly to ‘ satyagraha’ (sat- truth, agraha- firmness in)

- Sushila Nayar, Mahatma Ghandhi, volume IV: Satayagraha at Work, Ahemedabad: Navajivan, 1989, p119: Gandhi, An Autobiography, p235.