philosophies

Education as art to live
by Federico Battistutta

Libertarian pedagogy of Jiddu Krishnamurti.

A land with no paths

It happens sometimes that the contributions, if not more important, certainly more stimulating and provocative that come across in any subject area so-called outsiders come from authors, without the intellectual or academic certifications deemed necessary according to the maintenance of the celebrators status quo of knowledge. This is the case of the relationship between Krishnamurti and the world of education.
Born in India in the late nineteenth century and died in California in 1986, a thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti was a stateless person who did not want to belong to any organization, nationality or religion. Raised and educated as a child, to become a spiritual master, himself, in 1929, rejecting the role of authority to award, broke dramatically with this perspective. He will say right on that occasion: "You remember the story of the devil and his friend that walking, they see a man bending over, picking something up off the ground and put it in your pocket. The friend asked the devil: "What have you collected?". "A piece of truth," replied the devil. "A bad deal for you," said the friend. "Not at all," answered the devil. "I will wait to organize it." I maintain that truth is a pathless land and you can not get through any way, no religion, no school. This is my point of view, and will adhere fully and unconditionally. Because the truth is unlimited, unconditional, unreachable by any road, can not be organized, and no organization can be created to lead or coerce the other along a particular path. "
He devoted the rest of his life traveling the world, talking to many people and talking with students of schools established by him. What was really at the heart of man Krishnamurti was the liberation from the constraints, by submission to authority, passive acceptance of any dogma, always insisting on the necessary rejection of all authority, starting with their own, to see to the end how the structure of society the individual conditions. He was under no confidence in the ability to edit the various political institutions, since these would come not from man's liberation, but this possibility lies in man himself, is contained within him the story of all humanity. The step is then aimed at the liberation of the individual forms of voluntary servitude of which is at once victim and author. Hence the interest in educational processes.
It is appropriate, however, a preliminary clarification as to limit exposure to a specific field - that of education, in fact - you may see a form parcellizzante ultimately a specialized way to deal with man's relationship to exist, in contrast to always advocated a comprehensive approach by Krishnamurti. No coincidence that on one occasion says: "If, by examining a flower, he ripped the petals one by one, at the end of the flower is gone. You hold parts of a flower, but those pieces are not the beauty of the flower. "
But it is also true that it has always been central to his thinking, just the prospect of liberation from oppressive social various devices, attention and analysis to the various conditioning processes that cast the subject in terms of unhappiness and inauthenticity . Not only that it remains beyond any doubt that Krishnamurti has always been a relentless critic to any tendency to codify and institutionalize the flow of life without end, it is equally true that there is a place - the school - which has not declined at all and indeed he worked to make it suitable for children (or teenager). Moreover, we will discuss the pedagogy will be free from fixations prescriptive, preferring to call an observation innovative, active and participating in silence, towards a multilateral training of the person.

