1 Worlds of Fear: School Cultures Educational conference | December 12th-15th, 2015 | Centre For Learning 2 Contents 5 Fear: J Krishnamurti 7 CFL Conference 2015 8 Schedule for the conference 9 Profiles of conference speakers 12 Veena concert 13 Centre For Learning: Celebrating 25 years in education 23 Talks on August 1st, 2015 23 Professor Samdhong Rinpoche 28 Anurag Behar 36 Alumni writings 57 Articles by teachers 57 Intimations of fear Usha Mukunda 59 Twenty-five years later Yasmin Jayathirtha 60 Psychological aspects of fear and learning Kamala Mukunda 63 Talking to fear Shashidhar Jagadeeshan This souvenir is being released on the occasion of our educational conference, Worlds of Fear: School Cultures (December 2015). The conference is part of Centre For Learning’s 25th anniversary celebrations. This publication is for private circulation only. Design by Studio Onion Photographs by staff, alumni and students of CFL Printed by Maya Printers LLP We would like to thank everyone who helped us with the conference: former parents, alumni, current parents, students and other friends Fear ...You know most of us have some kind of fear, have kind of fear, it twists your mind, and you can never we not? Do you know your particular fear? You be intelligent. Fear is like a dark cloud and, when might be afraid of your teacher, of your guardian, you have fear, it is like walking in sunshine with a of your parents, of the older people, or of a snake, dark cloud in your mind, always frightened... or a buffalo, or of what somebody says, or of death You know there are natural reactions of the body, and so on. Each one has fear; but, for young people, are there not? When you see a snake, you jump. the fears are fairly superficial. As we grow older, the That is not fear, because that is the natural reaction fears become more complex, more difficult, more of the body. In front of danger, the body reacts; it subtle....For example, I want to fulfil; I am not an jumps. When you see a precipice, you do not walk old person, and I want to fulfil myself in a particular just blindly along. That is not fear. When you see direction...I want to become a great writer. I feel if a danger, or a car coming very fast, you sweep out I could write, my life would be happy. So, I want to of the way. It is not an indication of fear. Those are write. But something happens to me, I get paralysed bodily responses to protect itself against danger; and for the rest of my life I am frightened, I am such reactions are not fear. frustrated, I feel I have not lived. So that becomes my fear. So, as we grow older, various forms of fear Fear comes in when you want to do something and come into being, fears of being left alone, not having you are prevented from doing it. That is one type of a friend, being lonely, losing property, having no fear. You want to go to a cinema, you would like to position, and other various types of fear... go out of Benaras for the day and the teacher says `no’. There are regulations and you do not like these It is very important that we—you, young people, and regulations. You like to go. So you go on some ex- I—should consider this question of fear, because cuse and you come back. The teacher finds out that society and the older people think fear is necessary you have gone, and you are afraid of punishment. to keep you in right behaviour. If you are afraid of So, fear comes in... your teacher or of your parents, they can control you better, can they not? They can say `Do this and Should not education help the students to be free do not do that’ and you will have, jolly well, to obey from fear of every kind—which means, from now on them. So, fear is used as a moral pressure. The to understand all the problems of life, problems of teachers use fear, say in a large class, as a means of sex, problems of death, of public opinion, of author- controlling the students. Is it not so? Society says ity? I am going to discuss all these things, so that fear is necessary and, otherwise, the citizens, the when you leave this place, though there are fears people, will just outflow and do things wildly. Fear in the world, though you have your own ambitions, has thus become a necessity for the control of man... your own desires, you will understand and so be free from fear, because you know fear is very dangerous. If you have a large class of students in one class, All people are afraid of something or other. Most how can the teacher control you? He cannot. He has people do not want to make a mistake, do not want to invent ways and means of controlling you. So, he to go wrong, specially when they are young. So they says `Compete. Become like that boy who is much think that if they could follow somebody, if they cleverer than you.’ So, you struggle, you are afraid. could listen to somebody, they will be told what to Your fear is generally used as a means of controlling do and, by doing that, they would achieve an end, a you. Do you understand? Is it not very important purpose. that education should eradicate fear, should help the students to get rid of fear, because fear corrupts the So, I feel it is very important in a place like this that mind? I think it is very important in a school of this both the educator and the educated should under- kind that every form of fear should be understood stand this problem. Creativity, to be creative - you and dispelled, got rid of. Otherwise, if you have any know what it means? To write a poem is partly 5 Fear CFL Conference 2015 creative, to paint a picture, to look at a tree, to love you are. Are you not afraid that you might not pass Centre For Learning will host a conference on the theme Worlds of Fear: School Cultures, from 12th to 15th the tree, the river, the birds, the people, the earth, your examinations? Are you not afraid that people December 2015, on our campus, in a quiet and beautiful rural setting. The programme will include formal talks, the feeling that the earth is ours - that is partly should think of you nicely and decently and say what small group discussions, presentations by schools and plenty of unstructured time for conversations and walks. All creative. But that feeling is destroyed when you have a great man you are? … So first you must know what participants will stay on campus. We feel that the relaxed and intimate atmosphere will be genuinely conducive to fear, when you say `this is mine, my country, my you are afraid of. I will explain to you very slowly. the serious dialogue and hard thinking that face all of us concerned about education. class, my group, my philosophy my religion.’ When Then you must know also, the mind must know why you have that kind of feeling, you are not creative; it is afraid. Is fear something apart from the mind, Over the four days of the conference, committed and passionate speakers will share their ideas on our theme in the because, it is the instinct of fear that is dictating this and does not the mind create fear, either because it context of philosophy, cognitive studies, history and sociology. We will also have space for school presentations and feeling of `mine, my country’. After all, the earth is has remembered or it projects itself in the future? discussions, both formal and informal. We expect to host about a hundred participants. not yours or mine; it is ours. And if we can think in You had better pester your teachers till they explain those terms, we will create quite a different world— to you all these things. You spend an hour every Fear seems an unusual theme for a conference, particularly one on education. not an American world or a Russian world or an In- day over mathematics or geography, but you do not dian world, but it will be our world, yours and mine, spend even two minutes about the most important Fear permeates so many aspects of human social life: politics, religion, the workplace, the family and the rich man’s and the poor man’s. But the difficulty problem of life. Should you not spend with your education itself. As educators, we feel there is an urgency to understand this basic force and the ways in is when there is fear, we do not create... teachers much more time over this, how to be free which it plays itself out, both in our personal lives as well as in society as a whole. from fear than merely discussing mathematics or [I]t is the function of the educator to help the educat- reading a text-book?... Fear is so much a taken-for-granted dimension in education that we may not even question its role in ed to understand fear. It is for the teachers to help learning at a deep level. We risk shaping our institutions and practises around its potential for distorting the you to understand your fears and not to suppress it, Fear corrupts and to be free from fear one has to learning experience.