Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/47

Rh This ideal of allowing the boys to develop their own characters as much as possible is seen in another institution of the School, namely, the courts constituted by the boys for the punishment of minor offences against the laws which the boys themselves formulate. Most of the discipline of the School is managed by these courts, and although there are doubtless cases of miscarriage of justice, there is no complaint amongst the boys about the judgments pronounced against offenders. In this case as in others, self-government is better than good government. The committees which the boys form are intended to deal with all the aspects of school life in which the boys are themselves vitally interested. On one occasion the boys agreed to carry on all the menial work of the School, cooking and washing up, drawing the water and buying the stores, with the help of the teachers. And although the experiment was only found practicable for about a month, during that time there were no servants employed to do any of this heavy work, and many of the boys worked like Trojans without complaint even though it was the very hottest time of the year.

There are several magazines published monthly by the different sections of the School,