Akhilesh Mehta

What will happen when we become adults? What is going to happen to all of us when we grow to be men and women? Is education only about learning Physics, Mathematics, History, or a specialized academic discipline? Is education only about passing exams and getting jobs? credit goes to pinterest Why do we go to school, why do we learn various subjects, why do we pass examinations and compete with each other for better grades? What does this so-called education mean, and what is it all about? This is really a very important question, not only for the students, but also for the parents, for the teachers, and for everyone who loves this earth. Why do we go through the struggle to be educated? Is it merely to pass some examinations and get a job? Or is it the function of education to prepare us while we are young to understand the whole process of life? What is the point of passing examinations and getting degrees? Is it to get married, get a job, and settle down in life as millions and millions of people do? Are you going to allow your parents and society to dictate to you so that you become part of the stream of society? Having a job and earning one’s livelihood is necessary — but is that all? Are we being educated only for that? Surely, life is not merely a job, an occupation; life is something extraordinarily wide and profound, it is a great mystery, a vast realm in which we function as human beings. If we merely prepare ourselves to earn a livelihood, we shall miss the whole point of life; and to understand life is much more important than merely to prepare for examinations and become very proficient in mathematics, physics, or what you will. So, whether we are teachers or students, is it not important to ask ourselves why we are educating or being educated? And what does life mean? Isn't life an extraordinary thing? The birds, the flowers, the flourishing trees, the heavens, the stars, the rivers, and the fish therein — all this is life. Life is for the poor and the rich; Life is the constant battle between groups, races, and nations; Life is meditation. Life is what we call religion, and it is also the subtle, hidden things of the mind — the envies, the ambitions, the passions, the fears, fulfilments, and anxieties. All this and much more is life. But we generally prepare ourselves to understand only one small corner of it. We pass certain examinations, find a job, get married, have children, and then become more and more like machines. We remain fearful, anxious, frightened of life. So, is it the function of education to help us understand the whole process of life, or is it merely to prepare us for a vocation, for the best job we can get? What is going to happen to all of us when we grow to be men and women? We send our children to school to learn some techniques by which they can eventually earn a livelihood. We want to make the child first and foremost a specialist, hoping thus to give him a secure economic position. But does the cultivation of a technique enable us to understand ourselves? Throughout the world, engineers are frantically designing machines which do not need men to operate them. In a life run almost entirely by machines, what is to become of human beings?” we know, often asked young learners or their teachers: Do you watch the sunset in the valley? Did you listen to the bird’s song with absolute care and mindfulness? Look at nature, the mango trees in bloom, and listen to the birds early in the morning and late in the evening. See the clear sky, the stars, how marvelously the sun sets behind these hills. See all the colours, the light on the leaves, the beauty of the land, the rich earth. Then, having seen that and seen what the world is, with all its brutality, violence, ugliness, what are you going to do? Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? What will happen when we become adults? What is going to happen to all of us when we grow to be men and women? In all likelihood, you will get married, and before you know where you are you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be? Have you ever asked yourselves this question? Should you not ask it? If your family is wealthy you may have a fairly good position already assured, your father may give you a comfortable job, or you may get richly married; but there also you will decay, deteriorate. You may earn degrees, a series of letters after your name, and land a very good job; but then what? What is that all your life is going to be? Should you not ask it now, while there is still time? credit goes to me don’t let the schools to get in the way of your education Let me start with the first issue related to the state of education. Enough has been said about the disease that plagues the traditional educational system in the country — rote learning, a sole focus on quantifying ‘success’ through, for example, 99% marks on the board exam; a persistent obsession with select careers in medicine, engineering, commerce, and management; the colonization of our mental landscape by the notorious chain of coaching centers (the rising suicide rate in symbolizes this pathology); the rat race to improve the ‘ranking’ of a college or university through the myth of ‘placements and salary packages,’ or the ritualization of soulless seminars, publications, and conferences. in this hyper-competitive age of social Darwinism and gross consumerism, how do we rethink education? Should education only equip our children with a set of technical and cognitive skills, and transform them into ‘products’ for the techno-corporate market? Or, should we reimagine education as a praxis of liberation? Second, in this age of hyper-nationalism and militant religious identities when our consciousness is becoming increasingly parochial and exclusivist, is it possible to be free from this sort of conditioning, and evolve as sensitive, humane, dialogic seekers and wanderers free from all sorts of orthodoxies and indoctrination? And third, when the market-driven logic of neoliberalism has given birth to a profitable industry of all sorts of fancy gurus, babas and motivational speakers, is it possible for us to be free from this trap, trust our own inner journey and quest, evolve as seekers rather than consumers of instant spiritual products like — ‘how to detox your mind in two minutes’? Every child is enveloped in many layers of conditioning by the parents, by the society, by the teachers, and by all the vested interests. The obedient child is praised by his parents, by his teacher,s and by others whereas the playful child is condemned by everybody. The children, Osho says, are very intelligent, and he asks us to watch the intelligence of small children and see how spontaneous they are in their day-to-day life. A passerby asks a boy,”Son, can you please tell me what time it is?” “Yes, of course,” replies the boy, “but what do you need it for? It changes continuously!” Little Pierino comes home from school with a big smile on his face. “Well, dear, you look very happy. So you like school, do you?” “Don’t be silly, Mom,” replies the boy. “We must not confuse the going with the coming back!” Small children are innocent but they have not earned it. It is natural. A little boy, seized with