Jiddu Krishnamurti : Now, how are we going to find the truth of this matter? Merely forcing the mind into a system, a pattern, is obviously not education. So, to discover what is right education, we must find out what we mean by "education." Surely, education is not to learn the purpose of life, but to understand the meaning, the significance, the process of existence; because if you say life has a purpose, then the purpose is self-projected.

Surely, to find out what is right education, you have first to inquire into the whole significance of life, of living. What is present education? Learning to earn a few rupees, acquiring a trade, becoming an engineer, a sociologist, learning how to butcher people, or how to read a poem. If you say education is to make a person efficient, which means to give him technical knowledge, then you must understand the whole significance of efficiency. What happens when a person becomes more and more efficient? He becomes more and more ruthless. Don't laugh. What are you doing in your daily life? What is happening, now in the world?

Education means the development of a particular technique, which is efficiency, which means industrialization, the capacity to work faster and produce more and more, all of which ultimately leads to war. You see this happening every day. Education as it is leads to war, and what is the point of education? To destroy or be destroyed. So, obviously, the present system of education is utterly futile. Therefore, what is important is to educate the educator. These are not clever statements to be listened to and laughed off. Because, without educating the teacher, what can he teach the child except the exploiting principles on which he himself has been brought up? Most of you have read many books. Where are you? You have money or can earn it, you have your pleasures and ceremonies - and you are in conflict; and what is the point of education, of learning to earn a few rupees, when your whole existence leads to misery and war?

So, right education, surely, must begin with the educator, the parent, the teacher; and inquiry into right education means inquiry into life, into existence, does it not? What is the point of your being educated as a lawyer if you are only going to increase conflict and maintain litigation? But there is money in that, and you thrive on it. So, if you want to bring about right education, you must obviously understand the meaning, the significance, of existence. It is not only to earn money, to have leisure, but to be able to think directly, truly - not "consistently," because to think consistently is merely to conform to a pattern. A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person; he merely repeats certain phrases and thinks in a groove. To find out what is right education, there must be the understanding of existence, which means the understanding of yourself, because you cannot understand existence abstractly. You cannot understand yourself by theorizing as to what education should be.

Surely, right education begins with the right understanding of the educator. Look at what is happening in the world. Governments are taking control of education - naturally, because all governments are preparing for war. Your pet government, as well as the foreign government, must inevitably prepare for war. A sovereign government must have an army, a navy, an air force; and to make the citizens efficient for war, to prepare them to perform their duties thoroughly, efficiently, ruthlessly, the central government must control them.

Therefore, they educate them as they manufacture mechanical instruments, to be ruthlessly efficient. If that is the purpose and end of education - to destroy or be destroyed - then it must be ruthless, and I am not at all sure that that is not what you want. Because, you are still educating your children in the same old fashion. Right education begins with the understanding of the educator, the teacher, which means that he must be free of established patterns of thought. Education is not merely imparting information, knowing how to read, gathering and correlating facts; but it is seeing the whole significance of education, of government, of the world situation, of the totalitarian spirit which is becoming more and more dominant throughout the world. Being confused, you create the educator who is also confused, and through so-called education you give power to destroy the foreign government.

Therefore, before you ask what right education is, you must understand yourself, and you will see that it does not take a long time to understand yourself if you are interested to find out. Sir, without understanding yourself as the educator, how can you bring about a new kind of education? Therefore, we come back to the eternal point - which is yourself - and you want to avoid that point; you want to shift the responsibility onto the teacher, onto the government. The government is what you are, the world is what you are; and without understanding yourself, how can there be right education?