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by Prof. P. Krishna
(Based on a talk delivered at the Krishnamurti Foundation India Education Conference at Rajghat,
Varanasi during November 19-21,1989)
Different people will answer that question differently, each one according to his
own conditioning. But we have set aside all conditioning, we have set aside all
opinion, which does not mean we do not consider it, but we do not want to give
tremendous importance to any one opinion, we do not want to accept anything on
authority, which is why we want to investigate from first principles.
I see that it is a tremendous responsibility. The way I am going to treat this child is
going to determine what he is going to be like. If I do not give him love, affection,
care, perhaps he will grow up to be a human being who can not experience
warmth, affection and love. How do you put a price on that deprivation ? So it is a
tremendous responsibility to find the answer to that question, before one can
really take on the role of being a teacher. Therefore this is a very serious
investigation, serious in the sense that one is examining it with great intensity,
with a great sense of responsibility, as something that is of grave concern. If I do
not understand, if I ill-treat that child, I may write on that blank slate something
the child may never be able to erase for the rest of his life and it may cripple that
child mentally the same way as an accident can cripple a human being physically.
So when one takes up the responsibility for educating a human being, not just
intellectually, not just imparting information which is only a very small fragment
of what education should really mean, but when one takes responsibility for
bringing up that child as a whole then it is my responsibility also to investigate
what I want that child's life to be like. Because the way I am going to bring him up
is going to determine the rest of his life.
Scientists are now finding out that this process begins as early as the very first
year of the child's life. So when a child comes to us, when he comes to school, he
already comes with quite a lot written on that slate. And it is our concern in a K
school to educate the child to lead a full, rich, right kind of life. We must of
course define these terms. We must ask ourselves what we mean by a life of high
quality. We are saying we want to educate the child in such a way, write on his
consciousness in such a way, that it helps him to live a life of high quality and we
are not accepting any definition given by anybody as to what is a life of high
quality. So I am going to observe around and find out what it means to have a life
of high quality. The prevailing view in society says the more you possess, the
bigger the house you have, the bigger and better the garden, the more the motor
cars, the better the quality of your life. So I ask myself, is that really true ? Does
the quality of my clothes, the quality of my house, the quality of the carpet,
determine the quality of my life ? It does not require too much investigation to
find out that this is a very very limited and superficial definition of the quality of
life, counting only the capacity to buy pleasure and enjoyment in life. Let us
consider why that is so. I notice that if I have the right quality of mind, life offers
an infinity of joys and pleasures which are accessible to each human being and
which can not be bought: pleasures of friendship, pleasures of nature, of beauty,
of affection, the so called simple pleasures of life. If one is sensitive to them they
are an infinity in themselves. So what is the great point running after adding to
this infinity a little bit more through having more and more buying power if I have
not first known the value of these pleasures themselves ? So I say to myself that
that cannot be the way to define the high quality of life; and unless I define what
is a high quality of life I do not know what to write on that empty slate (the mind
of the child), how to educate this child and what to call as right education. So that
is one of the issues that concerns us in a K school.
biological growth of the body. I am only concerning myself with what we are
going to write on that empty slate which is the consciousness of the child.
Each one of us has come to this world and is a part of nature. One must examine
whether it has been wise for man to consider himself more intelligent and capable
of imposing an order which is better than the cosmic order which runs the
universe. I want to bring up the child to live in harmony with his environment.
The environment includes plants, animals, mountains, rivers, the whole of the
nature, the sky. It also includes society, people, everything around him. Then you
have to define what you mean by harmony. Is it that one just accepts everything ?
