when children enter into school they have more intelligence than when they leave the university!
Photo copyright Suresh Gundappa 2007, Buy this photo at Suresh’s Gallery
We go on projecting. Our mind is just completely filled and fixed from the very childhood. Everything has been given to us ready-made, and through that readymade knowledge our whole life becomes an illusion. You never meet a real person, you never see a real flower. Just by hearing “This is a rose” you say, “Beautiful!” mechanically. You have not felt the beauty; you have not sensed the beauty; you have not touched this flower. Just “Rose is beautiful” is in your mind; the moment you hear “rose”, the mind projects and says, “It is beautiful!”
And you may believe that you have come to feel that the rose is beautiful; this is not so. This is false. Just look. That’s why children come to things more deeply than grown-up people — because they do not know names. They are not yet prejudiced. If a rose is beautiful, then only it will be beautiful; all roses are not beautiful. Children come nearer to things, their eyes are fresh. They see things as they are because they don’t know how to project anything.
Watch children in Rose gardens, they are filled with so much wonder about one flower. they can keep on looking at this rose endlessly for an hour. For a learned man it’s absurd to look at a rose for an hour! For a child it’s the feeling of wonder ever lasting. The petals, the fragrance, color, Flower swaying and dancing to the tune of wind – everything makes him feels like staying there forever. For a learned man it’s time to move on because he has read so many books about Rose.
But we are always in a hurry to make them grown-ups, to make them adults. We are filling their mind with knowledge, information. This is one of the recent-most discoveries of psychologists, that when children enter into school they have more intelligence than when they leave the university. Latest findings prove this. In the first grade, when children enter, they have more intelligence. They will have less and less intelligence as they grow in knowledge.
And by the time they become bachelors and masters and doctors, they are finished. When they come back with a doctor’s degree, a Ph.D., they have left their intelligence somewhere in the university. They are dead, filled with knowledge, crammed with knowledge, but this knowledge is just false — a prejudice about everything. Now they cannot feel things directly, they cannot feel live persons directly, they cannot live directly, everything has become verbal, wordy. It is not real now; it has become mental.
PS: The teacher writes on the blackboard,“I ain’t had no fun all summer.” Then she asks the children, “What is wrong with that sentence and what do I do to correct it?” Little Ernie shouts from the back, “Get a boyfriend.”
Photo of a learned man! ( sorry! )- definitely first photo on this site which is not photographed by me!
Love and lots of it dear ones
Suresh
Suresh – Our education kills the child within us. When we are young, as children, we do not judge people. The day we begin to judge others and start branding them, we loose that hidden child within us. We loose the ability to have unconditional love. And this is what the world sadly calls maturity.
Priya
January 23, 2007 at 4:11 pm
The photo of the rose is a knockout. So lovely.
icedmocha
January 23, 2007 at 5:07 pm
[...] when children enter into school they have more intelligence than when they leave the university! « … Posted by fourcrows Filed in meandering thoughts [...]
Something to ponder « Sneaking out at Midnight
January 23, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I was sure that when I left the university, my resume would look better, but I was not under the impression that I had become a smarter person. Rather than open my mind, I think perhaps my “education” had closed it and padlocked it.
penseroso
January 23, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Very true words! We are often blocked by what we think we know.
tobeme
January 23, 2007 at 8:50 pm
I don’t know about intelligence, but I did leave university much poorer than when I first entered school.
Also, beautiful pictures, mate. Glad I stumbled onto your page.
elzilcho
January 23, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Great post. I have to agree with that. School and even university, they make you take courses they think you should take and they force the info into you. If students chose what they wanted to learn, in part (there are still some things that should be required: math, history…) they’ll be more curious and question what they’re told. I believe learning comes from asking questions not just attending class to hear lectures.
lightcontrast
January 24, 2007 at 2:19 am
Wow! conspiracy against University and Professors! Where do you expect me to go if everyone agrees with you? I only know teaching!
just kidding! As a professor I need to admit this is the truth. I do not want to risk my university by naming it. But suresh you already know it. I agree with your suggestion not to include my name or my university name. thank you for understanding.
please understand as a professor we have been paid to do some job. While knowledge is important, somewhere we kill inquisitive nature of the students. This happens because as professors we are always in a hurry to teach fast whatever is necessary and move on with our lives. I guess need of the hour is not to change universities but the attitude of professors. As a teacher I need to build character of the students. And over the years I admit I have not done a good job in spite of well paid job. However I am also stuck by the system which is running education. I am helpless while leaning towards job security and monetary benefits.
this post hurt me a lot! and like any other professor I cannot give you short answer however my promise to all those who has commented here is that from now onwards I will try to encourage intelligence beyond books.
