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Sunday, December 11, 2011

J. krishnamourthi


Introduction:-
                         Today’s education prepares us for various professions and vocations that can only contribute to our miseries and illusions.  True education not only trains the mind to take-up various vocations but also educates the mind.  Education develops love and understanding among people and does not promote only industrialization that has the potential to annihilate others.  Education should help us learn the permanent values of life and develop creativity.
Life History:-
                        Born in a Brahmin family in Madanapalli, Andra Pradesh in 1895.                                 Jiddu Krishnamurti acquired a theosophical background, since his father had been a theosophist and had migrated to Madras on being invited by the President of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant.  After being educated privately, he wanted to prepare himself for some examinations of the London University.  He left for California in 1922 with his younger sibling Nityanand who suffered from a respiratory disease.  In 1924, while he was traveling to India, he received the news of the death of his brother and this transformed his entire psyche.  He began to think about the very basis of all existence on earth.
Krishnamurti Said:-
On Life and Education:-
                       We are all endowed with emotions, moods, feelings and sentiments searching for a place where there is no fear or mutual distrust.  To avoid conformation with the authorities and the forces that bind the society, we hesitate to revolt and prefer the status quo.  There can be no two opinions on the need for reforms.  The purpose of life will be narrow and zero if we live to get more and more out of the mundane affairs of life.
                      Education should enable us to understand the importance of life.  We should understand the difference between individual and personal spheres.  The individual is accidental that is he is shaped by the circumstances and the environment in which he is brought up.
                      Today’s education prepares us for various professions and vocations that can only contribute to our miseries and illusions.  True education not only trains the mind to take up various vocations but also educates the mind.  Education develops love and understanding among people.  Education should help us learn the permanent values of life and develop creativity.
True Education:-
                     The current education is making life dependent upon machines.  Education should promote inner experiences and enable one to avoid self­-deception.  It should enable us to help our fellow-beings and unshackle them from worldly affairs.
                    Man is not a machine and cannot be adjusted to predetermined structure of things.  True education cannot be based on any established system of things and should not be regarded as an instrument of molding individuals into a particular shape.
                     True education should enable people to feel free from mundane bondage facilitating people to love one another and feeling pride in helping others, making people realize their real selves in their individual capacities.
                    Education should enable the child to become a complete person and perceive life in its entirety.  The world is facing a crisis today and this is the consequence of the current system of education.
                    A teacher who understands the complexities of a child’s life will help them develop their personalities in the desired fashion.  If the child is to be free from tensions that hamper growth, the atmosphere at the school should be similar to that of home.
The School:-
                  Real education can be imparted only through small schools where the strength of the students in each class is limited to manageable proportions and individual attention is given to each child.  In a class with limited strength, the teacher will be more concerned with his students interaction with them on an individual basis and helping them to reach their maximum potential.
                  Work should be distributed to teachers according to their interests, aptitudes and abilities.  Every teacher should make sincere efforts to understand the background of each child as that helps a lot in providing the desirable direction to the child.
                  A big load of books should be avoided in school.  The co-curricular activities should be conducted in a democratic manner where participation of all the children and teachers is made obligatory.  If the education is to serve its intended purpose, the teacher should lead the student to understand the truth and purpose of life and help the student in his search for truth.
J.K’s Educational Philosophy:-
                    In his essay `The Noisy child and Silent Mind’ he states that children should open up and be aware of the great beauty in nature around them.  Noisy children become silent when they are absorbed in doing something which is of high interest to them.  Then there is perfect peace.  Hence education is the percept of taming the noisy mind by letting it in its own track which is excited to `see this’ or `do that’.
1.     Education and Discipline:-
                True learning should promote independent thinking in the individual, critically analyzing what he has seen, listened or read, in relation to his own personal experiences.  True learning demands application and order.  To learn, it is necessary to observe.  To hear or to read, we have to pay attention which is not compelled, not under any pressure or expectations or reward or punishment.  This is called `Discipline’.
Discipline means to learn not to conform, that is not to act according to others expectations but to observe those in which one is interested and get absorbed in activities what one likes.  Learning results from discipline.
Education has become a functioning of many subjects in our brain, conditioning us to conform that is all of us are thinking alike.  But true learning is the one which enables the individual to express his uniqueness in thinking by integrating the different subject contents he has studied.
2.     Education and Attention:-
        Attention is the pre-requisite for learning.  Attention is different from concentration.  Concentration is to bring all our energy to focus on a particular point.  In attention there is no such point of focus.  When there is attention, there is no concentration and therefore no conflict.
        Attention is not mechanical or repetitive.  It is the way of looking at a thing as a whole with the sense of detachment.
3.     Process of Learning:-
Discontent is like a flame.  In enquiry satisfaction is not the goal.  In fact dissatisfaction triggers the enquiry.  In studying there may be exchange of thought and silent observation.  Enquiry uncovers the light of intelligence.  It is our responsibility that this flame of enquiry sharpening our intelligence is spread wherever we are in school, home or in government.


