The Link #26 - Unlocking Key Insights at the Oak Grove

Paul Herder is Director of Teacher Development at Oak Grove School. He has been a teacher at Brockwood Park School and a member of the Link team. Parts of this article appeared separately in the KFA’s Foundation Focus Newsletter.

Krishnamurti expanded the role of education beyond the goal of academic excellence and into a larger exploration of psychological conditioning and its implications in all aspects of life. This inquiry forms the basis for a different way of living, an awakening of intelligence that can bring about profound change in the individual and therefore in the order and development of society. Krishnamurti inspired and continues to inspire educators around the world. However, serious questions remain as to what this revolution in education looks like in practice.

The Teacher’s Academy

Last summer Oak Grove School launched its first ever Teacher’s Academy, a threeweek residential program exploring the question: What is the meaning of Krishnamurti education in the classroom? The Academy brought together twelve educators of various ages, from different corners of the world, to explore Krishnamurti’s insights in education and the task of bringing these insights into the educational context as the basis of a living inquiry.

The job of identifying key areas or insights from Krishnamurti’s approach was critical to the development of the Teacher’s Academy curriculum. Four basic insights were formulated: Holistic Inquiry, Transparency, Direct Perception and Orientation to Relationship. Of the four, two – Transparency and Direct Perception – are presented here.

Transparency

Although the term ‘transparency’ is not found in Krishnamurti’s writing and talks, there was a sense it embodies important features of developing an inward, psychological, dimension in learning. The notion of transparency links the value of inward sensitivity to both self-awareness and solid academic endeavors. It turns out that the term is readily grasped by both parents and teachers and helps to communicate something significant about this more subtle level of learning and exploration.

Key Insight: Transparency

“You cannot think clearly if you are not sensitive ... to all the things that are happening around you, sensitive not only to what is happening outside you but also inside you.”

we need to make our thinking more available to inquiry

In order to develop an inward dimension to education we need to make our thinking, which includes the imagination, the intellect and the emotions, more available to inquiry. Transparency refers to the value we place on being in direct contact with our thinking. Krishnamurti defined thought as the response of memory. Aside from its minor function to record events, memory serves as a basis for action. In other words, children don’t just internalize their ABCs but, more importantly, internalize ‘who they are’, ‘what to believe’, ‘where they belong’ and ‘what to do’. Transparency doesn’t mean that we have to express what we think or feel to anyone, though there is certainly a place for that; rather, it acknowledges that most of our thinking is tacit – hidden – and in constant flux, and that being continuously open to the movement of thought is required in order for self-understanding to take place.

Transparency to the inward dimension of life is important because:
Our actions come from how we think about things

We cannot assume that our thinking makes sense

When we find ourselves in conflict, confused or unhappy, we often miss the source in thought

Transparency also has a direct effect on academic work. Students and teachers are encouraged to share their thinking, the reasons for it and the assumptions that frame it. This transparency helps connect academic content to student interests and encourages classroom discussion and the development of literacy skills. The process of making thinking explicit is consistent with the development of other critical academic skills, including learning about scientific methodology, e.g. the stating and testing of hypotheses.

Direct Perception

The second 'key insight' used at the Teacher’s Academy is Direct Perception. In contrast to ‘transparency’, the term comes from Krishnamurti’s own words. Throughout his life Krishnamurti spoke of the central role of perception in living intelligently. It is a fundamental element of inquiry, and its complex nature is rarely brought out or given the kind of energy and attention typically afforded subjects such as mathematics or science.

The central challenge to perceiving directly for oneself is found in the relationship between thought and seeing. Whereas transparency recognizes the central role of thought in influencing and shaping experience, the study of perception highlights the challenges of perceiving things as they are, inwardly and outwardly. Krishnamurti expressed the importance, and the difficulties, of simple watchfulness in a complex and fluid existence. An approach to learning that appreciates the role of perception is therefore central to a revolution in education.

Key Insight: Direct Perception

“Truth is not in some far distant place; it is in the looking at what is. To see oneself as one is – in that awareness into which choice does not enter – is the beginning and end of all search.”