Suresh, You have a wonderful gift my friend, It was also nice of you to hold my earlier comment and talk to me about shielding my university name. I came across this blog from one of my students. such gifted meditative photographs and even stunning articles covering all aspect of our life. I am amazed at the number of topics you have covered in your blog. for most of us it takes years to observe one issue but you seems to be dissecting this world like a master crafter.
from your comments I can see that you have touched many lives in so many ways. May God bless you to continue this good work!
PS: I love MR.Bush photo, it is hilarious!
Prof Randale
January 24, 2007 at 3:48 am
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Sanjay M
January 24, 2007 at 7:39 am
I’ve often said that as children, we are born ‘knowing’, are taught to ‘forget’ by our environment, experiences and caretakers, and then it is up to us to learn to remember. Jesus hit it on the nailhead for me when He said, “The kingdom of God is made up of such as these (children)”.
Grace
January 24, 2007 at 5:32 pm
For Professor Randale…
Sir, you’re such a small, albeit wonderful I’m sure, piece of education. By the time students get to you, all the flames have long been extinguished, you can only hope to rekindle what’s been lost.
If only our primary schools would take small notice of these issues…even in the first 5 grades…allowing an imagination to grow, and to find a true love of learning, of thinking…
So much would change in our world. University, to me, opened my eyes to what could be. It gave me wings. Public schools taught me little more than self-loathing and memorization. That’s not an education.
I chose to homeschool my son after the first grade. I can only hope this experiment is more fruitful than my own experience.
Again…Suresh, thank you so much for your blog!
fourcrows
January 24, 2007 at 6:40 pm
“I chose to home school my son after first grade ‘ – very brave and courageous decision by fourcrows.
Please let me know if i can contribute to your son’s education by sharing some of my skills. I do not want to let this great decision go down. I am overwhelmed by both Prof Randale and fourcrows response.
Suresh Gundappa
January 24, 2007 at 6:44 pm
I Knowledge you can get by staying in a room and filling it with books and reading them. When I went to college they tried to teach me to observe the world and analyze it. The question I was always asked was “why?”. The program I entered university with, started at High School where we attended seminars t college level, studied the great thinkers and were tought to think beyond the obvious. I wish it were that way today
yari
January 24, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Sorry, if my post sounded so damning. While sometimes I do feel that school can be so routine and so strict, I still find I’m learning interesting things. I’ve always had an avid curiosity. I love asking questions. I just always feel disappointed that in school, schools don’t teach enough about the subjects that are very interesting. The education is branched out, which is good, but if you branch out too much you’re not really getting at all the important points. Where is the focus? Is there a real focus? I’m not really sure. So I’m finding that I need to supplement my learning a lot. I’ll try, but I do feel I’ve missed much.
lightcontrast
January 25, 2007 at 4:11 pm
why don’t education teach childhern to take care of their parents? where do they lose this love, in college or in society?
Cathy F
January 25, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Suresh, what a wonderful gesture! Thank you so much! It’s a wonderful thing to know we could depend on you if needed.
The whole process is much more fun than I ever anticipated. We learn together every day, and it’s usually not book learning, which makes it all the more intriguing.
It’s been 4 years now, and I see him still being a child, but with the thoughts of an adult. Which may sound not necessarilly good…but these are philosophical thoughts, questions about nations, nationalities, politics….(“Why are some countries so happy not to go to war, when America thinks it’s so important?” came up last week. I just wanted to hug him!)
And then too…He’s the youngest 10 year old I know in terms of his love of play and general goofiness. I don’t think I could have ever made a better decision than to take him out of school.
