You know you have raised one of the most fundamental questions about Auroville. When Mother was giving names to the Centres of Education in Auroville, I was myself greatly illuminated when she spoke of Last School, meaning thereby that school that was being opened at that time was a concession to humanity because humanity has a habit of creating schools and that was the concession which Mother gave to us and allowed a school to come into existence. So I felt that after this something else has to happen in which there will be no school at all and then afterwards I heard that Mother said that After School and then No School. So she gave three concessions one after the other because we were still not awakened from our sleep that Mother wants something quite different and that is Mother's second article of the Charter that the whole of Auroville is to be a site of endless education. Now if the whole of Auroville is nothing but endless education then where is the school? Whole Auroville is a school, you have a right to call it a school, actually it is not a school.
Now in this context your question is significant. Ideally, every activity in Auroville should be developed as a school – every activity, whether you are constructing, weaving or spinning or pottery, or gardening, or farming, all activities in Auroville should be educational activities. Now if that really happens then there will be no school as such. The question is are we still ready for it? If we are ready I’ll be very happy, but then we have not yet. It's a big experiment, – how to make every activity in Auroville an educational activity. For that, all the adult members of Auroville have to sit up, how to make my office, for example an office of education. If I really become a learner myself and I vibrate with the aspiration to learn, giving up my pride of my expertise, my knowledge, my mastery; saying what Mother had once specially written to me, ‘Never believe that you know, what you know is nothing as compared to what remains to be known.’ Now if we can live in that state of experience and not only believe but in the knowledge of it, a real realisation as to what you know is nothing. As in the Agenda, Mother herself speaks about her own. She says: We know nothing. At the age of 93, she says we know nothing. Now imagine what a freshness of consciousness is there where you really, genuinely feel you know nothing. It is to be born to that experience that all education should emerge. We can say that we are truly educated when we are constantly fresh and we encounter every experience with the freshness that would really give the true character of Auroville. We are very far from the ideal because of this reason. I think the answer to your question lies in this. If this happens then this question will be answered automatically, therefore I do not give any answer in a theoretical manner – that, yes, children should be sent to factories, let them learn, I don’t give that answer. If this happens first the children would be sucked, as it were, into the whole thing and you will find that every place you go it will be a teaching-learning experience. It will happen, if this is really done and that is my personal aspiration for Auroville. Let Auroville be really a site of endless education for the children.