Krishnamurti - Educating the Educator

Educating the Educator

Copyright 2013 Krishnamurti Foundation of America

Educating

the

Educator

J. Krishnamurti

K RISHNAMURTI F OUNDATION I NDIA

CONTENTS

From Krishnamurtis Talks in India 1948, Series I-Bombay (Verbatim Reports)

From The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Volume 5

From The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Volume 5

From The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Volume 5

P UBLISHERS N OTE

During the year 1948, Krishnamurti held as usual a series of public talks in India, but in Bombay and Poona his talks were interspersed with meetings with teachers and parents. These special sessions took the form of Krishnamurti answering questions on education put to him by the audience.

As Krishnamurti emphasizes in his opening remarks, his chief, if not sole, concern is that it is the educator who needs educating. By which he means that the teacher should be rooted in self-knowledge and committed to bringing about a radical change in himself as a human being. Our problem is not so much the child but the educator, who needs educating much more than the pupil. And to educate the educator is far more difficult than to educate the child, because the educator is already set, fixed. Elsewhere he speaks in a similar vein to parents: The educator is you; for the home environment is as important as the school environment. So you have to transform yourself first to give the right environment to the child.

This book brings together the authentic reports of these meetings, besides the answers to two questions posed at the end of his public talks in New Delhi and Benares.

E DUCATING THE E DUCATOR

Bombay, 13 March 1948

[Although open to all, todays meeting was convened specially for the benefit of educationists and teachers. It was presided over by a member of the New Education Fellowship, who welcomed Krishnamurti on behalf of his institution and thanked him for doing them the honour to attend. He then requested him to give them the benefit of his advice in the matter of education.]

K RISHNAMURTI : Mr Chairman and friends: I have been sent many questions, and I propose to answer as many of them as possible this evening. All these questions have been rewritten, but their substance has been kept. Some questions were repeated, and we thought it would be better to combine and rewrite them, and there are about fifteen or sixteen questions here. But before I answer them, I would like to say something.

Throughout the world, it is becoming more and more evident that the educator needs educating. It is not a question of educating the child, but rather the educator, for he needs it much more than the pupil. After all, the pupil is like a tender plant that needs guiding, helping; but if the helper is himself incapable, narrow, bigoted, nationalistic, and all the rest of it, naturally his product will be what he is. So it seems to me that the important thing is not so much the technique of what to teach, which is secondary; but what is of primary importance is the intelligence of the educator himself. You know that, throughout the world, education has failed, because it has produced the two most colossal and destructive wars in history; and since it has failed, merely to substitute one system for another seems to me to be utterly futile. Whereas, if there is a possibility of changing the thought, the feeling, the attitude of the teacher, then perhaps there can be a new culture, a new civilization. Because, it is obvious that this civilization is likely to be destroyed completely; the coming war will probably settle Western civilization as we know it. Perhaps we shall be profoundly affected by it in this country also.

But in the midst of all this chaos, misery, confusion, and strife, surely the responsibility of the teacher, whether he is a government employee, whether he is a religious teacher or a teacher of mere information, is extraordinarily great; and those who merely fatten on education as a means of livelihood seem to me to have no place in the modern structure of society if a new order is to be created. So our problem is not so much the child, the boy or the girl, but the teacher, the educator, who needs educating much more than the pupil. And to educate the educator is far more difficult than to educate the child, because the educator is already set, fixed. He merely functions in a routine because he is really not concerned with the thought process, with the cultivation of intelligence. He is merely imparting information; and a man who merely imparts information when the whole world is crashing about his ears is surely not an educator. And do you mean to say that education is a means of livelihood? To regard it as a means of livelihood, to exploit the children for ones own good, seems to me so contrary to the real purpose of education.

So, in answering all these questions, the principal point is the educator, and not the child. You can provide the right environment, the necessary tools, and all the rest of it; but what is important is for the educator himself to find out what all this existence means. Why are we living, why are we striving, why are we educating, why are there wars, why is there communal strife between man and man? To study this whole problem, and to bring our intelligence into operation, is surely the function of a real teacher. The teacher who does not demand anything for himself, who does not use teaching as a means of acquiring position, power, authority; the teacher who is really teaching, not for profit, not along a certain line, but who is giving, growing, awakening intelligence in the child because he is cultivating intelligence in himselfsurely such a teacher has the primary place in civilization. Because, after all, all great civilizations have been founded on the teachers, not on engineers and technicians. Engineers and technicians are absolutely necessary, but those who awaken the moral, the ethical intelligence, are obviously of primary importance; and they can have moral integrity, freedom from the desire for power, position, authority only when they dont ask anything for themselves, when they are beyond and above society and are not under the control of governments; and when they are free from the compulsion of social action, which is always action according to a pattern.

So a teacher must be beyond the limits of society and its demands, so as to be able to create a new culture, a new structure, a new civilization. But at present we are merely concerned with the technique of how to educate a boy or girl, without cultivating the intelligence of the teacherwhich seems to me so utterly futile. We are now mostly concerned with learning a technique and imparting that technique to the child, and not with the cultivation of intelligence which will help him to deal with the problems of life. So when I answer these questions, I hope you will bear with me if I dont go into any particular detail, but deal primarily, not with technique, but with the right approach to the problem.

Q UESTION :What part can education play in the present world crisis?

K RISHNAMURTI : First of all, to understand what part education can play in the present world crisis, we must understand how the crisis has come into being. Without understanding that, merely to build on the same values, on the same ground, on the same foundation, will bring about further wars, further disasters. So we must first investigate how the present crisis has come into being, and in understanding the causes we will inevitably understand what kind of education we need.

Obviously, the present crisis is the result of wrong valueswrong values in mans relationship to property, to people, and to ideas. The expansion and predominance of sensate values necessarily creates the poison of nationalism, economic frontiers, sovereign governments, and the patriotic spirit, all of which excludes mans cooperation with man for the benefit of man, and corrupts his relationship with people, which is society. And if the individuals relationship with others is wrong, the structure of society is bound to collapse. Similarly, in his relationship to ideas, man justifies an ideologywhether of the left or of the right, whether the means employed are right or wrongin order to achieve an end. So mutual distrust, lack of goodwill, the belief that a right end can be achieved by wrong means, the sacrificing of the present for a future idealall these are obviously causes of the present disaster. One cannot take time to go into all the details, but one can see at a glance how this chaos, this degradation, has come into being. Surely, it all arises from wrong values and from dependence on authority, on leaders, whether in daily life, in the small school, or the big university. Leaders and authority are deteriorating factors in any culture. The moment you depend on another, there is no self-dependence, and where there is no self-dependence, obviously there must be conformity, eventually leading to the dictatorship of totalitarian states.