If anyone out there has ever considered it, the leap is huge, but once you take that jump, you’ll find that you can soar.
With love…
Robin
fourcrows
January 25, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Suresh stands up and gives fourcrows standing ovation! clap clap! clap !
Suresh Gundappa
January 25, 2007 at 5:54 pm
I love the Pope and Bush! Very funny! And your statements really hit me deeply- about how we identify beauty without feeling it. Really provocative read here. Thanks.
naturalhigh
January 25, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Suresh, dear,
Jesus, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Mohammend never went to any university and contributed the most to the mankind´s evolution. For Spirituality is the highest science and can not be learned, only experienced.And it is alos the highest need.
It seem to me what you are talking about is not really intelligence but more like a wisdom. Why do adults miss what children posses? It is the innocence that it getting lost with the aging. It is the innocence that gives you an ability to see if the rose is beautiful or not. It is ONLY the innocence that gives you the freshness of mind and soul. And it is the innocence what we love the most about children.
It`s true, most of the knowledge we get at Universities is dead, as it is not enlightened by the pure attention and innocent mind. For many reasons we loose it and nobody is there to blame!
However it is never too late
I was never brilliant at school and university, rather average. Many things like science and maths was absolutely a nightmare for me as – having a humanitarian set of mind – I could not comprehend these subjects. Neither at my studies of linguistics was I one of the best students 
However since I am doing Sahaja Yoga(which gives you the self-realisation and a lasting transformation of your being, and opens up all the possible amazing qualities that you never knew you actually have), I noticed that not only my freshness and innocence is back but also my intellectual abilities increased! Thanks to this perception of a child I can easily understand any matter whatsoever – which I could not dream of before! – and even explain it to somebody else. Scientific magazines have become my favorite reading
)) However I believe it would not have been possible without the profound university education.
It is a rather popular way here in the West to blame the parents, the teachers, the government in all the problems people have. But only me and myself alone are responsible for what I become.
Thank you for making it to a topic!
LOVE,axinia
shaktipower
January 26, 2007 at 6:45 am
[Suresh hope you can sometime mail this to Prof Randale]…
Prof Randale: I was really touched by your comments.
Nowadays I see there are many new radical kinds of schools for example some schools provide a LOT of freedom, have no competitive ranking systems at all (and also some implementations have other limitations like some students misuse the freedom, becoming complacent and dull) Even if we see that some implementations work very well, it is not practical to overnight change the entire system all over the country let alone world, and implement it in every school – I am optimistic that it is bound to evolve over the years.
I too have gone through education being more or less a slightly above average student. And looking back I’m kind of glad I wasn’t obsessed at excelling with higest ranking. So I had time and bandwidth in my school days to experiment and learn and so my curiosity to learn more or less survived intact
I thank my parents who just gently urged me to study without pressurising me at all.
I also especially thank some of outstanding teachers of my school and college. These teachers were those those who even with all their experience, were still finding new creative ways of expressing their ideas, who had a gentle sense of humor, who seemed to acknowledge that they too were students along with us. They may have been a minority but these were my most inspiring teachers whom I owe a LOT of gratitude. And that exactly the kind of teacher I see in your above comments as well
– best wishes with all your endevours!
Sanjay M
February 18, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Like coming across some people who very soon became intimate lifelong mentors and friends, learning meditation, meeting my wife, and even this blog – there have been some key milestones I’ve come across in life just at the right time of my life when I’ve needed it
There are countless spiritual approaches esp in multicolored multifaceted India. I respect the idea that each person has to find his own approach.
Thought of sharing one personal thing in more detail here in the context of this post when I recieved video links (1 & 2 in an email. Maybe someone here may feel it is a right approach for oneself, and may benefit from it.
It is one of the approaches I just happened to accidentally stumble across. I felt as if it was something that had been part of my life all the time, and yet something refreshingly new!
Been over five years so far, and its worked quite well for me.
In our current age, where with our increased access to media – the limitless internet and so many international channels on TV, with good bad and misleading information. There is only a limit to how much supervision and interference adults can do. A child definitely needs – maybe now more than ever – to be in touch with as the video says – “internal compass”.