Would you say harmony is the absence of conflict ? Is it possible for me to
educate the child in such a way that he can live without conflict ? That means his
relationship with nature, with plants, with animals, with society, which is his life,
is not full of conflict. So that life is not viewed all the time as a problem to be
struggled with and solved. Is it possible to lead life with a sense of joy, to cherish
life as it comes - not necessarily only when there is pleasure. So one has to
understand and help him understand the relationship to pleasure and pain. If I
don't do all these things then what am I giving to the child ? Kahlil Gibran has
said, "Your children are not your children. They are an expression of life's longing
for itself. They come through you but they belong not to you. And they dwell in
the house of tomorrow. Therefore, don't give them your thoughts or make them in
your own image." If I am aware that I have been conditioned and brought up
wrongly, incorrectly, I don't want to pass on the same problems to that child. So I
must have humility, I must not start with the assumption that I know everything
and I am going to pass it on to the child; otherwise all that I will do is pass on my
conditioning, making him in my image and I am such a miserable little human
being, constantly struggling. Not having understood life completely ourselves,
treating it like a problem, always trying to solve it, we are then telling him that life
is that way, that he must always look upon it as a problem and go on solving
problems. Therefore life becomes a series of problems, and the ability to cope
with life becomes the ability to solve problems. Is that really so ? This is an issue
that we must examine in a K school.
One such fundamental question is "What is true religion?". In olden days, in India
and also perhaps in Europe, a few centuries ago, before this modern system of
education had come in, of having colleges and universities, people used to send
the children to a great learned man, a Guru. And the children lived in his ashram.
Education was their life in that ashram. Whatever they learnt there, that was part
of their life and it was also religion, intellectual development, everything. What
we have now is a modern trend, where education has become commercialized. It
has become like a factory, where you are trying to churn out engineers, medical
people and so on, treating human consciousness like a computer that needs to be
programmed to produce a certain result. I am not saying that vocation is not
necessary. But is that the main purpose and aim of education? How to help the
child to find the right vocation, and what is right vocation ? To discover what one
loves to do - not decide first what to do and then adjust ourselves to fit into that.
That means I must observe the child, I must respect the child, his uniqueness.
Every child is unique. There is no other child in the world like him, nor has there
been, nor will there be. Every child has his own talent, potentiality. My role is to
let it flower. I have no right to impose upon it. I have no right to say that talent
must be in such and such direction. Can you bring up the child the way you look
after a plant in your garden? Give nourishment, let it grow in freedom. Don't cut it
off here and there, clip the branches. Don't already have an idea in your mind
what shape that plant should have. Let it grow and respect it's natural growth. Of
course in the case of the child the growth is not only the biological growth but
also the mental growth of the child. But I don't want to impose on the mental
growth either. So I expose him to everything, I expose him to art, I expose him to
nature, I expose him to beauty, I want to develop all his capacities. I don't know
where his talent lies, I will help him to discover that. We will do it together. That
is another major concern in a K School.
What are the capacities of the human mind ? If I want to have a harmonious,
balanced life, I must have a harmonious development of all the capacities. If I
have a person who is intellectually highly developed but emotionally dwarfed he
is a monster. If I have a person who is emotionally extremely developed but
intellectually dwarfed, I again have a monster. So I need to have a balance and I
want to help the child to cultivate all the capacities the human mind is capable of.
It has nothing to do with what capacities were cultivated in me, because I am not
trying to make him in my image. And I am not imposing that he must enjoy life
the way I enjoyed it or saying that is the only way to live. So you watch that in
yourself. I have tried to list some of the capacities which the human mind is
capable of and which we should concern ourselves with, and I have grouped them
into the following groups on the basis of similarity. The first group is perception,
observation, attention and awareness. I am afraid, most of the time our present
educational system doesn't concern itself sufficiently with the development of
these capacities, because it is all the time interested only in achievement. The
second group is memory, language, information, knowledge and conditioning.
