J. Krishnamurti's Right Education

Krishnamurti was not an educator in the narrow or formal sense of the term, his concern for what he considered ‘right education’ was clearly not an attempt to provide temporary solutions to society's problems or seek to correct them through merely educating people to read or write. Krishnamurti has been described as a ‘revolutionary teacher who worked tirelessly to awaken people—to awaken their intelligence, to awaken their sense of responsibility, to awaken a flame of discontent’, and this commitment to awakening the consciousness of people was undoubtedly based on a ‘strong moral passion’.

Krishnamurti's quest for self-knowledge or self-discovery does not take one very far from oneself. It is in this sense that, as Krishnamurti often said, ‘the teachings are yourself’. There is also no culmination of this process of self-discovery: ‘there is only the journey. There is no total knowing of oneself but rather an unending process of knowing oneself’. Education forms a central core of Krishnamurti's world view. Education is therefore the foundation on which the good society will build itself. Krishnamurti always asserted the individual's responsibility to the social order: ‘You are the world’.

For Krishnamurti, therefore, the right kind of education does not simply produce engineers, doctors or scientists, but a ‘human being who is alive, fresh and eager. An ‘educated mind’ is one that ‘thinks, that is active, alive; it is a mind that looks, watches, listens and feels’. Krishnamurti's perspective on education seeks to bring about a more just and humane society in a world that is rapidly degenerating. Krishnamurti saw the possibilities for radical change through human transformation.