To improve our education, we need to stop mass production, says Sadhguru

In India, the concept of education has been very sacred. But over the years, people lost their way and made it about obtaining credits and mechanising the minds. Starting with that thought, Sandeep Sinha, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Lumis Partners, put forward the question, “Where do you think education lost the script?”

Commenting on this, Jaggi Vasudev, a motivational speaker and the Founder of Isha Foundation, popularly known as Sadhguru, said:

“Education has not lost the script. But who wrote the script for us is something we have to look at.”

In a fireside chat at the Resurgence TiEcon Delhi-NCR event, Sadhguru spoke about ‘Education for Life’ and said,

“Unfortunately, as a nation and a culture with profound roots, or as parents and teachers, we should have re-thought the whole fundamental part of education.”

Children and education

Earlier, people were able to craft themselves into their own unique personalities. Now, with no sense of what actual life is, human beings can be easily replaced with machines, said Sadhguru.

The system of education is the same for the first 16 years for all children who wish to go to any stream of life - from banking to artistry, and we’re being cultured into this kind of life. This leads to a kind of mass production, which brings us to another question - quantity vs quality.

And with the increasing population, there is an increasing demand for mass production, leading to this kind of education.

Sadhguru said that we need to break this fixed idea of education and not make it about carrying badges, even though it was used as a marker to show your educational qualification in the society. “But soon this will change as many companies will stop looking at these markers as a criteria for hiring,” he said.

Now, with children learning from home, parents need to be more dedicated towards their child’s education. So, this again calls for a lot more commitment towards the child’s development, he added.

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The pandemic pause

When asked if the pandemic is temporary, a fleeting realisation, or a sincere opportunity to realign our education and work to feel perfect, Sadhguru said it depends on whether the situation will continue for the next one year or change in the next two months with the vaccines. Irrespective of this, people are waiting for things to go back to normalcy.

“But was everything normal in the past, before the pandemic? In fact, normalcy has been forced upon us in pandemic times. We’ve been compelled to behave consciously,” said Sadhguru.

One size doesn’t fit all

Sandeep went on to ask another question that if we could go back to contributing about 25 percent to the global GDP as we did 100 years ago if we implemented the kind of education we had back then.

“Only if we stop mass production,” Sadhguru said.

A crowd can never act intelligently, only an individual can. If we produce more people who have crafted their own future, learning about the things unique to their stream, the more capable our society will become, he said, adding, “Without creating great human beings, we will be unable to create a great society.”

While we prepare our children for university, nobody actually prepares them for life. We’re forced into thinking more is better aiding this ‘mass-production'.

“Education is not independent of the social structure. While our ancient societies used to value knowledge and power, our current society acknowledges the size of the pocket or their ‘hold in the society,” said Sadhguru.

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The new ‘normal’

“Particularly in the field of education, sustaining work from home would be great. But this puts a lot more pressure on the parents,” said Sadhguru.

In his opinion, children should go to school for about four months in a year to get a little discipline, and they also need to have some focused time with nature. Only this way the brain and body can grow to full size.

So up to the age of 12, the child needs only to play, jump, and run. But now, with even a three-year-old having access to Google, too much information is being passed on, disrupting and limiting their thinking, he said.

“We have forgotten that our activity is largely dependent on the times in which we exist. So, it is important human beings develop to the full size in all aspects of life. What we do must not be determined by us, but by the situation,” Sadhguru said.