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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Online Available at indianresearchjournals.com & INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH Vol.1 No. 3, March 2012, ISSN 2277 3630 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF JIDDU KRISHNAMURTHY DR. VIKRANT MISHRA Assistant Professor, Shivalik College of Education, Aliyaspur (Ambala) ABSTRACT Jiddu Krishnamurti (12 May 1895 - 17 February 1986) was a writer and speaker on philosophical and spiritual issues including psychological revolution, the nature of the mind, meditation, human relationships, and bringing about positive social change. Maintaining that society is ultimately the product of the interactions of individuals. Jiddu Krishnamurti has said that The purpose, the aim and drive of these schools is to equip the child with the most excellent technological proficiency so that he may function with clarity and efficiency in the modern world, and, far more important, to create the right climate so that the child may develop fully as a complete human being. In this paper, a systematic attempt has been to explain the educational philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Keywords: Jiddu Krishnamurti, Education, Philosophy, Human being, Schools INTRODUCTION social structure of frustration and desire and, at the Jiddu Krishnamurti was a great educationist as well as same time, giving him information about a philosopher. He has that that the purpose, the aim mathematics, physics, and so on? We must be very clear and drive of these schools is to equip the child with the in ourselves what we want, clear what a human being most excellent technological proficiency so that he may must be - the total human being not just the function with clarity and efficiency in the modern technological human being. If we concentrate very world, and, far more important, to create the right much on examinations, on technological information, climate so that the child may develop fully as a on making the child clever, proficient in acquiring complete human being. This means giving him the knowledge while we neglect the other side, then the opportunity to flower in goodness so that he is rightly child will grow up into a one-sided human being. So related to people, things and ideas, to the whole of life. we must find a way, we must bring about a movement To live is to be related. There is no right relationship to which will cover both. So far we have separated the two anything if there is not the right feeling for beauty, a and, having separated them, we have emphasized the response to nature, to music and art, a highly developed one and neglected the other. What we are now trying to aesthetic sense. I think it is fairly clear that competitive do is to join both of them together. If there is proper education and the development of the student in that education, the student will not treat them as two process-the pattern which we now cultivate and call separate fields. He will be able to move in both as one education-is very, very destructive. You teach him to movement; in making himself technologically perfect, read and write within the present system of frustration he will also make himself a worthwhile human being. then the flowering of the mind is impeded. The Surely, a school is a place where one learns about the question then is: if one drops this competitive totality, the wholeness of life. Academic excellence is education, can the mind be educated at all in the absolutely necessary, but a school includes much more accepted sense of the word ? Or, does education consist than that. It is a place where both the teacher and the really in taking ourselves and the student away from the taught explore not only the outer world, the world of knowledge, but also their own thinking, their own 78 DR. VIKRANT MISHRA behaviour. From this they begin to discover their own organizations, and relationships often ran counter to conditioning and how it distorts their thinking. This the convention of the day. If they are less startling today, conditioning is the self to which such tremendous and it is either due to the effect his insights have had on cruel importance is given. Freedom from conditioning common consciousness or an indication of the extent and its misery begins with this awareness. It is only in to which he was ahead of his time. But Krishnamurti's such freedom that true learning can take place. In this insights on education are still radical and frequently school it is the responsibility of the teacher to sustain misunderstood or dismissed as impractical. This is with the student a careful exploration into the probably due largely to the fact that Krishnamurti implications of conditioning and thus end it. A school presents education as a religious activity in an age when is a place where one learns the importance of most people still see it as preparation for succeeding in knowledge and its limitations. It is a place where one a secular world. Throughout the ages sages have learns to observe the world not from any particular warned us that we can't see what is true even when it is point of view or conclusion; one learns to look at the presented to us because that which is true isn't what we whole of man's endeavor, his search for beauty, his expect or want to hear. The traditional western symbol search for truth and for a way of living without conflict. for this is choosing Barabbas; choosing what is familiar So far education has not been concerned with this, but or most like us over what is true or sacred. This is as true in this school our intent is to understand actuality and in educational matters as it is in religious ones. Modern its action without any preconceived ideals, theories or education is so obviously failing to solve the world's beliefs which bring about a contradictory attitude problems, is so rightly criticised for not meeting towards existence. The school is concerned with societies' aspirations, and is so clearly unable to prepare freedom and order. Freedom is not the expression of people for the fundamental challenges of living. To one's own desire, choice or self-interest; that inevitably solve these problems, we seem to need educational leads to disorder. Freedom of choice is not freedom, insights that marry the most profound learning though it may appear so; nor is order conformity or possible with the everyday; the subtle with the imitation. Order can only come with the insight that to mundane; or to put it another way, the sacred with the choose is itself the denial of freedom. It is here one can secular. Jiddu Krishnamurti's insights into education learn about the movement of thought, love and death, are such a marriage. They are radical, that they meet the for all this is our life. From ancient times, man has challenges of living at a profound level, and they do so sought something beyond the materialistic world, at a time when such insights are desperately needed. Of something immeasurable, something sacred. It is the all the many subjects that Krishnamurti addressed in intent of this school to inquire into this possibility. This his more than seventy years of writing books and whole movement of inquiry into knowledge, into speaking in public, it is Krishnamurti's insights into oneself, into the possibility of something beyond education that most people will eventually feel has had knowledge, brings about naturally a psychological the greatest effect on the world. revolution, and from this comes inevitably a totally Jiddu Krishnamurti's interest in education was different order in human relationship, which is society. long standing and always passionate. In what is The intelligent understanding of all this can bring perhaps his first book, "Education As Service" (1912), about a profound change in the consciousness of we see his concern for education and the introduction mankind." of a few themes that remain in his work. We hear the EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF J. voice of the seventeen year old Krishnamurti writing KRISHNAMURTHY from his heartfelt experiences when he says in the For most of Jiddu Krishnamurti's life what he said and foreword, wrote sparked both interest and controversy. His For Jiddu Krishnamurti, education is a religious observations on religion, nationalism, tradition, activity. Krishnamurti's work is large, subtle, and 79 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF JIDDU KRISHNAMURTHY complex. Krishnamurti did not explicitly define founded were also meant to be places for adults to positions; instead, his understanding is interwoven learn. In English, or rather in the English of through out his work. This is further complicated by England, schools are specifically places for the evolution in his manner of expression that occurred younger students. To support our theme we will over his lifetime, so that two comments taken out of show how Krishnamurti described the three context and separated by decades seem to contradict elements mentioned above (the intentions, the each other (though, taken in context, they are not places, and the participants) in religious terms, contradictory); and he did not present his insights in which has the added benefit of seeing the traditional intellectual forms, which would have made relationship they have with one another. We summarisation easier. Consequently, we are left with a believe these three elements are the focus of much, kind of translation - translating Krishnamurti's work, if not most, of Krishnamurti's work on education. which is partly apophatic, into an expository 1. The intentions of education presentation. And, as with all processes of translation, Krishnamurti repeatedly stated the intentions of something is lost, and those who know the original see the education centres he founded in very unequivocal the loss, and rightly complain.