The making of a master-piece

Education to one should result in the knowing of the Self, so that when they express themselves they can be true to their Self. If that sounds far-fetched then there is no need to despair as you are not the only one feeling that way.

Knowing oneself and living true to the Self is an art and one has to strive hard to master, like any art. To understand art one has to develop a sense of aesthetics and to understand the art of living one has to understand the aesthetics of life and how to express them.

A true Artist is one who is totally aware and has developed the ability to extract and express their thought or idea through a medium they are familiar and comfortable, with all the aesthetics, having no external constraints, compulsions or expectations. The medium is irrelevant as long as the artist is comfortable with it. Such an expression is the Art produced by the Artist. Every instance of expression of an Artist (the Art) will be unique and non-replicable. In that sense every piece of Art is a master-piece and needs no certification from anyone. In a similar vein it can be said that everyone’s life has a potential and reason to be a work of Art by becoming the expression of the Self with all its aspirations harmoniously blended with the world around.

We enjoy and feel so good about the expression of nature around us. The reason I believe we feel good about nature is because of our ability to appreciate the aesthetics of its unique expressions. Every human being is bestowed with a similar ability to express oneself aesthetically, but somewhere in the hustle and bustle of our pursuit with the material progress we have forgotten to understand the Self and express it. This process appears to be so simple and natural when it comes to everything else in nature except for us. I believe this is because we create constraints and set expectations with everything we do. The constraints and expectations could be self inflicted or by our environment, either way; according to our earlier definition for Art, any expression motivated by a prior expectation on the outcome does not qualify to be Art.

Another aspect of expression and Art is related to the certainty of the outcome. The outcome should be a direct consequence of the expression of the thought or idea by the Artist with complete uncertainty to make it unique and a master-piece by itself. Every outcome of an expression has a limitation owing to the limitations in the artists’ ability to express every aspect of the thought. A true Artist strives every time to excel his previous expression. If the outcome is pre-defined either by the artist or otherwise, it tends to conform to something that already exists. What already exists has limitations and every pure expression should overcome the earlier limitations and create a different standard.

We are too concerned about living life in a certain defined way; we fear uncertainty and its outcomes. The Artist may have a picture in the mind but the outcome of the expression through a medium is completely uncertain. The Artist may be limited by their ability to use the medium while expressing. What is important though is the fact that the Artist made an honest attempt in creating something original; a master-piece.

Our modern education seems to have a knack of completely sapping out the individual’s ability to see and recognize the aspirations of the Self. With this fundamental ability suppressed most of our expressions lack originality. When we meet someone we are busy making our opinions of the person by mapping them to certain prototypes prevailing in society that we are familiar. The individual’s identity is stereotyped based on the occupation and environment they relate to – school, strata in society, demographics et al. It is time to rejuvenate our society so that we can have more people express their Self and its aspirations in harmony with the world having uncertain outcomes. This can be made possible only if we Deschool our society of its prevailing tendencies and awaken the Artist within each one.

The optimist in me says that it is possible for each one of us to be an Artist expressing the Self by living true to its aspirations and making our Life a master-piece. 

Albert Einstein on Education

Philosophy of Education in Schools

Transfer of Tradition

The school has always been the most important means of transferring the wealth of tradition from one generation to the next. This applies today in an even higher degree than in former times, for through modern development of the economic life, the family as bearer of tradition and education has been weakened. The continuance and health of human society is therefore in a still higher degree depended on the school than formerly.

Sometimes, one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring a certain maximum quality of knowledge to the growing generation. But that is not right. Knowledge is dead; the school, however, serves the living. It should develop in the young individuals those qualities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the common wealth. But that does not mean that individuality should be destroyed and the individual become a mere tool of the community, like a bee or an ant. For, a community of standardized individuals without personal originality and personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development. On the contrary, the aim must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals, who, however, see in the service of the community their highest life problem.

Not by Words alone

But how shall one try to attain this ideal? Should one perhaps try to realize this aim by moralizing? Not at all. Words are and remain an empty sound, and the road perdition has ever been accompanied by lip-services to an ideal. But personalities are not formed by this heard and said, but by labour and activity.