hiccups, cried, “Mommy, I am coughing backwards!” The second — grade teacher had sent the children to the board to work out arithmetic problems. One little fellow said, “I ain’t got no chalk.” “That is not right,” the teacher said. “The right way to say it is, ‘I don’t have any chalk. You don’t have any chalk, we don’t have any chalk, they don’t have any chalk…’ Now do you understand?” “No,” said the little boy. “What happened to all the chalk?” Childhood has its beauties, because it does not know the etiquette, the manners, and all kinds of crap. It is so simple and so innocent and so spontaneous. In a better world every family will learn from children. credit goes to pinterest Education is to give you inner richness. It is not just to make you more informed; that is a very primitive idea of education. If parents really love children, they will help them to be courageous - courageous even against the parents themselves. Are you a human being or a teacher first? Are you a human being or a professional, first? Does education mean only greater proficiency in science or the arts? On what do you lay emphasis — academic excellence or human excellence?” us to reflect on what truly matters. an in-depth exploration of the human condition. I think the greatest profession — if one can use that word — is to be a teacher because teachers are preparing for a new generation, for a future people who are not caught in the routine of life, but are something much more. When I say that the profession, the undertaking, of an educator is really the greatest activity of a human being, it means not only teaching academic subjects, such as mathematics, geography, and history, but also something much more. We seem to spend a great deal of time on academic subjects, probably most of our time, but there is also the other side of the human being — the whole inward, subjective, psychological area, which, I am afraid, we neglect completely. We give our days and years to the study of physics, science, chemistry, architecture, and so on. If you observe your life as a teacher, you spend a great deal of time on these subjects and very little time on the student’s behaviour, his way of life, on whether he is a mediocre human being or not — the whole subjective, inward life of human beings. May we go on with this kind of thing? As teachers, are you interested in, concerned with, both the academic and the psychological side; that is, with the cultivation of the whole human being, not just one side of it? credit goes to me The question of teaching children to face life is a tall task in times of acute commercialisation and ghettoisation of education. Caught in the race for marks and placements in ‘reputed’ professional colleges and later on, multiple-digit-salaried-blue-collared jobs, is the new generation of educational institutions, teachers and parents, with the student at the end of the alley. Unfortunately, the entire system, actually meant to educate the child, has the least to do with the child. “What we now call ‘education’ is a matter of accumulating information and knowledge from books, which anyone can do who can read,” Do you see? Surely, education has no meaning unless it helps you to understand the vast expanse of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a very good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid? So, while you are young, must you not seek to find out what life is all about? And is it not the true function of education to cultivate in you the intelligence which will try to find the answer to all these problems? Do you know what intelligence is? It is the capacity, surely, to think freely, without fear, without a formula, so that you begin to discover for yourself what is real, what is true; but if you are frightened you will never be intelligent. You know, it is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear. Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death. Most of us have fear in one form or another, and where there is fear, there is no intelligence. And is it not possible for all of us, while we are young, to be in an environment where there is no fear but rather an atmosphere of freedom — freedom, not just to do what we like, but to understand the whole process of living? Life is really very beautiful, it is not this ugly thing that we have made of it; and you can appreciate its richness, its depth, its extraordinary loveliness only in the present rotten society. As a human being, find out for yourself what is true. Not to imitate but to discover — that is education, is it not? It is very easy to conform to what your society, your parents, and teachers tell you. That is a safe and easy way of existing, but that is not living, because in it there is fear, decay, death. To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself. But you are not encouraged to do this; no one tells you to question, to find out for yourself Your parents and society want you to live safely, and you also want to live safely. Living safely generally means living in imitation and therefore in fear. Surely, the function of education is to help each one of us to live freely and without fear. And to create an atmosphere in which there is no fear requires a great deal of thinking on your part as well as on the part of the teacher, the educator. Do you know what this means — what an extraordinary thing it would be to create an atmosphere in which there is no fear? And we must create it, because we see that the world is caught up in endless wars; it is guided by politicians who are always seeking power; it is a world of lawyers, policemen and soldiers, of ambitious men and women all wanting position and all fighting each other to get it. Then there are the so-called saints, the religious gurus with their followers; They also want power, position, here or in the next life. It is a mad world, completely confused, in which the communist is fighting the capitalist, the socialist is resisting both, and everybody is against somebody, struggling to arrive at a safe place, a position of power or comfort. credit goes to me The world is torn by conflicting beliefs, by caste and class distinctions, by separative nationalities, by every form of stupidity and cruelty — and this is the world you are being educated to fit into. You are encouraged to fit into the framework of this disastrous society; your parents want you to do that, and you also want to fit in. Real education means that your mind, not only is capable of being excellent in mathematics, geography, and history, but also can never, under any circumstances, be drawn into the stream of society. Because that stream which you call living is very corrupt, is immoral, is violent, is greedy. Now, is it the function of education merely to help you to conform to the pattern of this rotten social order, or is it to give you freedom — complete freedom to grow and create a different society, a new world? We want to have this freedom, not in the future, but now, otherwise we may all be destroyed. Organizations cannot make you free. No man from outside can make you free. you exist to save yourself Truth hahahahahahah We also want to love what we are, and also the world, not only just a better future or a better world