Sanjay M
February 18, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Since this is my favorite post on this site (most of the time as its somewhat hard to decide) I came across an article by JK again today that I felt needed to be added here…
—————
Question to JK:
It is the universally accepted conclusion of modern intellectuals that educators have failed. What is, then, the task of those whose function it is to teach the young?
Krishnamurti: There are several problems involved in this, and to understand them, one must go very carefully into them. First of all, why do you have children? Is it mere accident, an unwanted event? Do you have children to carry on your name, title or estate? Or do you love, and therefore you have children? Which is it? If you have children merely as toys, something to play with, or if you are lonely and a child helps you to cover up that loneliness – then children become important because they are your own self-projection. But if children are not a mere means of amusement or a result of accidents, if you really love them in the profound sense of that word – and to love somebody means to be in complete communion with them – , then education has quite a different significance. If as a parent you really love your children, you will see that they have the right kind of education. In other words, children must be helped to be intelligent, sensitive, to have a mind and heart that are pliable, able to deal with any situation. Surely, if you really love your child, you as a parent will not be a nationalist, you will not belong to any country, you will not belong to any organized religion; because, obviously, if you are a nationalist, if you worship the State, then you inevitably destroy your son, because you are creating war. If you really love your son, you will find out what is your right relationship with property; because it is the possessive instinct which has given property such enormous significance, and which is destroying the world. Again, if you really love your children, you will not belong to any particular religion, because belief creates antagonism between man and man. It you love your children, you will do all these things. So, that is one aspect.
Then the other aspect is that the educator needs educating. What are you educating the children for? To become clerks or glorified clerks, governors, engineers, technicians? Is that all life us, merely a matter of glorified clerks, technicians, mechanics, human beings made into cannon fodder? What is the purpose and intention of education? Is it to turn cut soldiers, lawyers and policemen? Surely, the occupations of soldier, lawyer, and policeman, are not right professions for decent human beings. (Laughter.) Don’t laugh it off. By laughing it off, you are pushing it aside.You can see that these professions do not contribute to the total well-being of man, though they may be necessary in a society that has already become corrupt. Therefore, first of all, you have to find out why it is that you have children, and what it is that you are educating them for. If you are merely educating them to be technicians, naturally you will find the best technician to educate your child, and he will be made into a machine, he will discipline himself to conform to a pattern. Is that all there is to our existence, our struggle and our happiness – merely to become mechanics, tank or airplane experts, scientists, physicists inventing new ways of destruction? Therefore, education is your responsibility, is it not? What is it you want your children to be, or not to be? What is the purpose of existence? If it is merely to adjust to a system, to efface oneself for a party, then it is very simple; then all that you have to do is to conform and fit in. But if life is meant to be lived rightly, fully, joyously, sensitively, then there must be quite a different process of education in which there is the cultivation of sensitivity, of intelligence, and not mere technique – though technique is necessary.
So, as a parent – and God knows why you are parents – you have to find out what your responsibility is. Sirs, you love so easily: you say you love, but really you don’t love your children. You have no feeling. You accept social events and conditions as inevitable; you don’t want to transform them, to create a revolution and bring about a new culture, a new society. Surely, it depends on you what kind of education your children will have. As the questioner says, education throughout the world has failed, it has produced catastrophe after catastrophe, destruction and more destruction, bloodshed, rape and murder. Obviously, education has failed; and if you look to the experts, the specialists, to educate your children, the disaster must continue, because the specialists, being concerned only with the part and not with the whole, are themselves inhuman. Surely, the first thing is to have love; for if there is love, it will find the way to educate the children rightly. But you see, we are all brains and no heart; we have cultivated the intellect, and in ourselves we are so absurdly lopsided – and then the problem arises of what to do with the children. Surely, it is obvious that the educator himself needs educating – and the educator is you; for the home environment is as important as the school environment. So, you have to transform yourself first to give the right environment to the child; for the environment can make him either a brute, an unfeeling technician, or a very sensitive, intelligent human being. The environment is yourself and your action; and unless you transform yourself, the environment, the present society in which we live, must inevitably harm the child, make him rude, rough, unintelligent.