To me the worst thing seems to be for a school principally to work with methods of fear, force, and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of the pupil. It produces the submissive subject.

Darwin's theory of the struggle for existence and the selectivity connected with it has by many people cited as authorization of the encouragement of the spirit of competition. Some people also in such a way have tried to prove pseudo-scientifically the necessity of the destructive economic struggle of competition between individuals. But this is wrong, because man owes his strength for existence to the fact that he is a socially living animal. As little as a battle between single ants of an ant-hill is essential for survival, just so little is this the case with the individual members of a human community.

Success Not the Aim of Life

Therefore one should guard against preaching to the young man success in the customary sense as the aim of life. For a successful man is he who receives great deal from his fellowmen, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them. The value of a man, however, should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

The most important motive for the work in the school and in life is the pleasure in the work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community. In the awakening of and strengthening of these psychological forces in the young man, I see the most important task given by school. Such a psychological foundation alone leads to a joyous desire for the highest possessions of men, knowledge and artist-like workmanship.

If a young man has trained his muscles and physical endurance, by gymnastics and walking, he will later be fitted for every physical work. This is also analogous to training of the mind and exercising of the mental and manual skill. Thus the wit was not wrong who defined education in this way: Education is that which remains if one has forgotten everything he learned in the school. For this reason I am not at all anxious to take sides in the struggle between the followers of the classical, philogic, historical, education and the education more devoted to natural science.

Not Specialization but Harmonious Personality

On the other hand, I want to oppose the idea that school has to teach directly that special knowledge and those accomplishments which man has to use later directly in life. The demands of life are much too manifold to let such a specialized training in school appear possible. Apart from that, it seems to me, moreover, objectionable to treat the individual like a dead tool. The school always has its aim that the young man leave it as harmonious personality, not as a specialist. This, in my opinion, is true in a certain sense devote even for technical schools whose students themselves to a quite definite profession. The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge. If a person masters in fundamentals of his subject and has learned to think and work independently he will surely find his way and, besides, will be able to adapt himself to progress and changes than the person whose training principally consists in the acquiring of special knowledge.

It is not enough to teach man a speciality. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine, but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquires an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise, he with his specialized knowledge more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellowmen and the community.

Humanities Important

These precious things are conveyed to the younger generation through personal contact with those who teach, not-or at least in the main-through text-books. It is this that primarily constitutes and preserves culture. This is what I have in mind when I recommend the ‘humanities’ as important, not just a dry specializes knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy.

Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included

Independent Thinking

It is also vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be developed in the young human being, a development that is greatly jeopardized by overburdening him with too much and with too varied subjects. 

Overburdening necessarily leads to superficiality. Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not a hard duty.

More relevant thoughts ...

1954

Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.

There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind. We owe it to a few writers of antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, etc.) that the people in the Middle Ages could slowly extricate themselves from the superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more than half a millennium. Nothing is more needed to overcome the modernist's snobbishness.

1950

... knowledge must continually be renewed by ceaseless effort, if it is not to be lost. It resembles a statue of marble which stands in the desert and is continually threatened with burial by the shifting sand. The hands of service must ever be at work, in order that the marble continue to lastingly shine in the sun. To these serving hands mine shall also belong.

1954

When, after several hours reading, I came to myself again, I asked myself what it was that had so fascinated me. The answer is simple. The results were not presented as ready-made, but scientific curiosity was first aroused by presenting contrasting possibilities of conceiving matter. Only then the attempt was made to clarify the issue by thorough argument. The intellectual honesty of the author makes us share the inner struggle in his mind. It is this which is the mark of the born teacher. Knowledge exists in two forms - lifeless, stored in books, and alive, in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position.

J Krishnamurti on Education

You know, you live in one of the most beautiful valleys I have seen. It has a special atmosphere. Have you noticed, especially in the evenings and early mornings, a quality of silence which permeates, which penetrates the valley? There are around here, I believe, the most ancient hills in the world and man has not spoilt them yet; and wherever you go, in cities or in other places, man is destroying nature, cutting down trees to build more houses, polluting the air with cars and industry. Man is destroying animals; there are very few tigers left. Man is destroying everything because more and more people are born and they must have more space. Gradually, man is spreading destruction all over the world. And when one comes to a valley like this - where there are very few people, where nature is still not spoilt, where there is still silence, quietness, beauty - one is really astonished. Every time one comes here one feels the strangeness of this land, but probably you have become used to it. You do not look at the hills any more, you do not listen to the birds any more and to the wind among the leaves. So you have gradually become indifferent.

