Unconditioning and Education: The Need for a Radical Approach, Volume 1 presents dialogues between J. Krishnamurti, parents, and teachers on schooling and their intention to establish a school in the Ojai Valley, California.

The discussions examine how traditional teaching methods and school environments condition both children and educators. They question whether education encourages observation and creativity or conformity to society.

In exploring the education of the whole human being, the participants consider relationships between students and teachers built on attention, care, and trust.

Excerpt from the book:

What does it mean to be educated? Is it to conform to the pattern of society, acquiring enough knowledge to act skilfully in that society? Does to be educated mean adjusting oneself to society and following the dictates of that society? Is education merely to cultivate one segment of the mind to use knowledge skilfully?

Is it possible to educate the totality of man, instead of cultivating memory as we do, and depending on that memory to act skilfully? The cultivation of memory and dependence on that is part of the degeneration of humanity, because then man becomes merely mechanical, always acting in the field of the known. When we are acting in the field of knowledge, we are acting according to a past pattern; so then the brain must be conditioned, it has no flexibility.

Knowledge has become the factor of conditioning the mind to a certain pattern according to which it acts. We are asking if it is possible to educate human beings from childhood and beyond to nurture the whole outward and inward totality of man. Is it possible in our life to educate ourselves completely, totally, inwardly as well as outwardly?

[Abstracted from one of J. Krishnamurti’s dialogues with parents and teachers as they discussed their intention to begin Oak Grove School in Ojai, California.]

Publisher: Krishnamurti Publications International | Author: J. Krishnamurti | 156 pages | Paperback | Language: English