True Education according to Jiddu Krishna

True Education according to Jiddu Krishna Murthy

The celebrated international philosopher, Jiddu Krishna Murthy was acclaimed, proclaimed and heralded to be one of the greatest world Teachers. Born at Madanapalle, Chittoor District, A.P, he was, infact, an adopted son of Dr. Annie Besant, who took him away to England, where this unique personality came into contact with eminent scholars of his time and rose up to the pinnacles of fame.

As a matter of fact, he had been disinclined and also an inexorable enemy to encourage all our time-honoured values and traditions, for the simple reason that they were an obstacle to the healthy growth of human mind in order to think freely to establish a new society. Undoubtedly, our mind has been cluttered and stuffed with debris of various evil insinuations, infatuation, anxieties and worries, intolerance, prejudice, ego, fear and unbridled aspirations, and, therefore, it is our primary duty to comprehend them as a whole, for they have to be removed by psychological operation or surgery and also by following postmortem analysis in order to find out the reality to ourselves.

J. Krishna Murthy had lofty ideas and thoughts on education, whose significance and importance in expressing the total transformation of human mind will be allowing to translate ones thoughts in the right way, and thereby new culture could emerge. He had always been against the traditional way of teaching, as the natural propensities of the growth of the pupils would be affected under compulsion or pedagogic hierarchy.

The philosopher had emphatically stated that the pupil or child ought to be allowed to think and grow in complete freedom in order to develop a profound sense of inner orderliness, which is the root of freedom. Further, he had drawn our attention to comprehend the difference between the “pay attention” and “concentration”.

We can perceive things very clearly, in case, proper attention is to be paid to the melodious singing of the birds, the murmuring of the brooks, and the various sounds can also be differentiated. The beauty of the tree is seen, when we pay our complete personal attention to the leaves and the branches, as the wind may be playing with the leaves. It is said that attention is quite different from concentration in order that we may not be missing various aspects from our attention or observation. Let us look at the tree with all our attention with a view to seeing the shadows, the breeze playing on the leaves, the trunk of the tree and its circumference in relation to other trees. The penetration of the light on the leaves, the branches and the trunk can be seen with all our attention, and, consequently, attention is rather absolutely indispensable either in the class room, or outside and finally for all purposes in life.

As a provocative thinker, J.K. has explicitly stated that the right kind of education can never be achieved through our self-gratification and success. It is, in truth, that self-knowledge is to be experienced, in case, our mind transcendently goes beyond and above all hindrances and impediments. In the first place, we have to comprehend what is life, before we ponder over the right kind of education.

“To bring about right education, we must obviously understand the meaning of life as a whole, and for that we have to be able to think, not consistently, but directly and truly. A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove. We cannot understand existence abstractly or theoretically. To understand life is to understand ourselves and that is both the beginning and the end of education”, says J.K.

Really speaking, the right kind of education will be starting from the teacher or educator, who has to understand in the first instance that he or she ought to be free from all prescribed or established patterns or the ways of imparting knowledge in the sober interest of the pupil or child. It is in reality that the child or student is not at fault nor can we blame the parent, and therefore, the whole problem may be attributed to the educator, as he or she should be first educated.

J.K. is of the firm opinion, “Education in true sense is helping the individual to be mature and free, to flower greatly in love and goodness. That is what we should be interested in, not in shaping the child according to some idealistic pattern.”

The whole humanity has the natural qualities like violence, vindictive hatred, urge, overweening ambition, pride, vanity, jealousy, anger and passion, which are like the dying embers of the animal instinct in us, and in as much as humans are outwardly educated, cultured, clever and intelligent, for they have to surmount the former qualities in order to establish the genuine education among children to comprehend this aspect as culture of the mind.

In the perennial stream of life, the so-called “teaching and learning” is a constant, consistent and persistent process and in other words from the cradle to the grave, as the “teacher” and the “taught” are students, an established truth from time immemorial. They have to learn together as a matter of course, there is no relationship between them except teaching and learning. The philosopher further says that there should not be any kind of “motive” in the educator’s mind, for the motive simply vanishes and disappears if this important aspect is uppermost in the mind. In order to establish with all dominance, our knowledge, success, and superior authority, we always wish to pine away for exercising this in conformity with the situation and thus we take an opportunity to impart knowledge with all eagerness to the young innocent children or students, who may be given some kind of shape according to the vanities and idiosyncrasies of the educator. We are thoroughly cognizant that every child or pupil has desire, tremendous potentiality, and intelligence to be used for understanding the ways of the life in the right perspective.

J. Krishna Murthy asserts thus: “Intelligence is the spontaneous perception which makes a man strong and free. Intelligence is the capacity to understand the ways of life, it is the perception of right values.”

This outstanding personality says that we have already contributed the seeds of grotesque distortion of values and truth and allowed the children to grow up and breed in the already corrupted society.

“Society is doing everything to inculcate fear by laying down standards, religious ideals, class distinctions, ideas of success, the rich and the poor man. Society is doing everything possible to breed distorted values”, says the philosopher.

The whole concept of the thoughts and views of the great philosopher, J.K. is to promote healthy values and views among humans not to adhere to the ancient systems in imparting knowledge blindly and allow the tiny tots to blossom into myriads of flowers with a view to spreading the sweet fragrance, as they will learn anything in which he or she is interested and also in accordance with his or her desire, aptitude and attitude and thus the dream of new society can emerge.

It is all the more an interesting fact that J. Krishna Murthy categorically refused to follow any scriptural texts and mythological allusions of any nation in order to substantiate and corroborate his statements. The people are allowed to draw their own conclusions, taking into utmost consideration his hints and observations.

He said:  “Maturity is not a matter of age, it comes with understanding.”