Surely, sirs, those who are deeply interested in this problem will begin to transform themselves and thereby transform society, which will in turn bring about a new means of education. But you are really not interested. You will listen to all this and say, `Yes, I agree; but it is too impracticable’. You don’t treat it as a direct responsibility; you are not really, fundamentally concerned. If you really loved your son and knew the war was coming, as it inevitably is, do you mean to say yon would not act, you would not find a way of stopping war? You see, we don’t love; we use the word `love’ but the content of that word has no meaning any more. We just use the word without a referent, without substance, and we live merely on the word; so the complex problem is there still, and we have to face it. And don’t say I have not shown you a way out of it. The way is yourself and your relationship with your children, your wife, your society. You are the gleam, you are the hope; otherwise there is no way out of this at all.
Look at what is happening. More and more governments are taking charge of education, which means they want to produce efficient beings, either as technicians or for war; and therefore the children must be regimented, they must be told, not how to think, but what to think. They are taught to live on propaganda, slogans. Because those who are in power don’t want to be disturbed, they want to keep the power, it has become the function of government to maintain the status quo with little alterations here and there. So, taking all these factors into consideration, you have to find out what is the meaning of existence why you are living, why you are producing children; and you have to find out how to create a new environment – for, what the environment is, your child is. He listens to your talk, he repeats what the older people think and do. So, you have to create a right environment, not only at home, but outside, which is society; and you have to create a new kind of government which is radically different, which is not based on nationalism, on the sovereign State with its armies and efficient ways of murdering people. That implies seeing your responsibility in relationship, and you actually see that responsibility in relationship only when you love somebody. When your heart is full, then you find a way. This is urgent, it is imminent – you cannot wait for the experts to come and tell you how to educate your child. Only you who love will find the way; for, those hearts are empty that look to the experts.
You have listened to all this, and what is your reaction? You will say, `Yes, very nice, very good, it should be done; but let somebody else begin’ – which means, really, you don’t love your child; you have no relationship with your child, so you don’t see the difficulty. The more irresponsible you become, the more the State takes over all responsibility – the State being the few, the party, left or right. You yourself have to work it out because we are facing a great crisis – not a verbal crisis, not a political or an economic crisis, but a crisis of human degradation, of human disintegration. Therefore, it is your responsibility; as the father, as the mother, you have got to transform yourself. These are not just words I am indulging in. One sees this calamity approaching so closely and dangerously, and we sit here and do not do a thing about it; or if we do, we look to some leader and turn our hearts over to him. It is an obvious fact that when you pursue a leader, you choose that leader out of your own confusion, and therefore the leader himself is confused. (Laughter.) Don’t laugh it off as a clever remark: please look at it, see what you are doing. It is you who are responsible for the appalling horror which we have come to, and you are not facing it. You go out and do exactly the same thing that you did yesterday; and you feel your responsibility is over when you ask that question about education and pass your child on to a teacher who teaches and beats him. Don’t you see? Unless you love your wife, your children, and not merely use them as a tool or means for your own gratification, unless you are really touched by this, you will not find a right way of education. To educate your children means to be interested in the whole process of life. What you think, what you do, and what you say, matters infinitely, because that creates the environment, and it is the environment which created the child.
Sanjay M
March 21, 2007 at 6:56 am
[...] See also: Just by hearing “This is a rose” you say, “Beautiful!” mechanically. You have not felt the b… [...]
a common man ಸಂಜಯ » Blog Archive » a simple flower
August 28, 2007 at 8:08 pm
[...] may have been from a rural background, and was probably uneducated [a good thing], yet I felt reassured that the vague idea I had hadn’t been so vague after all, and was [...]
a common man ಸಂಜಯ » Blog Archive » unforgettable words of a dying old lady
November 20, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Nice Post. It is through experience that we learn. To learn that the University education is useless, you would have to experience the university education, like we did. Otherwise, the projected opinions in the society about the universities would prevail. There is an interesting quotation by Mark Twain in this context – “I went to school, but it didnot interfere with my education”. Another observation in this context is about schools and colleges primary function being to show results. Or make the children score high marks. There is nothing wrong about this. But if a student has to mug up (memorize) the whole text and equations to score marks and the university is also testing only the childs memory power (which sadly is the reality), then there is every reason to condemn the system. This is happening because every parent wants his son to be engg or doctor and they are willing to pay any amount of money to make this happen. So the people in the system are willing to let more and more money making machines (colleges) to get opened. Now the fault is not exactly with the system alone. As you have seen every parent, every student is also responsible for the degradation.
