Education and World Peace: A Krishnamurti View
-Hem Bishwakarma
Jiddu Krishnamurti was an Indian Philosopher, a speaker and a writer. In his early life he was groomed to be the new 'World Teacher' but later rejected this mantle and withdrew from the Theosophy organization behind it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti, an Indian Philosophical and Spiritual speaker tries to reveal the chaos possessed by the contemporary human world in his essay 'Education and World Peace', he evokes the solo reality of the education; what it has done/ had to be done or/ and doing; plus, the measures that education can stand helping to bring optimum closure to the significant to that chaos.
Krishnamurti exerts some frequently-talked discourses like distortion, conflict, antagonism and the like in the world prevailing – this has some critical reasons behind the scene or some meta-cognitive roots that simmers those things in the world.
Krishnamurti argues that the major intern causes we have in our relationship to the people is 'wrong value'. There subsist many factors which ensure such distortions between man and man such as nationality, caste, race, ideology, politics value beliefs and so forth. These above-mentioned notions are enough to bring such demarcation of fractions within human kind which hardly gets erased.
It is real that all the dimensions of society create such nylon stamp in our mind because of the media and textbooks to feel that our ideology and thoughts plus our caste and creed and nationality possess high superiority nevertheless regarding others that they have least quality in them. These sorts of affinity towards 'our', builds up hatred to others- that becomes a protocol to generate conflicts between. People are divided in terms of their ideology and philosophy they are entitled with. And they ignite the conflict bringing a big gap between righteousness and falseness. The belief they hold encompasses the prosperity, peace and humanity in the world. So this becomes an evident effort to establish the conflict in that gap. In such gap, people undoubtedly get diverged into two poles affected by the instinct dogmas. Politically people feel to have the best governance; religiously, people come upon with the best consciousness and ideologically, people believe to have strongest criticism or utmost thinking power causing a consequence of the power vs. politics and ideology. But Krishnamurti believes neither of the ideologies ensures the peace and affinity or any other legislation rather instruments of war. He exclusively urges that it is so stupid and unnatural to be ready to kill and be killed for our country, rave or ideology because human beings are more important than national and ideological boundaries.
The other kinds cause at present crisis according to Krishnamurti is wrong values in our relationship to property and the desire of security. Our relationship to property is acquisitive, thus we have been isolated competing with others. We have been so much exaggerated towards the money and money- power. The rich being is such effort that we want to do everyday life. The money is buying everything except the humanity. We have lost such humanistic cache that had to have into our rich being. The security has beckon such a important issue in which the whole world should work through. We are arrested by the fear losing our freedom into a half- path. Out of that transitive fear, we surrender to our freedom to a demagogue promising strength and security in return. However, the desire to be secure only fosters division and increases antagonism since then according to Krishnamurti. The more we struggle for security, and the less we shall have it.
Krishnamurti strongly opposes the implement of military training in education. According to him, the training associated with education constrains the integration between human since military training equals death and destruction, regimentation of minds, patriotism and so on.
Government control of education is a calamity.
He portrays the present educational panorama of world. An innocent child, as he asserts, is innocently converted into an ugly adult in course of time. It instills the separative spirit into that child either by cultivating patriotism or training them to become the finished and furnished product as a doctor, an engineer, executive, brilliant scientists, able workmen and so on that the government needs. In this sense, our education system is promoting ruthlessness and competition among us; it is making us only with brains but lacking heart. That’s why we cultivate the intellect and despise humility. And this is the reason why Krishnamurti strongly argues that government control of education is a calamity. Similarly, the sovereign state also controls the thought of its pupils through education. For this reason, education becomes a means of teaching what to think and how to think because if we think independently of the prevailing political system, we surely are a threat to them.
However, all those practices or thoughts are in existence since too long because, most importantly, we lack our independent vision or our own interpretation of the world and human life free from any kind of particular dogma. And we are doing those stupidities in the name of being different from others, being more important than others, proving ones right and falsifying others as wrong.
Moreover, we worship power or force in order to invade others, we want to become excellent or brilliant so as to prove other worthless, and this is the matter of pity that our education system is responsible for such kind of compartmentalization since it’s the only means to meet an end. Thus, Krishnamurti suggests that we cannot achieve brotherhood, fraternity, humanity through such education system which are the prerequisites for maintain world peace. However, more ironically, all those separate spirits are claimed to be sought for ensuring prosperity, integrity and peace among us. Thus this seeking of a right end through wrong is one of the ultimate causes of the prevailing catastrophe.
He believes a true educator is to be concerned only with right living, right education and right means of livelihood with universal brotherhood.
Lastly, he suggests us to have critical thinking and be independent on authority and ideology. The password to transform the world is to transform ourselves with the best possible transformation. Or our awareness in our domestic issue like action and thought can have the sign of transformation. Similar way, the horizon of education should not be enchanted only with the red mark of caste, nationality, religion or ideology instead it should be for the whole mankind irrespective of any other identity. It should bring all the human beings in one thread together hopping up the red mark of any particular sever.
-Bishwakarma is an M. Ed. (English) Scholar, a Freelancer and a Translator
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