The aesthetics of education

Today’s children need an education that teaches them courage and the determination to make the most of whatever life offers them

“The questions we hold are precious and beautiful. They are part of a perennial quest to end all illusion and live a life free of conflict.”

Sounds familiar? We have often heard these thought provoking statements by renowned thinker and educationist J Krishnamurti whose ideals were summarised in a newsletter I received from a non-formal school built on those same ideals. They are all the more relevant in today’s context when children have suffered the trauma of loneliness and disconnect from friends and classmates. Also, the uncertainty of what may happen tomorrow is always there.

Today’s children, the victims of a pandemic-ridden world, need an education that teaches them courage and the determination to make the most of whatever life offers them. What better teacher than JK, whose simple philosophy of how to live courageously in stressful times is the kind of learning that is most relevant for today’s children? Schools built on his principles are the most relevant for the times we live in. His idea of a good school was a space meant for a child to grow, to learn life’s lessons, and to become a courageous human being.

Read | The examination fever

The present reality is sadly different. Today’s schools, built on the principle of better grades, better ranks, and severe academics that are purely examination oriented, strive for scholastic excellence at the cost of losing out on a child’s curiosity, creativity, and independent thinking. It is an education that is purely scholastic, with the promise of more scholarship, and devoid of any originality. If this did exist, it is carefully demolished by teachers who prefer dumb obedience in a pupil who will listen rather than learn, who will obey rather than innovate. Such schools, which attract the largest number of pupils, teach them to strive for grades rather than values. Exactly what Jiddu Krishnamurti would have abhorred.

Forcing young children to face the ordeals of four public examinations even before they reach the age of 17 years, will hardly help in their total development. Besides, all pupils in a school do not come with the same social and economic advantages. Many may be first generation learners. When such pupils are made to compete with others coming from an educated household, schooling becomes an uneven playing ground. Today’s popular schools, mostly affiliated to central boards where there is greater stress not only for the pupils but for the parents as well, the child’s real education takes a back seat while the pressure mounts on both. Children coming from poor homes have no access to educational resources like libraries or parental support in their studies. They are driven to low grade and useless private tuition after school hours.

“Holistic ideas of education, in which learning is emphasised and students can explore concepts and ideas, are largely for kids who don’t need to worry about class mobility” was never more relevant than in today’s education scene. Rich families can afford to send their children to rich schools with many opportunities to progress. Being educated themselves in exclusive schools, they can give their personal attention and supervision to their children. It is a harsh reality that kids coming from poor families where the parents are illiterate and employed in unorganised sectors, study without learning; come to school without an iota of understanding what is taught.

“Research has highlighted inequalities in students’ homework production and linked those inequalities to differences in students’ home lives and in the support students’ families can provide,” says an article in The New York Times. To help combat the myth of meritocracy, the authors suggest that teachers not assign overly challenging homework and stop rewarding or punishing students based on the quality of the homework they produce. They also suggest that some teachers, if so inclined, could go “a step further in attempting to reduce homework’s harm” and just get rid of it altogether.

I have always wondered why schools don’t ask children to do their homework in activities that they enjoy? Renowned artist and painter K K Hebbar once asked why our schools do not give much importance to aesthetic activities like music, dance, theatre, drawing, and painting, among other arts? If teachers ask their students to prepare an aesthetic creation for homework and bring it to school, will there be a single child who will refuse?

Let me end with one more quotation from JK, whose description of the ideal school should be read by all educators. He says:

“A school is a place where one learns about the totality, the wholeness of life. Academic excellence is absolutely necessary, but a school includes much more than that. It is a place where both the teacher and the student explore not only the outer world, the world of knowledge, but also their own thinking their own behavior.”

Words fit to be framed and displayed in every school.