Describing his educational experiment in Santiniketan, Rabindranāth Tagore has indicated that he started with the intention of creating an educational system that was connected to life's totality, and that the institution had grown with his own ‘mind and life’. Accordingly, this overview of Tagore's educational theory and practice will follow the unfolding of his educational experiment in Santiniketan in conjunction with the personal growth of his rich and multifaceted life and personality. It will explore the ways in which his educational theory and method evolved and were affected by an ever-widening sense of inclusivity that developed as a result of his poetic sensitivity to nature and the arts, as well as his experiences with colonial education, aggressive nationalism, international travels, and Gāndhi's Noncooperation Movement, among other factors.

Tagore would appear to hold a distinctive position among educators as being the only internationally renowned poet and artist to create an educational system. His profound sensitivity to nature and special connection to the creative arts, as well as his strategies for developing global networks of cooperation, give him a special position in educational theory. His role in the history of international education will be considered, as well as his methods for developing creativity and awareness in the Santiniketan students through outdoor classes in a beautiful natural setting, along with music, seasonal festivals, dance dramas, student publications, and global interconnection.

Rabindranath's first major address on education,‘Shikshār herpher’ (The Vicissitudes of Education), delivered in 1892, was one of the first comprehensive critiques of English-medium education in India. It lays out a number of the educational ideals that would later play a part in his Santiniketan experiment. The address provides a strong critique of Englishmedium education and the disassociation that results from learning in a foreign curriculum, where the language and images are disconnected from a Bengali environment. A child's linguistic medium, argues Rabindranath, should be associated with his/her social and cultural environment.