~~~ EDUCATION ~~~1

For example, the way education is imparted to students is utterly old-fashioned. It still depends on feeding the memory; and the more the memory is loaded, the less is the possibility of clarity and intelligence. I take it as a great opportunity that students can be freed from storing all kinds of information. They can carry small computers which will have all the information they need at any moment. That will help their minds to be more meditative, clear, innocent. Now their minds are too cluttered with unnecessary rubbish.

In the future, education will be centralized on computer and on TV, because what can be seen graphically is more easily remembered than what is read or heard. Eyes are far more powerful instruments than ears, or anything else. And it takes away the boredom of reading and listening. On the contrary, TV becomes a joyful experience. Geography can be taught very colorfully....

The teacher should be only a guide to show you the right channel, to show you how to use the computer, how to find the latest book. His function will be totally different. He is not imparting knowledge to you, he is making you aware of the contemporary knowledge, of the latest knowledge. He is only a guide.

The first is informative, like history, geography, and many other subjects which can be dealt with by television and computer together.

But about history – we have to take a completely radical standpoint. Right now history consists of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Adolf Hitler, etc. These are not our history, these are our nightmares. Even the idea that human beings can be so cruel to other human beings is nauseating. Our children should not be fed with such ideas.

In the future, history should consist only of those great geniuses who have contributed something to the beauty of this planet, to humanity – a Gautam Buddha, a Socrates, a Lao Tzu; great mystics like Jalaluddin Rumi, J. Krishnamurti; great poets like Walt Whitman, Omar Khayyam; great literary figures like Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Rabindranath Tagore, Basho.

We should teach the positive grandeur of our inheritance, with footnotes about the people who have been counted up to now as historically great men – people like Adolf Hitler. They can have only a place in footnotes, or an appendix, with a clear explanation that they were either insane or suffered from some inferiority complex or other psychiatric disorder.

We have to make the future generations completely aware that a dark side existed in the past and dominated the past, but now there is no place for that side.

In the first dimension also come languages. Every person in the world should know at least two languages; one is his mother tongue, and the other is English as an international vehicle for communication. They can also be taught more accurately by television – the accent, the grammar, everything can be taught more correctly.

We can create in the world an atmosphere of brotherhood: language connects people and language disconnects too. There is right now no international language. This is due to our prejudices. English is perfectly suitable, because it is known by more people around the world on a wider scale.

The second is the inquiry of scientific subjects, which is tremendously important because it is half of reality, the outside reality. They can be imparted by television and computer too, but they are more complicated, and the human guide will be more necessary.

And the third will be what is missing in present-day education, the art of living. People have taken it for granted that they know what love is. They don't know...and by the time they know, it is too late. Every child should be helped to transform his anger, hatred, jealousy, into love.