They are all memory based. You need that too - the capacity for memory. You
cannot say that all conditioning is evil therefore memory is to be blanked out, you
will turn out a moron. So, find out what is the right blend of all these capacities,
neither excessive growth of one, nor excessive dwarfism in another. The third
group is thinking, reasoning, imagination, planning, technique, mathematics, logic,
concentration, intellectual enquiry, invention, humour and the intelligence of
thought - all these are thought-based, so it is a big group. Thought has its utility in
life and it has its limitations. One needs to be aware of both. The fourth group is
feeling, emotion, sensitivity, intensity, sentiment, beauty, romance, art, poetry.
These are all emotion - based and represent the aesthetic sensibility which the
human mind is capable of. The fifth group, which is very difficult to define is
perhaps not based either on thought or emotion if one investigates it deeply. I
have put it down as vision, insight, creativity, intuition, silence and intelligence
,not of thought but as wisdom.
child does keep his books in his house with care. The reason he doesn't keep it
that way in the school library is because he doesn't feel that way. So it is for us to
bring about that atmosphere where the child feels completely that it is his home,
which means all the prior requisites have to be there: absence of fear, friendship,
affection and care.
The cultivation of good habits is another issue that needs consideration. You
could say you are conditioning the child, but you have got to teach the child, right
conduct, good manners, right behaviour. You need to explain to him that it comes
out of consideration for others, so that he knows the reason for it. But you have to
teach him to have his bath and keep clean, and brush his teeth. I would not say
that freedom means he doesn't have to have his bath everyday. He will probably
understand it later on that he need not do it mechanically, habitually. One can do
it with full attention, spontaneously, naturally, so that order in life is not imposed
in a mechanical way but comes naturally. All these things cannot be taught to
children in a classroom. The children imbibe it from the atmosphere. The
atmosphere in the school teaches much more than what we teach in the
classroom. And the atmosphere is built by the way we all live. It is important that
we also learn, because we never learnt all these things when we were children. So
we must also be prepared to learn all this now, because it is never too late. Once
you have seen that it is right, you begin then and there by saying "I feel this is
right so this is the way I want to live". That creates the right atmosphere, and the
atmosphere teaches. So it comes about indirectly, not through lectures, which is
not to say that you must not have culture classes and you must not discuss; but to
understand that they are not the only things and learning will not come about just
through that. They have a place but that is not the way you can teach all this in a
K school.
I think I will end here and answer questions if there are any.
Question : Do the parents know all this and do they send their children to this
school because they value such an education ?
Answer : Ideally it should be so that the parents ought to send their children to
the school because they want the child to grow up this way. But I am afraid it is
not so. I suspect that most of the parents want their children to be competitive, to
be achievers, and so on. They themselves do not have a right understanding of
life. They want the children to be like them and perhaps they send them to our
school because they feel that their children do well in that respect too ! So they
are willing to have happiness thrown in on the side !
Question : Is not our life actually a series problems for which we are seeking
solutions ?
Answer : We have all been brought up and educated to look upon life as
presenting a series of problems that have to be overcome. You have to achieve
this, you have to achieve that, you have to struggle to do this and so on. All the
time it is a struggle, right from the start, from childhood. Education is a pain in the
neck. The day he has a vacation he can go home and do what he likes, that's the
happy day and the rest of the time the education process itself is a big struggle. So
you are educating him to look upon life as struggle, and the mind gets conditioned
to think that this struggle is life. And pleasure becomes an escape from that
struggle. Either you escape or you suppress, dominate. Now, is it possible to live
in such a way that life is not a struggle at all ? Not to look upon life as a problem.
Suppose I cherish life and I let it unfold and I accept what comes and face it. Not
dictate all the time that it must be this way or that way. When I already have a
fixed idea it must be this way I must do my M.Sc. by this age, have such and such
a job, have my wife from here, live with her there and so on, I am narrowing
down life too much, asking it to move along a narrow lane. Leave it open. Let life
unfold. Don't define what it should be and cherish each day as it comes. Don't all
the time use today for building up something in the future, because life is now, in
the present. Remember out of those thirty thousand days you are here, everyday
is clicking by and it is not going to come back. We are all born in the hospital bed
and we will end up at the cremation ground. Those two inevitable ends, none of
us can change, education or no education. And you have those thirty thousand
days in between; either you struggle through them or you cherish them. So we are
asking if it is possible to live cherishing each day as it comes, learning from it,
irrespective of whether it brings pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow.
