Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments β and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that authorities prioritize compliance over individuality, fearing the potential of free-thinking individuals.
Jiddu Krishnamurti's quote highlights a critical perspective on how governments and organized religions often prefer to cultivate a society of efficient technicians who adhere to norms, rather than encouraging the development of individuals who think independently and challenge authority. The fear is that true human beings, equipped with the capacity for critical thought and personal freedom, could pose a threat to the established structures of control in both government and religious contexts, which is why there is an emphasis on controlling educational systems.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of independent thinking in education.
The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.
If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.
If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud - you are all that, and that is love.
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it.
All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.
The education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. [I]t is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system ... than to correct by penal statutes the ill effects of a bad system. ... The education of youth ... lays the foundations on which both law and gospel rest for success.
It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.
If only for a half hour a day, a child should do something serviceable to the community
When you're given a newspaper column, you're not being paid to sit on a fence and scratch your chin and say 'On the one hand this' and 'On the other hand that.' You're getting paid for your opinion.
We can say with some assurance that, although children may be the victims of fate, they will not be the victims of our neglect.
The rationale for tenure is still valid. But the system has turned the academy into one of the most conservative and costly institutions in the country. Yes, conservative: Economists joke that their discipline advances one funeral at a time, but many fields must wait for wholesale generational turnover before new approaches take hold.
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