EducationN

The child when he is born functions from the center; we teach him how to function from the circumference. That is our whole educational system all over the world: teaching the child how to function from the circumference. We pull him away from his center, we make him more and more accustomed to the circumference, to living on the circumference... twenty-five years of conditioning, education: good names we have given to ugly things. We call it education -- it is not education, nothing can be a greater mis-education. The very word 'education' means drawing something out, to draw something out. When you draw water out of the well it is education. Just like that, when something is drawn outwards from your center it is education. But this is not what is going on in the name of education; it is forcing things upon you. It is not bringing your center to function. It is not sharpening your center; it is dulling it, making it more and more sleepy, dozy. The society succeeds the day your center goes into a coma and your circumference remains functioning. Then you are a robot, a machine, no more a man. In the coming century the whole education system is going to be totally transformed and changed because of the computer. It will be stupid to teach children history, geography -- unnecessary, there is no need. All that can be done by a computer; the child can carry the computer. And my own observation is: the less you depend on memory, the more intelligent you become. That's why it happens that in the universities you will not find very intelligent people. Professors, chancellors, vice-chancellors -- I have seen many, but it is very difficult to find some intelligent person there. You can find more intelligent people in the farmers, in the gardeners, in the villagers. And the reason is clear: because they are not knowledgeable they cannot depend on the memory. They have to respond to reality, they have to respond to challenges, they have to bring their consciousness to respond -- their consciousness remains more sharp. A farmer, a villager, is far more wise than a professor in the university. The professor can depend on the memory, the farmer cannot depend on the memory.