Fundamental to education is the importance of what Krishnamurti called seeing what is; the real, the actual, the fact. In order to see what is we must be sensitive to the nature of our perception. We need to carefully consider the subtle but significant effects thoughts, images and assumptions have on how we perceive and relate to the world.

the complex nature of perception is rarely given the attention afforded to mathematics or science

Traditional education all but dismisses the role of individual perception, emphasizing instead conformity to established social norms and time-tested routines. Traditional teaching methods have their place, but they do not address the challenges inherent in the development of selfawareness and a radically independent mind.

Our understanding is that direct perception and the freedom to be guided by that perception is central to thinking clearly. This is critical because the mind is predisposed to think without consistent regard for the facts. When we learn about the relationship between thought and perception, we are able to bring order into thinking and the awakening of intelligence is possible.

Krishnamurti called the human capacity to perceive in the moment, without the interference and limitation of thought, choiceless awareness. Choiceless awareness is crucial to opening thought up to reality, and it is therefore essential to learning about anything in life, including oneself.

The curriculum at the Teacher’s Academy enabled an exploration of the relationship between Krishnamurti’s insights and the realities of teaching skills and content. There is no Krishnamurti instructional methodology, so an assortment of strategies and approaches was explored that are seen as complementary to his intent. Some of these approaches are based on what is generally classified as Constructivist or progressive methods. These practices are ‘studentcentered’ and ‘inquiry-based’ and reflect loosely-affiliated pedagogical movements that aim to develop critical thinking and communication skills in students. While these methods are complementary to Krishnamurti’s approach and intent, by themselves they remain limited.

an approach to learning that appreciates the role of perception is central to a revolution in education

Interestingly, the majority of leading pedagogical experts now see progressive education as noble in intention but a failure in practice. An influential number of these experts are ‘rediscovering’ traditional educational practices. This swing of the pendulum is driven by the educational establishment’s obsession with testing. There is fear in the political classes that the country is in the process of losing its competitive advantage, economically, scientifically and militarily. In the name of accountability, educators are under intense pressure to conform to state and national standards. Lacking a real understanding of the problem, educationalists are reverting to the familiar, to the known, abandoning the more creative progressive approaches and replacing them with mechanistic and authoritarian systems.

In fact, progressive teaching strategies fail because teachers are not encouraged to delve directly into the source of the problem, namely the challenge of the conditioned mind. These strategies and practices have real value but are very difficult to implement for the very reason that they challenge what are often unconscious assumptions about the nature of education and the socialization of the young.

the effort to encourage inquiry fails by limiting the value of its application

Krishnamurti provides the opportunity to transform Constructivist or progressive education. For example, during the Teacher’s Academy we looked at how the progressive educational movement lacks an understanding of its fragmentary nature. For instance, many educators have grasped the fact that fear inhibits learning. Teachers foster a safe learning environment through modifying the teacher’s role to that of a facilitator and by attempting to be emotionally neutral or only positive in their dealings with student’s contributions. But because teachers are not necessarily inquiring into their own lives and learning to question their inherited notions around authority, competition, or reward and punishment, fear remains. In other words, the understanding that fear inhibits learning is limited and at cross-purposes with other dynamics in the classroom environment.

The same observation is true with regard to the Constructivist practice of inquirybased learning. Educators want the child to learn the value of questioning and independent thinking, but that inquiry is restricted to certain content areas of academic learning; saying, in effect, that sustained inquiry doesn’t really count in, for example, the complex and conflict-prone world of day-to-day human relationship. Therefore, the effort to encourage inquiry fails by limiting the value of its application. Bringing holistic inquiry (inquiring into the whole of life, as Krishnamurti intended) into the classroom is therefore a radical departure from inquiry-based education as it is practiced elsewhere.

A Krishnamurti school is intended to be a place of educational revolution, a place where sanity and intelligence can emerge. In a society mired in self-interest and materialism there is no greater need than the development of talented and passionate educators for whom Krishnamurti’s intent is taken to heart.

Paul Herder, September 2006