[The sannyasin who started the ashram school says: I just don’t understand what it means to be a teacher to children here…]
Yes, that is right — it will be a totally different thing! It will be a totally different thing….
It can’t apply here. A few things to remember, and then you can work them out…. The first and the most basic is that we are not to enforce any pattern on the children. We have just to help them to be themselves. So there is no ideal that has to be enforced on them. You just have to be a caring atmosphere around them, so whatsoever they want to do you can help them to do better. Just help them to do it better. And they are not in any game, ambition-game.
We are not trying to make them very very powerful, famous, rich, this and that, in their life, no. Our whole effort here is to help them to be alive, authentic, loving, flowing, and life takes care. A trust in life — that’s what has to be created around them, so they can trust in life. Not that they have to struggle but can relax. And as for education, just help them to be more creative. Painting is good — they should try painting — or creating something else, but let it be creative; let them do things on their own. And don’t bring in your criterions.
For example, when a child paints, don’t bring in adultish criterions; don’t say that this is not Picasso. If the child has enjoyed it and when he was painting he got absorbed in it, that’s enough. The painting is great! Not because of any objective criterion — the painting may be just nonsense; it may be just colours splashed, may be messy…. It has to be because a child is a child; he has a different vision of things.
For example, if a child makes the face of a man he has a different vision. He will make very big eyes; the nose will be very small. The ears may be missing — he has never looked at them — but eyes are very important for him. If he makes a man he will make the head and the hands and the legs and the torso will be missing — that is his vision. For you it is wrong but from his standpoint that is how he looks at a man: hands, legs and head.
So it is not the question that you have to judge whether the painting is good or bad. No, we are not going to judge at all. Judge ye not. Don’t make the child feel good or bad about it. If the child is absorbed in painting it, that’s enough. He was in deep meditation, he moved with the painting utterly… he was lost in it! The painting is good because the painter was lost.
Help the child to be completely lost, and whenever a child is painting on his own, he will be lost. If you force him to paint then he will be distracted. So whatsoever the children want to do, let them do; just help them. Mm ?you can help in many technical ways. You can tell them — if a child wants to paint — how to mix colours, how to fix the canvas, how to use the brush; that you can help with. Be a help there; rather than being a guide, be a help.
Just as a gardener helps the tree… You cannot pull the tree fast; you cannot do anything in that way, nothing can be done positively. You plant the seed, you water, you give the manure, and you wait! The tree happens on its own. When the tree is happening you protect it so somebody does not hurt it or harm it. That is the function of a teacher: the teacher has to be a gardener. Not that you have to create the child; the child is coming on its own — god is the creator.
That’s what socrates means when he says, ‘I am a midwife.’ A midwife does not create the child. The child is already there, ready to come out; the midwife helps.
So help them to be creative, help them to be joyous, because that has disappeared from the schools. Children are very sad, and sad children create a sad world. They are going to inhabit the world, and we destroy their joy. Help their joy, help their celebration, make them more and more cheerful. Nothing is more valuable than that. If they are not doing mathematics it is perfectly okay, because mathematics is not the point. The point is joy!
If they are not learning language, forget about it; they are learning something far more valuable. In this atmosphere of joy help them to learn two things — language and mathematics. History is meaningless bunk!
Just two small things — a little mathematics will be needed in their life. And about that too: we are not to make them great mathematicians, just a little mathematics so they can figure out things. And language it needed so they can communicate. They can read poetry, they can enjoy the great works.
And there is going to be no examination. There is going to be no gradation of who is first and who is second. Everybody is just the same. We make the space available for them to learn — they all have learned according to their capacities but who are we to judge? So no gradation, no examination. And when children are a little grown up let them learn practical things — carpentry, pottery, weaving — and they will enjoy all those things. When they are still more grown up let them learn something about electricity, cars, mechanisms, technology, but practical things.
That’s why the other day I said the university that is going to be will be rajneesh international anti-university. We will make everything anti: no examinations, and the vice chancellor and the chancellor will not have any degrees. Only sweepers and cleaners will have degrees!
And you have to work it out soon because when we move, then at least one hundred children will be immediately available….
Start working so it takes some shape before we move. Because there you have to start a full-fledged school. But it is going to be a totally different kind of school, because I am all for de-schooling society.
Man can be saved only if society is de-schooled or if totally different kind of schools which cannot be called schools are evolved; then only humanity can be saved.
So no ambition should be there, no comparison ever. Never compare a child with another and say, ‘Look, the other has done a better painting!… That is ugly, violent, destructive. You are destroying both the children. The one you say has done a better painting starts getting the idea of the ego, superiority, and the one who has been condemned starts feeling inferior. And these are the illnesses — the superior and the inferior — so never compare!
It will be difficult for you and other teachers because comparison is so much in us. Never compare. Each child has to be respected on his own. Each child has to be respected as unique.
-Osho, "Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There, #16"