Better Childhood Part Two:The understanding of relationship is education
What is the responsibility of a parent?
Why do we, as parents, want to educate our children at all? It is generally understood that parents desire their children to be educated to fit into society, to adjust and adapt their thoughts to society, which really means helping them to prepare for a profession of some kind so that they can earn a livelihood. They want their children to be educated to pass examinations, to take a degree at some university, and then to have a fairly good job, a secure position in society. That is all most parents are concerned with.
So, what is the responsibility of parents? Does their responsibility end the moment the boy or the girl has taken a degree and is married off? What do we mean by responsibility?
To what are we responsible?
KRISHNAMURTI: The parent spends so much money on the education of his child, which means putting him through the university and all that. Such education may enable the student to fit into society, but will it help him to be creative?
How can education help the student, from childhood right through adolescence to maturity?
Then how can education help the student not to become mediocre, not to fall into the mediocrity of the rich, of the poor, or of the middle class? What kind of education should there be in order to break up the mediocrity of the mind, if we can put it that way? Not to be mediocre, surely, the boy must be able to do things with his hands as well as with his mind, he must not say, ''This is good,'' ''That is bad.
Education, surely, is the understanding of the relationship between oneself and the child, between oneself and society. The understanding of relationship is education.
But is it possible to understand relationship if the mind has a fixed point?
We are discussing the relationship of the parent with his child, and we are asking ourselves if there is any relationship at all, though we say there is. What is that relationship?
You have produced the child and you want him to pass through college, but have you actually any other relationship with him or her? The very rich man has his amusements, his worries, and he has no time for the child, so he sees him occasionally, and when the child is five or six years old, he packs him or her off to school and that is the end of it. The middle class are also much too busy to have any relationship with the child, they have to go to the office every day, and the poor man's relationship with the child is work, for the child must also work.
Greatest Thoughts from Talks by Krishnamurti in India 1954-1955 (Verbatim Report) Madras, Banaras, Bombay.
Why do we, as parents, want to educate our children at all? It is generally understood that parents desire their children to be educated to fit into society, to adjust and adapt their thoughts to society, which really means helping them to prepare for a profession of some kind so that they can earn a livelihood. They want their children to be educated to pass examinations, to take a degree at some university, and then to have a fairly good job, a secure position in society. That is all most parents are concerned with.So, what is the responsibility of parents? Does their responsibility end the moment the boy or the girl has taken a degree and is married off? What do we mean by responsibility?
To what are we responsible?
- Is it our responsibility to see that the young people fit into a particular society irrespective of whether that society is good or bad, revolutionary or corrupt?
- Or is it our responsibility to make the boy or the girl conform, regardless of what he or she wants to do and is capable of? Is that what we mean by responsibility?
KRISHNAMURTI: The parent spends so much money on the education of his child, which means putting him through the university and all that. Such education may enable the student to fit into society, but will it help him to be creative?
How can education help the student, from childhood right through adolescence to maturity?
- Or, is it the function of education merely to mold the student to fit into a particular society?
- Or should education help him to understand what society is?
Then how can education help the student not to become mediocre, not to fall into the mediocrity of the rich, of the poor, or of the middle class? What kind of education should there be in order to break up the mediocrity of the mind, if we can put it that way? Not to be mediocre, surely, the boy must be able to do things with his hands as well as with his mind, he must not say, ''This is good,'' ''That is bad.
Education, surely, is the understanding of the relationship between oneself and the child, between oneself and society. The understanding of relationship is education.
But is it possible to understand relationship if the mind has a fixed point?
We are discussing the relationship of the parent with his child, and we are asking ourselves if there is any relationship at all, though we say there is. What is that relationship?
You have produced the child and you want him to pass through college, but have you actually any other relationship with him or her? The very rich man has his amusements, his worries, and he has no time for the child, so he sees him occasionally, and when the child is five or six years old, he packs him or her off to school and that is the end of it. The middle class are also much too busy to have any relationship with the child, they have to go to the office every day, and the poor man's relationship with the child is work, for the child must also work.
Greatest Thoughts from Talks by Krishnamurti in India 1954-1955 (Verbatim Report) Madras, Banaras, Bombay.
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