We live in darkness
a modern cave
we believe
not the messenger
who speaks differently
another way
not from heaven
but from earth
Krishnamurti
Chapter I
Education and the Significance of Life
When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia. This is especially true in colleges and universities. We are turning out, as if through a mold, a type of human being whose chief interest is to find security, to become somebody important, or to have a good time with as little thought as possible.
Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity. To be different from the group or to resist environment is not easy and is often risky as long as we worship success. The urge to be successful, which is the pursuit of reward whether in the material or in the so-called spiritual sphere, the search for inward or outward security, the desire for comfort—this whole process smothers discontent, puts an end to spontaneity and breeds fear; and fear blocks the intelligent understanding of life. With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict,and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion. This fear of life, this fear of struggle and of new experience, kills in us the spirit of adventure; our whole upbringing and education have made us afraid to be different from our neighbor, afraid to think contrary to the established pattern of society, falsely respectful of authority and tradition
Fortunately, there are a few who are in earnest, who are willing to examine our human problems without the prejudice of the right or of the left; but in the vast majority of us, there is no real spirit of discontent, of revolt. When we yield uncomprehendingly to environment, any spirit of revolt that we may have had dies down, and our responsibilities soon put an end to it.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
Anti-Education
Lecture I January 16, 1872
“Let me tell you what I think characterizes the vital and pressing educational and pedagogical questions of today. It seems to me we need to distinguish between two dominant tendencies in our educational institutions, apparently opposed but equally ruinous in effect and eventually converging in their end results. The first is the drive for the greatest possible expansion and dissemination of education; the other is the drive for the narrowing and weakening of education. For various reasons, education is supposed to reach the widest possible circle — such is the demand of the first tendency. But then the second tendency expects education to give up its own highest, noblest, loftiest claims and content itself with serving some other form of life, for instance, the state.
“I think I know where the loudest and clearest call for the maximum expansion of education is coming from. Expansion is one of the favorite national – economic dogmas of the day. As much knowledge and education as possible — leading to the greatest possible production and demand — leading to the greatest happiness: that’s the formula. Here we have Utility as the goal and purpose of education, or more precisely Gain: the highest possible income. From this point of view, education essentially means acquiring the discernment that keeps a person ‘up to date,’ tells him all the ways to most easily make money, gives him power over the various channels along which individuals and peoples conduct their business. The true task of education, in this view, is to form people who are, as the French say, ‘ au courant ’ — the same way a coin is courant , valid currency. The more of these ‘circulating’ people there are, the happier the nation is as a whole. And that is the goal of the modern educational institution: to make everyone as ‘current’ as it lies in his nature to be, to train everyone to convert his innate capacity for knowledge and wisdom, whatever it might be, into as much happiness and income as possible.
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