Reflection N° 120 - Education
- A little duck breaks its eggshell, stretches and moves its little feet, and at once walks to a nearby lagoon and swims in search of things to eat. Everybody had a chance to know, and some few creators of a humble origin, attended to gratuitous Universities, because to learn is a natural gift and none knows that which he has until he can demonstrate it. At present, a half of educational institutions –primary and secondary– are in the hands of private institutions and, as a rule, are of lesser qualifications. In Argentina, teaching at public and gratuitous schools is on a level with private schools. In England, teaching at State colleges is higher than at Eton, although wealthy parents may pay a fortune. Education is a personal and intimate matter, and not of social competence.
In most prestigious and highest institutions –Max Plank in Germany, Princeton in the United States, La Sorbonne in France, Steklov Mathematical Institute in Saint Petersburg, et cetera, are mainly responsible for conveying knowledge. Even most prestigious laboratories are investigating and looking for new science conquests, and have a lot of selected pupils learning advanced investigation. In the Renaissance, the best painters were formed beside masters; an apprentice started cleaning the studio, later preparing colors, and then copying works painted by his teacher. He was self-sufficient and able to teach others when that apprentice discovered his own style.
Every society has its own form to teach those matters it wants to convey. In Nazi Germany, the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) were duly organized in disciplined groups, the Soviet Union systematically dictated keys to Marxism, since Middle Ages the Church indoctrinated at Parochial Schools, and the United States instill a fiery love for the fatherland at primary school. In tropical jungles, deserts, and remote mountains, uncivilized peoples even are educating, but in their own way. Without any school, their apprenticeship takes place in the bosom of their family group, not to read but to survive. As soon a child reaches an age to leave his mother’s tutelage, he is with the elder exploring places, vegetal species and animals, and paths in the jungle, and hunting and fishing for food; and a girl learns by her mother how to grow the family orchard, and how to spin and weave. Their apprenticeship is intensively practiced all day.
- If you wish to know the other side of wisdom, please apply to the Teaching “Tibetan Disciples”, Course “The Way to Renunciation”, and you’ll see how mystique of ash was taught and learnt –which was so hard and strenuous– and you’ll understand how spiritual development and liberation in man cannot be achieved by priestly rituals or dispensations but by continuous efforts from birth to the time of death.
We all learn and teach good things and bad things at school, before a TV set, on football bleachers, on the street, driving through routes, with family, everywhere. A thief teaches to steal, a corrupt politician to cheat people, a soldier to kill, and Muslim guerrilla to defend his fatherland. A lonely man is teaching himself. Helen Keller was deaf, blind and mute, and she learned to communicate and taught to live. From the cross, Jesus taught to Mankind mercy and redemption through personal sacrifice.
To learn is an intimate phenomenon, although you are at a class of thirty children. All of them are listening and suddenly one says in loud voice: “Already I know!”, although the rest of children remain quiet. The crown moment in apprenticeship, in whatever subject and circumstance, is an integral transformation, a flash passing through the pupil and renewing him. Sometimes it is a fleeting moment, and other times this apprenticeship lasts all life. Many scientists have made transcendental discoveries through an enlightening flash. Saint Ignatius of Loyola was integrally transformed reading in sickbed a biography of saints. Saint Thomas of Aquinas studied all life and wrote the Summa Theologica.
When an old boy comes of age and must decide his future –profession, occupation, business, emigration to other town or country, to earn money professionally or follow another way– then his effective, responsible and transforming education begins. It will be for good or evil, –it will depend on that which he learns and how he learns. If he wants to be a sportsman, we know how he will end –then a long retirement with frustrations fed by a fleeting success. If he enters a corporation –Government, Armed Forces, banks and financial institutions, factories, or service providers– all of a sudden he becomes an invariable identity code, gets his monthly salary and his holiday season, takes his pension at the height of his powers, and later languishes completely alone. His vocation for learning unusual things and his envisioned achievements are faded away throughout long years devoted to activities that he felt were meaningful for all life. He might be a cashier in a bank, a seller of tools at a warehouse, a manager at a store, or a school miss and go on to learn new things, other tasks, languages, whatever. Socrates was old when he was sentenced to death, and while waited in his cell, he learnt to play flute and remained joyful until the end.
Old people become sad because they are closed in advance; much earlier than his final life time, they stopped growing and learning; in short, they stopped loving. Because to learn is to love the unknown. It is a natural quality in one’s infancy, in whatever social condition, from a hut to a luxury apartment, because that impulse comes before we come to life; it is a seed of a huge potential, which developed on astral dimension, protected and grown by wise Masters. One is born on the best place and predestined environment (human beings incarnate in pre-established family and society groups so that they may have facilities on their later development).
On these times of excessive mass development even with untenable maintenance by productions from the Planet, some few culture sectors are able to develop their identity. By a globalization of culture, habits, financial resources, trips and ideas, collectivities just can admit robotized androids, not individual making efforts to cultivate their personalities. Arts are almost dead, literature is mainly pornography, social relationships are grotesque, a mediocre TV is flooding homes and nobody can get rid of it, even those babies seated by their mother before the screen not to bother while they are sucking the rubber teat and being educated at the “universal school”.
Just by failure and contradiction, men can be saved from such existential damnation of the Western civilization. They must start again, like incarnation among men. This is fatally sanctioned by politics of Nations, as we wish those who work for a different time. It is written on Master Bovisio’s Teachings. Here, sermons or educational programs in force at school are worthless. Also science and religions are worthless. Renunciation of a lonely man and self-education by new-ideas of Hidrochosa is the only indispensable power for some few survivors to remain free in chaos and keep the legacy of life for the New Race.
The Renunciation Message is globally spread. For its efficacy and transformation into a transforming education it has to be in the heart of those who want to change –those chosen by destiny and protagonists of change. Only an auto-didactic person can do it because there are no teachers or spiritual directors to teach a difficult subject –the identity that every one of us bears in his soul. Times of dogmas and collective verities imposed by Religions, States and Universities are over. Now, what prevails is contradiction, ethics of good and evil, rebelliousness of the lonely man forced to enter the desert unknown to himself, to find and unveil hidden treasures that he inadvertently possesses, and then to go ahead, becoming strong in this freedom that he is conquering, and getting rid of collective impositions and beliefs of others. He we’ll remain such as he is although externally he has to work at an office or store. He is happy if he is able to quit such compulsive situation and looks for new air on the country or on the mountains. He will avoid the awful destruction undergone in big metropolis and in Nature.
He can start this change educating himself and educating his children, when and if he has children. The old adversary stays home presiding at family gatherings and “teaching” wickedness. If he wants to teach something good to his dear ones, call them together, unplug the TV set, throw it away, and crash it against the kerb so that it may not go on hurting. That teaching will stay there; and the TV set will be trash that the City Hall truck will gather up.
José González Muñoz
July 2010