4.     Freedom and Learning;-
  Freedom is obviously not to do whatever we like.  We think we are free because this and that.  But in fact we are not at all free but `programmed’.  We are programmed to be Hindus, Muslims, Christians; we are programmed to be communists, socialists or capitalists etc.  Our minds are programmed like the computer is programmed.  When a mind is programmed, it says `I am a Hindu, I am a Buddhist, I am this, I am that’.

         Freedom in learning means that the learner has got the capacity to independently observe everything around him, and examine all ideas without any pressure or compulsion.
           Freedom denotes the opposite of `being imprisoned’; capacity to go out or beyond anything.
          The school and its educational practices should provide adequate opportunities for students to independently observe and enquiry everything around them without the pressure of competition, examination etc.  In the classroom fearless and non-threatening atmosphere should prevail offering total freedom to students.
5.     Learning without Competition:-
                 There should be no competition in learning.  Competition leads to fear, jealousy, fear of failure, violence etc. On the contrary learning with co-operation will be more effective.  Every student should set his own goal based on his learning speed and individual abilities and then progress towards the set goal devotedly with the cooperation of all others.
6.     Freedom and Responsibility:-
                 Individual freedom refers to the ability of independent enquiry critically evaluating everything based on one’s own personal experiences and acting as per one’s own judgement.  Freedom and responsibility are the two sides of the same coin.
                 In our country, the family and the parents play an important part in students’ education.  Though the young ones may earn a livelihood in different parts of the world, the family is the centre of their lives.  This is fast disappearing in the Western world.  So the students are caught between their own desire for freedom to do whatever they wants and the society which demands conformity to its own norms.  This affects greatly their learning climate.
                 Teachers are responsible for the total behavior of students and their progress.  The teacher is to bring about the unconditioning of the human brain not only of his own but that of the students.  In relationship with the student, he is helping both the student and himself to free consciousness from limitations.
7.     Individual Awakening and Liberation:-

               Every individual should have communion with other human beings who suffer, struggle and have great pain or the sorrow of poverty.  By watching, perhaps we learn more than from books.  Schools are there to gather knowledge and information about the world outside, world around us, nature, the social environment and economics.  If individuals change for the better, the society will change.  The essence of J.K’s philosophy is: “changes should come from you; from within you; because you are the seed of change”.  Thus J.K emphasized individual awakening and liberation through education.  True learning frees the brain and thought of prestige, and status; it brings about equality among human beings.
Conclusion
                  For him knowledge or educations are conditioning factors of our thinking.  Knowledge makes man either conform to it or differ from it.  Learning has been the ancient tradition of man, not only from books but from others sources like nature and the psychology of human being.  As this has been neglected entirely, there is disorder in the world; terror, violence and all other cruel things are taking place.  To learn listening and reading alone are not sufficient, as they will result only in indoctrination; instead of thinking independently, because slaves of others thinking.

Shortcoming in the present of education
            j.k noticed the following deficence in present system of eduation.
1)Education at present is simply accumulating knowledge and collecting information from books.
2)Today education , not only kills the spirit of child but also debars him from becoming an integred individuals.
3)Education has come to mean acquiring skills, learning techniques whicw help in learning a living only.
4)Education doesnot encouraga creativity.
5)Todays education create more or less ‘Yes man’.
6)Large impersonel schools with crowded class and mass instruction fail to bring about  accomplishment of true education.
7)The present systm of education depents upon authority and dominatin at all levels the government, tne head of the school and teacher.
           
Main features of educational philosophy of Krishnamurthi
(1) Integral Education
            According to him, “ The highest fucntion of education is to bring about an integrated  individual who is capable of dealing with life as a whole.
Education according to him was a trnsfermatio of human mind and creation of new culture. Education must free the mind and sprit of children.
(2) The educators role
            The teacher should be a properly integreted human being. The teacher has to be careful, thoughtful and affectionate in the creation of right environment for developing of understanding to be enable the child to deal intelligently   with human problem. For a teacher, teaching was not a technique but way of life.
(3) Responsibility of the parents
            J.K held the view that education was dual responsibility of the parents and the teachers. He said.” The problem is not child but parent  and the teacher.
Conclusion
            He was a great auther and also writter. The books by him were the result and ouitcome of his speeches. He wished that our children and youth could develop fully alll their faculties unhindered by rigid and narrow systen of our schooling.

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