destinationinfinity
December 8, 2007 at 7:40 am
There is also a second opinion which i wish to express. Suppose, we are educating the children to be highly innovative and imaginative, make all of them into scientists, who would do the other jobs?. Look at it in this way – the current education system is creating mechanical workers – be it clerks, technicians etc who work mechanically according to the defined patterns. Majority of the people are happy to become a good technician or clerk and make a lot of money in their fields. Why do we want to stop this? Let them be happy. If certain students are not happy doing this, they would certainly not accept the system. They would either become dropouts or pass through the system without much honors. But their necessities in life are the same as others. They somehow have to live and support families. They would not accept the normal clerk or technician type of mechanical jobs. They start getting into more innovative and different careers. Be it enterpreuners, media-journalism, retail, and what not. Most of the great personalities of this world have been created like this. Great personalities were never university first types. They have always been fighting the system. But what we fail to notice is that, it us because of their fight against the system that they have become great. Now think of a situation where you put Einstien in a school that is specialized in making scientists. Do you think he would become a great scientist? This specialized school is another system which teaches him established and trial tested ways of becoming a scientist. Did Einstien become a scientist like that?
destinationinfinity
December 8, 2007 at 7:56 am
http://shibumi.org.in/
Shibumi
Shibumi is a school that will start in Bangalore, in June 2008. The deepest concern of the school is to bring up children who are free, responsible and concerned with the whole of life. At Shibumi, we are exploring a totally different kind of education which creates the freedom to bring about clarity in the mind. From this direct sense of what it means to be free, all else must flow.
“A school is a place of leisure where the educator and the one to be educated are both learning. This is the central fact of the school: to learn. We do not mean by leisure having time to oneself, though that is also necessary; it does not mean taking a book and sitting under a tree, or in your bedroom, reading casually. It does not mean a placid state of mind; it certainly does not mean being idle or using time for day-dreaming. Leisure means a mind that is not constantly occupied with something, with a problem, with some enjoyment, with some sensory pleasure. Leisure implies a mind that has infinite time to observe: observe what is happening around one and what is happening within oneself; to have leisure to listen, to see clearly. Leisure implies freedom, which is generally translated as doing as one desires, which is what human beings are doing anyhow, causing a great deal of mischief, misery and confusion. Leisure implies a quiet mind, no motive and so no direction. This is leisure and it is only in this state that the mind can learn, not only science, history, mathematics but also about oneself”
-J. Krishnamurti
The group consists of teachers who have taught at the J. Krishnamurti schools for several years, and young people who have been students at these schools and have decided to make education their vocation.
To learn more about Shibumi, do start by reading about our Educational Philosophy
Sanjay M
April 20, 2008 at 6:03 pm
[India] Study shows how slum-kids speedily take to computer (Fwd)
http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/s-asia-it/archive/1999/11/msg00026.html
BBC News | SCI/TECH | Delhi children make play of the net
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1502820.stm
Sanjay M
July 3, 2008 at 9:36 am
Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
Sanjay M
July 4, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Try this simple excercise in drawing, and then read the explanation!
http://www.drawright.com/vaceface.htm#vaseface
Sanjay M
July 8, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Not related to this post but education in general, I do wonder what the readers here think about this ad…
http://www.whatanidea.co.in
Sanjay
Different Context
August 22, 2008 at 1:44 pm
- C&H Quotes
Sanjay
July 10, 2009 at 2:56 am
When I first saw this video tweeted by @charityfocus, I wondered how sensible these children are. But then I had to remind myself from my own experience interacting with kids, that any child can be so, as long as they’re treated with respect. This video is really the perfect living world example of the earlier story from Suresh Panje of the perfect heart! Here the teacher says
Sanjay M
September 8, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Here’s the URL of the video: http://ow.ly/ovWQ
Sanjay M
September 8, 2009 at 5:29 pm