Krishnamurti Foundation India, Kolkata Centre organised a two day workshop titled EDUCATING THE EDUCATOR at the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum (BITM) in Kolkata on 5 and 6 July. The Workshop was facilitated by Alok Mathur and Chandrika Mathur of Rishi Valley.
We are delighted that the workshop happened during the 125th birth anniversary of J Krishnamurti. It wasn’t planned this way but things somehow fell in place. The interest shown by some teachers during conversations at the Kolkata Book Fair in February started the process and then we had the good fortune of getting Alok Mathur and Chandrika Mathur to agree to run the workshop. Alok Mathur is a Trustee of the Krishnamurti Foundation India, and formerly Director, Teacher Education, at the Rishi Valley Education Centre. He has been an educator for over three decades in the schools run by the Krishnamurti Foundation. Chandrika Mathur is a researcher and language teacher, who brings the experience of several decades of teaching in India and abroad. She was formerly Joint Director, Rishi Valley Institute of Teacher Education.
Despite our good fortune in getting such excellent facilitators to run the workshop, we were worried that perhaps not too many schools and teachers might be interested. But as things turned out, within fifteen days of our letter being sent out in April, we had more participants than we could cope with! 35 in all. Many teachers have missed out because we could not accommodate more participants. We have promised them that we will repeat the event within the next 12 months.
There was great diversity in the participating group. Virtually every segment in education was represented…..private schools, government schools, rural schools, special schools, ‘religious’ schools, a college and also a professor from the Department Of Education, Viswa Bharati University. The good thing is that the theme encompassed education in a holistic manner and there was so much common ground at the very core. Levels become irrelevant when human and life issues get precedence over all else.
We had set up a book stall and participants browsed and bought books during tea break. Some representatives of the media were with us for a while and they interacted with Alok Mathur and Chandrika Mathur. Doordarshan Bangla also came in to cover the event. We are of course delighted but realise that the challenge is huge because teachers by and large are unaware of the enormity of J Krishnamurti’s vision in education. J Krishnamurti had said:
“We must be very clear in ourselves what we want – clear that a human being must be the total human being, not just a technological human being. If we concentrate very much on examinations, on technological information, on making the child clever, proficient in acquiring knowledge while we neglect the other side, then the child will grow up into a one-sided human being. When we talk about a total human being, we mean not only a human being with inward understanding, with a capacity to explore, to examine his or her inward state and the capacity of going beyond it, but also someone who is good in what he does outwardly. The two must go together. That is the real issue in education: to see that when the child leaves the school, he is well established in goodness, both outwardly and inwardly.”