Educate to life

If contemporary pedagogical debate raised Krishnamurti sometimes more of a concern and distrust, to the point of view ignored the concrete proposals put in place, it could not miss the other hand "a surprising convergence between the needs of a scion so total Iconoclasm, and those that the best contemporary pedagogy has been slowly maturing "(as Aldo Visalberghi, a leading Italian scientists of education, of Krishnamurti), identifying interesting analogies with the pedagogical lines of Tolstoy, Dewey, Whitehead, Huxley, Rogers, up to Illich.
"Teaching is the profession of the higher life," says our author, emphasizing the profound responsibility that requires the activity, since the objective of education is to facilitate the overall development of the human being, and hence to the overall development of society. According to Krishnamurti, the primary connotation of the human being consists in the simultaneous coexistence of an irreducible plurality of voltages, components and levels of listening and seeking expression. Unlike the reductionist conceptions that can induce acute lacerations in the evolution of the subject, "education should achieve the integration of these separate entities, in fact, without integration, life becomes a series of conflicts and sorrows." Because the settings sectoral and specialist in education also reveal their inherent limitations, Krishnamurti offers an education that seeks to merge with the art of living. The real is all that is happening - that is what he insists, even during meetings and conversations with adults - so there is never a moment when there is no learning, every action embodies a movement education and the 'the whole process of life is education. "The student who observes a leaf swaying in the sun is attentive. At that time, force him to return to the book amounts to discourage attention, and help to observe that leaf makes it perfectly aware of the height of attention in which there is no distraction. "
The art of living manifests and unfolds through the opening to the complexity of life by means of a calm and clear perception, where there is no sign of rejection or duality in the face of what is, to what is happening, the mind that constantly occurs. According to Krishnamurti the dualistic view, separate, and ultimately oppositional expression that arises when we flee before what is, when the reactive groups of the mind, than is the case, trigger the expression of various influences and sustained assimilated by the same mind to escape all'otherness, the radically new, permanent stupor in front of the bare fact of existence. "To live is to discover on their own what is true, and you can make this discovery only when there is freedom, when inside you there is a continuous revolution." And again: "Do not imitate, but to discover, this is true education." From this perspective should be taken critically dichotomy that might arise between a noble albeit idealized values ​​and models, on the one hand, and the mere unfolding of reality, on the other.
Without realizing it, we entered into the question of the relationship teacher / learner. Existence is relationship, Krishnamurti said, like others before him, arguing that "to understand ourselves we must be aware of our relationship not only with people but also with things, with ideas and with nature." The first step that will make the teacher, according to his pedagogical perspective, each model will consist nell'accantonare reference to accept the student is and not as it should be: "Having the ratio is larger and more responsible to have no images" . At this point it becomes possible to abandon the educational cooperation, which gives way to one of free inquiry in freedom, without barriers between one who knows and who does not know, is the mirror each other in mutual and shared responsibility. "You can go very far if you leave from very close" to teachers Krishnamurti writes, "the closest thing to yourself is your student." As we said above, and in spite of all duality will then be possible to reach out and touch the point at which the teaching, the teacher and the one that is taught in the essential unity coincide, destination and walk the entire testimony of life we left the Indian thinker.

On these bases were built during the time of the schools where you can apply and test these guidelines. The first dates from the mid-twenties, today in India and many other schools were opened on the principles proposed by Krishnamurti. There is one even in Europe, Brockwood Park School, Hampshire, England, active from '69, a residential community that is home to dozens of students of both sexes, aged between 14 and 19 years, from around the world. The ethos of these schools can be defined as non-hierarchical, non-coercive, non-competitive, aiming at the comprehensive care of the person, not only oriented to the achievement of positive outcomes from the perspective of the student's curriculum, but turning attention to the physical, psychological, moral and spiritual person. In the words of a teacher in these schools: "We teach what we know, but what we are educating".

Federico Battistutta

Reading Krishnamurti

The wide opening quote of the speech of Krishnamurti's dissolution of the organization that was promoting it as a new messiah has appeared and reappeared over time in various texts, including the latest, we recommend the special edition in Italian of "Bulletin of the Krishnamurti Foundation", in June 1986.
Krishnamurtiana a biography, although at times hagiographic, however, accompanied by witnesses, documents, pictures and letters was written by Mary Lutyens, The Life and Death of Krishnamurti, Rome, Ubaldini, 1990.
Krishnamurtiana extensive bibliography was prepared by Susunaga Weeraperuma, A bibliography of the life and teaching of Jiddu Krishnamurti, London-Leiden-Koln, Brill, 1974, later supplemented by a Supplement to a bibliography of the life and teaching of Jiddu Krishnamurti Bombay, Chetana, 1982.
The texts of Krishnamurti, in Italian translation, specifically dedicated to education, from which it derives most of the quotations in this article are the following: education and the meaning of life, Rome, New Italy, 1958, Letters to schools , Rome, Ubaldini, 1983, A school for Life, Milan, Aequilibrium, 1988.
Since 1997 there is an annual publication of the Krishnamurti schools: "The Journal of the Krishnamurti school" of which they have been is an anthology of texts in Italian, in a single number, "Journal of the Krishnamurti schools", No. 1 / 2002. With regard to the experience of Brockwood Park School cf. Shila Morelli, Educating for life. The case of Brockwood Park School, thesis, University of Milan, academic year 2008/2009.
Finally, to be interpreted in a libertarian, with particular reference to the relationship between the individual / company, cf. Emilia Rensi, instances of "liberation" in Krishnamurti, "Will," n.12/1966.