This book presents a series of dialogues in which renowned educator and religious teacher J. Krishnamurti explores with parents and teachers the need for a radical approach to schooling and their intention to establish such a school in the Ojai valley in California. They discuss the conditioning effects on children and educators of teaching and environments in schools based on traditional methods of education. They look at the stultifying effects of knowledge-based approaches which, instead of broadening the minds of children in a setting that encourages observation and creativity, conditions them to conform to society. To free the mind's broader potential and to educate the whole human being they see that there must be right relationship between students and teachers in an atmosphere of attention, care and trust. Excerpt from the book: What does it mean to be educated? Is it to conform to the pattern of society, acquiring enough knowledge to act skilfully in that society? Does to be educated mean adjusting oneself to society and following the dictates of that society? Is education merely to cultivate one segment of the mind to use knowledge skilfully? Is it possible to educate the totality of man, instead of cultivating memory as we do, and depending on that memory to act skilfully? The cultivation of memory and dependence on that is part of the degeneration of humanity, because then man becomes merely mechanical, always acting in the field of the known. When we are acting in the field of knowledge, we are acting according to a past pattern; so then the brain must be conditioned, it has no flexibility. Knowledge has become the factor of conditioning the mind to a certain pattern according to which it acts. We are asking if it is possible to educate human beings from childhood and beyond to nurture the whole outward and inward totality of man. Is it possible in our life to educate ourselves completely, totally, inwardly as well as outwardly? [Abstracted from one of J. Krishnamurti's dialogues with parents and teachers as they discussed their intention to begin Oak Grove School in Ojai, California.]
About the Author: Krishnamurti was born in India in 1895 and died in the United States in 1986. He spoke throughout his life in many parts of the world to large audiences as well as with numerous individuals, including writers, scientists, philosophers and educators. Asked to describe what lay at the heart of his teaching, he said, "Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organisation, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection..." Krishnamurti was concerned with all humanity and stated repeatedly that he held no nationality or belief and belonged to no particular group or culture. In the latter part of his life, he travelled mainly between the schools he had founded in India, Britain and the United States, schools that educate for the total understanding of man and the art of living. He stressed that only this profound understanding can create a new generation that will live in peace.