Education in Ancient India c4.43

c4.43

Family and the Pre-School Period: We have seen already that the preservation of the national culture was one of the important aims of education and the family was expected to cooperate with the school in its realisation. The ambition of the child was first fired and its imagination set aglow not by the lessons it received in the school but by the stories it heard from its mother and grandmother. Well known is the part which the home influence played in shaping the career and firing the imagination of heroes and saints like Śivājī and Rāmadāsa. Multiplication tables, noun declensions and some metrical rules about grammar were taught at home to the child during its early childhood in all cultured families. The home thus not only prepared the child for the school, but also supplemented its work.