Education in Ancient India c8.s4.4

c8.s4.4

Method of Teaching in the Vedic Schools: Education therefore was for a long time imparted through the oral lesson, without the medium of a book. This method persisted in the Vedic schools down to recent times. The teacher used to pronounce only two words of the Vedic stanza at a time, which the student was asked to recite with exact intonation and accent. The number of words was reduced to one, if the expression happened to be a compound one.¹ If the student had any difficulty in the matter, it was explained to him. When a whole verse was thus taught to one student, he was dismissed and the same process was repeated with the next one. Necessarily every student used to receive individual attention under this system. The method of teaching was direct and personal and not even a text-book intervened between the teacher and the student.