Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/54

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SHANTINIKETAN

to give help if needed. Classes begin in the afternoon at 2 o’clock and continue till 4.30 or 5 o’clock.

In the cool of the evening football is played, while some of the boys go for walks. At sunset they have again fifteen minutes for silence and the chanting of the evening verses. Some of the boys teach in a night-school which has been started for the servants of the School and the neighbouring villagers.

Before the evening meal there is an hour which is devoted to some form of entertainment, such as story-telling by one of the teachers, a lantern lecture, or some amusement got up by the boys themselves. The bell for retiring sounds at about 9 o’clock, and most of the boys are asleep by 9.30, except on moonlight nights when numbers of the older boys go out for a walk to neighbouring woods, where they sit and sing till late at night.

There is no head master, the School being under the management of an executive committee elected by the teachers themselves, from among whom one is elected each year as executive head. He is entrusted with the practical management of the institution. In each subject one of the masters is elected as director of