Education is not only learning from books, memorizing some facts, but also learning how to look, how to listen to what the books are saying, whether they are saying something true or false. All that is part of education. Education is not just to pass examinations, take a degree and a job, get married and settle down, but also to be able to listen to the birds, to see the sky, to see the extraordinary beauty of a tree, and the shape of the hills, and to feel with them, to be really, directly in touch with them. As you grow older, that sense of listening, seeing, unfortunately disappears because you have worries, you want more money, a better car, more children or less children. You become jealous, ambitious, greedy, envious; so you lose the sense of the beauty of the earth. You know what is happening in the world. You must be studying current events. There are wars, revolts, nation divided against nation. In this country too there is division, separation, more and more people being born, poverty, squalor and complete callousness. Man does not care what happens to another so long as he is perfectly safe. And you are being educated to fit into all this. Do you know the world is mad, that all this is madness - this fighting, quarrelling, bullying, tearing at each other? And you will grow up to fit into this. Is this right, is this what education is meant for, that you should willingly or unwillingly fit into this mad structure called society? And do you know what is happening to religions throughout the world? Here also man is disintegrating, nobody believes in anything any more. Man has no faith and religions are merely the result of a vast propaganda.

Since you are young, fresh, innocent, can you look at all the beauty of the earth, have the quality of affection? And can you retain that? For if you do not, as you grow up, you will conform, because that is the easiest way to live. As you grow up, a few of you will revolt, but that revolt too will not answer the problem. Some of you will try to run away from society, but that running away will have no meaning. You have to change society, but not by killing people. Society is you and I. You and I create the society in which we live. So you have to change. You cannot fit into this monstrous society. So what are you going to do?

And you, living in this extraordinary valley, are you going to be thrown into this world of strife, confusion, war, hatred? Are you going to conform, fit in, accept all the old values? You know what these values are - money, position, prestige, power. That is all man wants and society wants you to fit into that pattern of values. But if you now begin to think, to observe, to learn, not from books, but learn for yourself by watching, listening to everything that is happening around you, you will grow up to be a different human being - one who cares, who has affection, who loves people. Perhaps if you live that way, you might find a truly religious life.

So look at nature, at the tamarind tree, the mango trees in bloom, and listen to the birds early in the morning and late in the evening. See the clear sky, the stars, how marvellously the sun sets behind those hills. See all, the colours, the light on the leaves, the beauty of the land, the rich earth. Then having seen that and seen also what the world is, with all its brutality, violence, ugliness, what are you going to do?

Do you know what it means to attend, to pay attention? When you pay attention, you see things much more clearly. You hear the bird singing much more distinctly. You differentiate between various sounds. When you look at a tree with a great deal of attention, you see the whole beauty of the tree. You see the leaves, the branch, you see the wind playing with it. When you pay attention, you see extraordinarily clearly. Have you ever done it? Attention is something different from concentration. When you concentrate, you don't see everything. But when you are paying attention, you see a great deal. Now, pay attention. Look at that tree and see the shadows, the slight breeze among the leaves. See the shape of the tree. See the proportion of the tree in relation to other trees. See the quality of light that penetrates through the leaves, the light on the branches and the trunk. See the totality of the tree. Look at it that way, because I am going to talk about something to which you have to pay attention. Attention is very important, in the class, as well as when you are outside, when you are eating, when you are walking. Attention is an extraordinary thing.

