The world over, Jiddu Krishnamurti is revered as one of the greatest philosophers and spiritual leaders of all time. He is a spiritual guide who encourages skepticism and inquiry in the spiritual realm rather than unquestioning trust and acceptance. Instead of elaborating on any philosophy or religion, he spoke about issues that affect all of us in our daily lives, such as the difficulties of surviving in today's violent and corrupt society, the need for security and happiness among individuals, and the requirement for a man to be freed from his inner burdens such as fear, anger, hurt, sorrow, and so on. He accurately demonstrated how the human mind functions and made it clear that we must infuse our daily lives with a highly contemplative and religious aspect.
He was extremely critical of today's educational institutions' objectives, procedures, and curricula. He objected to the current educational system's overly and exclusively technical concentration and its disregard for human factors. He believes imparting information to pupils and preparing them to pass exams is the least intelligent kind of instruction. He claimed knowledge is only necessary as a tool for developing the intellect, not as a goal in and of itself. Jiddu Krishnamurti established his educational institutions to put his teachings into reality, much like Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, and others.
The schools in India, Brookwood Park in England, and the Oak Grove School in Ojai, California, piqued Krishnamurti's intense interest. Every two weeks, he said, he would write them a letter outlining the qualities of the perfect school, emphasizing that they should continue cultivating the whole person instead of just being centers for academic brilliance. They aim to foster an environment free from fear, authority pressure, and competitiveness so that kids and teachers may blossom organically and display their unique strengths. A few additional institutions, like the Sahyadri School near Pune, were started after Krishnamurti's passing.
It is a boarding school that serves youngsters from affluent households. Children from lower-middle-class households send their children to two more schools, the Bhagirathi Valley School in Uttar Pradesh and the Bal Anand in Mumbai. The Rishi Valley Education Centre in Andhra Pradesh, established under the aegis of the Krishnamurti Foundation India, embodies Krishnamurti's educational beliefs. The Rishi Valley Education Center was founded to bring about a new kind of education that would educate kids while also helping them realize that learning is not life's ultimate goal and that it is equally important to be sensitive to trees and birds, to understand what it means to love and to be kind.
This is feasible when teachers can transcend the written word and inspire the best in students. Without a doubt, authority is harmful, and it is important to ensure that kids learn from their mistakes. Insofar as it produces wisdom, it is a constructive process. Children are taught to rely more on themselves than anybody else. When a person depends on particular individuals for safety, money, or enjoyment, there is a good chance that when they do something that annoys them, they will feel scared, irritated, furious, jealous, and disappointed.
J. Krishnamurti attacked conventional schooling for making it exceedingly difficult to think independently and impeding one's understanding of oneself as a whole process. Although it academically wakes us, the current educational system is making us obedient, mechanical, and profoundly thoughtless; internally, it leaves us lacking, stultified, and uncreative. He believed that because each person is made up of several entities, education should help those entities come together because, without it, life would be nothing but a succession of disputes and suffering. He claims that education aims to build integrated, intelligent humans rather than just information acquisition, fact collection, and correlation. In other words, education aims to create integrated people who are mature, fearless, and possess self-awareness, love, and kindness rather than merely scholars, technologists, and job seekers.
The development of new values is another goal of education. Education should awaken the intellect and assist the next generation in preventing additional war and tragedy since education is directly tied to the current global issue. Additionally, he highlighted that the proper education is accepting a kid for whom he is rather than forcing onto him an ideal of whom we believe he should be. There should also be no coercion since sensitivity can never be awakened by coercion.
According to Krishnamurti, another goal of education is to foster healthy relationships not only between people but also between people and society. Without any coercion or threats, the appropriate sort of education will promote empathy and care for others. The inner meaning of human existence may be understood with the help of true education, but to do so, one's mind must be wisely set free from the reward-seeking impulse that fosters fear and compliance. In other words, education should promote awareness of inherent inclinations and environmental factors that condition the mind and heart and result in an integrated human person. It should also provide individual freedom through which love and kindness can blossom.
Krishnamurti believed that a perfect school should only have a small number of pupils since mass instruction cannot foster the development of an integrated personality in youngsters. The school must make an effort to comprehend the children's abilities and limits. Krishnamurti always had a strong passion for education, and he founded a few coeducational institutions in India and overseas to put his ideals into effect. He used to go there once a year to connect with the professors and pupils. Although the usual curriculum was followed in these schools, his main objective in creating these schools was to offer children ample opportunities and freedom so they might grow up without national, ethnic, social, or cultural biases and promote harmony among human beings.
He asserts that a genuine teacher is not just an authority on the material being taught but also guides his pupils toward wisdom and the truth. Krishnamurti defined communication as including listening and learning. The teachers can greatly benefit from knowing how the two vary. The instructor is less essential than the lesson. Each of us must act as a real teacher in order to build a new society. This implies that we must act as both students and teachers. He believes that while a kid has all the potential for self-development, the teacher's job is to help the child reach his or her true potential.
Jiddu Krishnamurthy was an Indian philosopher and educationist. He believed that the main aim of education should be the development of spirituality among human beings. Spirituality does not mean becoming slaves of any religion, but it encompasses gaining knowledge of reality through self-realization and self-analysis. He suggested that the curriculum should be according to the children's interests. Subject and content organization in the curriculum should be the basis of the principles of child psychology by which the child's natural interest can be developed.