Today it is the first day of a new year, good occasion to read K, instead of drinking and jumping, so let's continue...
From now on I will not make my comments after the text, I will do it on the comment section of each entry, if I think I should do it.
So, let's start the year with this beautiful text and questions:
I am going to ask you something. Why are you being educated?
Do you understand my question? Your parents send you to school. You attend classes, you learn mathematics, you learn geography, you learn history. Why?
Have you ever asked why you want to be educated, what is the point of being educated? What is the point of your passing examinations and getting degrees? Is it to get married, get a job and settle down in life as millions and millions of people do? Is that what you are going to do, is that the meaning of education? Do you understand what I am talking about? This is really a very serious question. The whole world is questioning the basis of education. We see what education has been used for. Human beings throughout the world - whether in Russia or in China or in America or in Europe or in this country - are being educated to conform, to fit into society and into their culture, to fit into the stream of social and economic activity, to be sucked into that vast stream that has been flowing for thousands of years.
Is that education, or is education something entirely different?
Can education see to it that the human mind is not drawn into that vast stream and so destroyed;
see that the mind is never sucked into that stream; so that, with such a mind, you can be an entirely different human being with a different quality to life? Are you going to be educated that way? Or are you going to allow your parents, society, to dictate to you so that you become part of the stream of society?
It is interesting that this part stars with "Why are you being educated?", and ends with "entirely different human being", as if K implying that the purpose of education is to bring about a change in consciousness...
ReplyDeleteHe already has made it quite clear that education is not just sharing knowledge
Yes, difficult... but it is good to be at least clear....
One thing that he mentions in part 5 is : "Whereas if I look at my greed, if I understand why I am greedy, the nature of my greed, the structure of greed, then, when I begin to understand all that, I am free of greed. Therefore, freedom from greed is something entirely different from trying to become non-greedy."