Osho on Education
Parents have an old habit of saying, ′First grow up and then you will understand.′ But, excuse me, I would like to ask you if you
have grown up.
Have you seen any grown-up person? Maybe the person is well-educated, has graduated from the university, was on the merit list, has a good job, is married, has children –
everything is going fine. But, look deep, is he grown-up? Has he really understood what life is? Has he any awareness? Or is he as ignorant of life as any child? Sometimes it
happens that children are more alert than grown-ups because children have a fresher consciousness.
Less dust has gathered on their mirrors. As yet they have not been poisoned by the society.
What do you call your university? It is an institution in the service of society. It poisons. It manipulates people. It forces people into the service of the society. It
destroys people′s individuality. Out of beautiful people it makes clerks, collectors, commissioners, tahsildar, station-masters, things like that. Out of beautiful people,
out of beautiful children it creates ugly things, dead things. The whole education system is a way to destroy a person, his freedom; to destroy his consciousness; to destroy his
aliveness; to make him usable – to reduce him to a means so that the society can use him in profitable ways, so that he becomes an instrument. Then he becomes a soldier in the
army – kills and, is killed.
Or he becomes a clerk in an office or a collector or a commissioner and wastes his whole life for something he cares nothing at all about and goes on doing things which he never
wanted to do in the first place.
Children are intelligent: they are not yet covered by layers of dust, they have not yet gone through the factory called education, they have
not yet been cultured; they are yet wild and they still have the freedom and the innocence and the joy of the wild animals. They act moment to moment.
But we start cultivating them, we start curbing their freedom. We start imposing, "Do this, don′t do that." We start imposing do′s and don′ts on them.
Soon they will forget all about freedom, soon they will start acting out of the past, pretending. Soon they will be no more alive.
Sir Ken Robinson on education: