AN ADVICE TO TEACHERS
What follows in this write type is a piece of advice to educators
by the Indian philosopher, writer and speaker Jiddu Krishnamurti.
This marvellous thinker was born at Madanapalle, Andhra
Pradesh (India) on 11th May 1896. He passed away on 17th February
1986 at Ojai, California, United States.
A frequent visitor to
India, J. Krishnamurti received his
education at Sorbonne University in
Paris. In India as also elsewhere, he was keenly interested in speaking to
people in both large and small groups. He spoke spontaneously and was always full
of original ideas. He is an author of several books on education and other
subjects including philosophy.
In India, he established Valley Boarding School at his native
village Madanapalle, in Chittoor District of Andhra
Pradesh.
The advice to educators which is reproduced below is part of
one of his numerous letters addressed to the schools. Though written about four
decades ago, its message is highly significant even today in the backdrop of
Covid-19 pandemic.
“This is one of the responsibilities
of the educator, not merely to teach mathematics or how to run a computer. Far
more important is to have communion with other human beings who suffer, struggle,
and have great pain and the sorrow of poverty, and with those people who go by
in a rich car. If the educator is concerned with this he is helping the student
to become sensitive, sensitive to other people’s struggles, anxieties and
worries, and the rows one has in the family.
“It should be the responsibility of
the teacher to educate the children, the students, to have such communion the
world. The world may be too large but
the world is where he is., that is his world. And this brings about a natural
consideration, affect ion for others, courtesy and behavior that is not rough,
cruel, vulgar.
“The educator should talk about all
these things, not just verbally but he himself must fell it – the world, the
world of nature and the world of man. They are inter-related. Man cannot escape
from that. When he destroys nature he is destroying himself. When he kills
another he is killing himself. The enemy is not the other but you. To live in
such harmony with nature, with the world, naturally brings about a different
world. “
18th
May 2020 G.
R. KANWAL
No comments:
Post a Comment