I am going to ask you something. Why are you being educated? Do you understand my question? Your parents send you to school. You attend classes, you learn mathematics, you learn geography, you learn history. Why? Have you ever asked why you want to be educated, what is the point of being educated? What is the point of your passing examinations and getting degrees? Is it to get married, get a job and settle down in life as millions and millions of people do? Is that what you are going to do, is that the meaning of education? Do you understand what I am talking about? This is really a very serious question. The whole world is questioning the basis of education. We see what education has been used for. Human beings throughout the world - whether in Russia or in China or in America or in Europe or in this country - are being educated to conform, to fit into society and into their culture, to fit into the stream of social and economic activity, to be sucked into that vast stream that has been flowing for thousands of years. Is that education, or is education something entirely different? Can education see to it that the human mind is not drawn into that vast stream and so destroyed; see that the mind is never sucked into that stream; so that, with such a mind, you can be an entirely different human being with a different quality to life? Are you going to be educated that way? Or are you going to allow your parents, society, to dictate to you so that you become pad of the stream of society? Real education means that a human mind, your mind, not only is capable of being excellent in mathematics, geography and history, but also can never, under any circumstances, be drawn into the stream of society. Because that stream which we call living, is very corrupt, is immoral, is violent, is greedy. That stream is our culture. So, the question is how to bring about the right kind of education so that the mind can withstand all temptations, all influences, the bestiality of this civilization and this culture. We have come to a point in history where we have to create a new culture, a totally different kind of existence, not based on consumerism and industrialization, but a culture based upon a real quality of religion. Now how does one bring about, through education, a mind that is entirely different, a mind that is not greedy, not envious? How does one create a mind that is not ambitious, that is extraordinarily active, efficient; that has a real perception of what is true in daily life which is after all religion.

Now, let us find out what is the real meaning and intention of education. Can your mind, which has been conditioned by society, the culture in which you have lived, be transformed through education so that you will never under any circumstances enter the stream of society? Is it possible to educate you differently? `Educate' in the real sense of that word; not to transmit from the teachers to the students some information about mathematics or history or geography, but in the very instruction of these subjects to bring about a change in your mind. Which means that you have to be extraordinarily critical. You have to learn never to accept anything which you yourself do not see clearly, never to repeat what another has said.

I think you should put these questions to yourself, not occasionally, but every day. Find out. Listen to everything, to the birds, to that cow calling. Learn about everything in yourself, because if you learn from yourself about yourself, then you will not be a second-hand human being. So you should, if I may suggest, from now on, find out how to live entirely differently and that is going to be difficult, for I am afraid most of us like to find an easy way of living. We like to repeat and what other people say, what other people do, because it is the easiest way to live - to conform to the old pattern or to a new pattern. We have to find out what it means never to conform and what it means to live without fear. This is your life, and nobody is going to teach you, no book, no guru. You have to earn from yourself, not from books. There is a great deal to learn about yourself. It is an endless thing, it is a fascinating thing, and when you learn about yourself from yourself, out of that learning wisdom comes. Then you can live a most extraordinary, happy, beautiful life. Right?

Are professional colleges looking at the right measures of success?

The other day I was talking to a professor friend of mine who is currently the Principal of a top engineering college in Bangalore, India. While discussing the topic of "Education" he said, "We measure the success of our college by the percentage of students that secure employment on campus". "Parents would be disappointed if their wards fail to secure jobs on campus and that would reflect poorly on the institution", he added. By and large this is how most of the colleges, at least in India, measure their success. This has some serious implications and raises several questions worth pondering.

• What's more important for colleges to focus on: Learning/Knowledge or Grades/Jobs?
• What's the relevance of the stuff we learn in college these days? Let's be honest; what percentage of the stuff we learnt in college are we using in our daily life today?
• What will happen to the world of Entrepreneurship & Innovation if most of the top talent is gobbled up by the big corporates on campus?
• What's the motivation for a student to focus learning than grades while most of the companies are looking at academic performance?
• Given the commoditization in the knowledge industry and the irrelevancy of what's taught in professional colleges is it really necessary to have a college education to get a job?
• Is it worth spending 3-5 years in college for what we get in return?

Wouldn't it be better if the colleges started measuring their success by the following metrics?

• How conducive is their campus for learning, experimenting & failing?
• How many of their students have started their own companies?
• How many patents, innovative ideas or projects have come out of their campus?
• What percentage of their students are joining startups rather than big corporations?
• How many of their students are contributing back to community?
• How many of thier students are contributing to the open source projects?

What do you think?