Quote on Education

At the study group tonight we ended with a quick chat about education. Robert lent me his book: Beginnings of Learning. The first thing I read was:

"The world is that way, deceptive, the deceiving politicians, the money-minded... If you are not properly education you'll just slip into it. So what do you think is education? Is it to help you fit into the mechanism of the present order, or disorder, of things? Or do you think it should be something else? Is you education at Brockwood helping you to be intelligent? I mean by that word to be very sensitive, not to your own desires, to your own demands, but to be sensitive to the world, to what is going on in the world. Surely education is not merely to give you knowledge, but also to give you the capacity to look at the world objectively. The function of education is to help you face the world in a totally different intelligent way. When you have that seed, and it is flowering here, then you will keep it going all of your life. But if this doesn't operate, then the world will destroy you. The world makes you what it wants you to be: a cunning animal." J. Krishnamurti