Do you understand my question? If I neglect the inner and accentuate technology, whatever I do will be one-sided. So I must find a way, I must bring about a movement which will cover both. So far, we have separated the two and having separated them, we have emphasized the one and neglected the other. What we are now trying to do is to join both of them together. If there is proper education, the student will not treat them as two separate fields. He will be able to move in both as one movement. Right? In making himself technologically perfect, he will also make himself a worthwhile human being.
Does this convey something or not? A river is not always the same, the banks vary, and the water can be used industrially or for various other purposes, but it is still water. Why have we separated the technological world and the other world? We have said: "If we could make the technological world perfect, we would have food, clothes, shelter for everybody, so let us concern ourselves with the technological." And there are also those who are concerned only with the inner world. They emphasize the so-called inner world, and become more and more isolated, more and more self-centred, more and more vague, pursuing their own beliefs, dogmas and visions. There is this tremendous division and we say we must somehow bring these two together. So having divided life into the outer and inner, we now try to integrate them. I think that way also leads to more conflict.
Whereas if we could find a centre, a movement, an approach which does not divide, we would function in both equally.
What is the movement that is supremely intelligent? I am using the word "intelligent," not clever, not intuitive, not derived from knowledge, information, experience. What is the movement that understands all these divisions, all these conflicts; and that very understanding creates the movement of intelligence?
We see in the world two movements going on, the deep religious movement which man has always sought and which has become Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, and this wordily movement of technology, a world of computers and automation that give man more leisure. The religious movement is very feeble and very few are pursuing it. The technological has become stronger and stronger and man is getting lost in it, becoming more mechanical and therefore man tries to escape from this mechanism, tries to discover something new - in painting, in music, in art, in the theatre. And the religious, if there are any, say "That is the wrong way" and move away to a world of their own. They do not see the insufficiency, the immaturity, the mechanical way of both. Now, can we see that both of these are insufficient? If we can see that, then we are beginning to perceive a non-mechanistic movement which will cover both.
If I had a child to be educated I would help him to see the mechanical and the insufficient processes of both ways and in the very examination of the insufficiency of both as they operate in him, there would be born the intelligence which has come into being through examination.
Sirs, look at those flowers, the brilliancy, the beauty of them. Now, how am I, as a teacher, to help the student to see the flowers and also be very good at mathematics? If I am only concerned with the flowers and I am not good at mathematics, something is wrong with me. If I am only concerned with mathematics, then also something is wrong with me.
You cannot cultivate technological information, become perfect in it first and then say you must also study the other. By giving your heart to years of acquiring knowledge you have already destroyed something in you - the feeling and the capacity to look. By emphasizing one or the other you become insensitive and the essence of intelligence is sensitivity.
So, the quality which we want the child to have is the highest form of sensitivity. Sensitivity is intelligence; it does not come from books. If you spend forty years in learning mathematics but cannot look at those flowers and also study mathematics. If there is a movement of that intelligence it will cover both fields. Now how are you and I, as a community of teachers, going to create that movement of sensitivity in the child?
The student must be free. Otherwise he cannot be sensitive. If he is not free in the study of mathematics, enjoying mathematics, giving his heart to it, which is freedom, he cannot study it adequately. And to look at those flowers, to look at that beauty, he must also be free. So there must be freedom first. That means I must help that boy to be free. Freedom implies order, freedom does not mean allowing the boy to do what he likes, to come to lunch and to class when he likes.
In examining, working, in learning, one understands that the highest form of sensitivity is intelligence. That sensitivity, that intelligence can come about only in freedom, but to convey that to a child requires a great deal of intelligence on our part. I would like to help him to be free and yet at the same time have order and discipline, without conformity. To examine anything one must have not only freedom but discipline. This discipline is not something from outside which has been imposed upon the child and according to which he tries to conform. In the very examination of these two processes - the technological and the religious, there is attention and therefore discipline. Therefore one asks, "How can we help that boy or girl to be free completely and yet highly disciplined, not through fear, not through conformity, not partially free but completely free and yet highly disciplined at the same time?"
Not one first and then the other. They both go together. Now, how are we to do this? Do we clearly see that freedom is absolutely essential, and that freedom does not mean doing what one likes? You cannot do what you like, because you are always in relationship in life with others. See the necessity and importance of being completely free and yet highly disciplined without conformity. See that your beliefs, your ideas, your ideologies are secondhand. You have to see all that and see that you must be absolutely free. Otherwise you cannot function as a human being.
Now I wonder if you see this as an idea or as a fact, as factual as this ink pot. How will you, as a community of teachers, when you see the importance of the child being completely free and also realize that there must be discipline and order - how will you help him so that he flowers in freedom and order? Your shouting at the child is not going to do it; your beating the child is not going to do it, your comparing him to another is not going to do it. Any form of compulsion, bullying, or system of giving him marks or no marks is not going to do it.
If you see the importance of the boy being free and at the same time highly orderly, and if you see that punishment or cajoling him is not going to produce anything, will you completely drop all that in yourself.
The old method has not produced freedom. It has made man comply and adjust, but if you see that freedom is absolutely necessary and therefore order is essential, these methods which we have used for centuries must drop away.
The difficulty is that you are used to old methods and suddenly you are deprived of them. So you are confronted with a problem about which you have to think in a totally different way. It is your problem. It is your responsibility. You are confronted with this issue. You cannot possibly employ the old methods, because you have seen that the boy must be totally free and yet there must be order.
So what has happened to you who have, so far, accepted and functioned with an old formula? You have thrown out the formula and are looking at the problem anew, are you not? You are looking at the problem with a fresh mind which is free.
This is the point in the talk, when K. seems to suggest that there is a new way of looking at the issue that he started with. He asks whether there can be an approach or a movement that does not divide. In order to communicate a sense of that movement to his listeners, K. uses words like "intelligence" and "sensitivity". I find that there is a danger at this point that those words may evoke a certain image in the reader, which would be then projected as an intellectual/emotional understanding of what K. is talking about.
ReplyDeleteFrom intelligence and sensitivity, K. moves to freedom and order. The question that naturally arises is whether order can exist without conformity. We can recognize a certain emergent order in nature, but can a similar kind of order exist psychologically? Or is K. talking about something entirely different? This whole question of order is a huge theme in K.'s work.
If freedom and order are both essential in education, then the methods that destroy either of the two obviously cannot be used. Yet, if order is not possible without the old methods, then the abandonment of those methods by the teachers would obviously put the whole process of education at risk. How can one teach a class if there is no order?