Inspiration
What a child needs is inspiration, not just information – Sadhguru
Global Education and Skills Forum 2017 held in Dubai was fortuitous to be graced by the presence and a plenary speech by the visionary spiritual leader Sadhguru J. Vasudev. He has been conferred the “Padma Vibhushan” award for the year 2017 by the Indian government.
Global Education and Skills Forum 2017 held in Dubai was fortuitous to be graced by the presence and a plenary speech by the visionary spiritual leader Sadhguru J. Vasudev.
He has been conferred the “Padma Vibhushan” award for the year 2017 by the Indian government and is the founder of the Isha foundation, a non-profitable organisation that works towards creating an inclusive culture of global harmony and progress.
Here are some excerpts from the spiritual leader’s views on global education shared by him at the GESF 2017:
Education is not a production line. It is an organic happening. You cannot create an education system independent of the society in which we exist.
Every child on the planet must have access to the highlights of different cultures.
If you deaden the brain with too much information, the possibility of intelligence is definitely lost. What we accumulate and who we are should remain separate.
Education should be about helping children to live life expressively and to always be curious.
Education has to be about every human being becoming a ‘seeker’. The purpose of education is to expand the horizons of individual human beings.
When we talk about people, we don’t refer to them as humans. We refer to them as Indians, Americans, Emiratis or whatever else. We need to overcome limited identities by experiencing other people as part of ourselves.
Don’t mistake intellect for intelligence. Intellect functions only with the backing of your memory whereas intelligence doesn’t need the support of your memory. If education systems do not focus on activating these dimensions of intelligence, you will create a workforce but no geniuses.
What a child needs is inspiration, not just information. We need to completely take away the idea of instruction from the teaching process. Instead of instruction, we need to empower teachers to inspire and transmit what really matters to them.
Decondition the intelligence, so that it becomes active, adapting to situations and doing what is appropriate.
A human being is here to enhance life in a way that no other creature can.
This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of ScooNews magazine. Subscribe to ScooNews Magazine today to have more such stories delivered to your desk every month.