ON EDUCATION

Krishnamurti, Think on These Things, edited by D. Rajagopal (New York: HarperPerennial, 1964, 1970) (From "The Function of Education": "I wonder if we have ever asked ourselves what education means. Why do we go to school, why so 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 teachers, and for everyone who loves this earth. Why do we go through the struggle to be educated? Is it merely in order to pass some examination 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? Having a job and earning one's living 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." Id. at 1, 1-2. From "The Problem of Freedom": "The function of education, then, is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but to be yourself all the time. And this is the most difficult thing to do: whether you are ugly or beautiful, whether you are envious or jealous, always to be what you are, but understand it. To be yourself is very difficult, because you think that what you are is ignoble, and that if you could only change what you are into something noble it would be marvelous; but that never happens. Whereas, if you look at what you actually are and understand it, then in that very understanding there is a transformation. So freedom lies, not in trying to become something different, not in doing whatever you happens to feel like doing, nor in following the authority of tradition, of your parents, of your guru, but in understanding what you are from moment to moment."  Id. at 9, 11. From "Orderly Thinking": "In this country, unfortunately, as all over the world, we care so little, we have no deep feeling about anything. Most of us are intellectuals--intellectuals in the superficial sense of being very clever, full of words and theories about what is right and what is wrong, about how we should think, what we should do. Mentally, we are highly developed, but inwardly there is very little substance or significance,; and it is this inward substance that brings about true action, which is not action according to an idea." Id. at 59, 61.).