Answer: Yes, of course. I just left out those topics which we have already dealt
with for the last two days. Dr. Parchure dealt with the `World crisis' where he
talked about the division on economic basis and national basis and the formation
of groups and other social problems. There we discussed the relevance of the
education in a K-school to the social problems and the necessity of making the
child aware of the deep-rooted causes of it. That is very much a part of education
in a K school, to create an awareness of that.
Question : Are the children in the K-schools associated with any social work?
Answer : Our children here, at least in this school, are not doing any social work,
but I know of other schools which take the children out to the village and make
them do some social work and so on. I am not sure how really meaningful or
productive that is or whether that just becomes another way of making your
conscience feel good. That is often the purpose of doing a good act; it does not
really achieve much unless one enables someone to stand on his own legs so that
he does not need our help anymore. It is much more necessary to be aware of
what causes the social problem. For example when we examine the present world
crisis the main reason is the formation of groups. We must help the child to
understand that the differences between human beings are only at the superficial
level: colour of the skin, the particular kind of temple he goes to pray, or the dress
he wears or the language he speaks etc. Now, if we live a superficial life we see
only these differences and they begin to matter enormously and the society
further supplements that. It says Muslims are separate from Hindus and they are
very different. Actually they are not different, go and see in his home and in his
family. The relationship between the mother and the child is the same. There is
the same bond of affection. Human consciousness is basically the same, but as the
child grows up you write something on the empty slate of his consciousness and in
another family they write something else. So if I could make the child aware of
this he would not give importance to the differences, he would see the unity
rather than the difference. But what's happening now is because we don't live
deeply, we see differences and around these differences we group together
creating the world crisis. That's where it comes from. It comes out of superficial
living. And that is where the role of the school comes in, to teach the child not to
live a superficial life, to be deeply aware of oneself and the social issues.
Answer : You know, you cannot teach anything to anyone, you can only learn
together. The ability to learn is far more important than the teaching. So I must
create in the child the ability to learn. It's not my ability to teach that matters. You
see, Krishnamurti himself taught for 70 years but different people received to
different extent from him. He taught the same for everybody and nobody perhaps
got it totally. So it obviously depends on each individual's capacity to receive.
That is a much bigger factor then the quality of the teacher. Otherwise, generally
one only gets influenced, which is not learning. You get influenced when there is
a very great person around. In the presence of that person you change for a while
but that is not learning. In the presence of Gandhiji they all became temporarily
nonviolent outwardly, but after he died they all fell for power. Real learning had
not taken place. It was just influence. So one has to be very careful, not to get
influenced.
Answer : Not really. Whichever way you bring up a child the environment will
inevitably condition the mind, but one can be aware of the conditioning and
therefore not be a slave to it. You take a new-born child and bring him up in a
different home, say, he is adopted by a Swedish family or a Russian family or in
China. Bring him up in China and he will grow up to be like a Chinese child, with
that culture and taste, he will be singing that music, he will be liking that food.
The food you enjoy, the clothes you like, the girl that looks most beautiful to you,
all this is taught. You have learnt it that way. It has all been written on that blank
slate with which you were born. Apart from the biological instincts which are
already put there, everything else is learnt after birth. The language, the culture,
even the taste in food is all created later. There are some racial characteristics
which are hereditary but I do not think they affect the mind. Certainly the social
traits are not inherited. If you take an Indian child and bring him up in America he
will not turn out to be as mother-loving as he is here. That is why the Indians
abroad try to send their children here. The non-resident Indians send them here
because they don't want their children becoming like American children. They
still have Indian values in their heads.
Answer : A `K' school is not a school that is being run by the Krishnamurti