Our home-education

There is no division between education and life. Our education involves many things, yet it all comes down to learning together about the human mind and about our relationship to each other and to nature. Education is always now. It is not something “for the future”. It is important that we discover in our lives what we really like to do, what we really feel is the right thing for us to do, the right occupation. We also need to spend enough time to acquire certain kinds of knowledge and skills which are necessary to live in this society. 

While living and acquiring knowledge and skills, it is equally important to observe the society in which we live and to ask ourselves why this society is in such a state of confusion, on all levels. We see that we human beings have created this society. We are responsible for the way things happen in this world. If we are responsible we should be clear about what drives us in this world. To come upon this we observe our actions, our thoughts, our feelings. We begin to observe the human mind. We begin to see the structure of society and the structure of the human mind. 

We also observe that people have tried in a thousand different ways – in education, in politics, in religion etc. – to re-organize structures and to change human behaviour. These reforms throughout history have led to only superficial and temporary solutions or to even greater chaos. Changes and reforms are the outcome of careful, analytical thoughts or of cunning thoughts or of irrational thoughts. We observe that reform is the result of thoughts, whether so-called good, bad or irrational thoughts. 

From that we ask ourselves whether thought can ever fully understand the chaos we live in. We even begin to ask ourselves whether thought itself is perhaps responsible for this chaos. If thought is responsible, let us observe it so that we come to know all about it. We observe it by studying society and by studying the workings of our own mind throughout the day: when we work, when we play, when we study various subjects like history or biology, when we read the newspaper together, when we do sports, when we meet friends, when we are silent. 

Seeing how confused and contradictory our thoughts and actions are, we ask ourselves in what ways we can come to a greater understanding of this human mind? If not through more thoughts then what will lead to deeper understanding? 

Is it possible for the child and the teacher to learn together about the human mind, about the superficial layers and the deeper layers, and to die together to every movement of thought? To anger, to fear, to anxiety, to desire, to criticism, to flattery? Observing and dying together to all these movements of thoughts and feelings, do we come upon a different kind of communication? Understanding is always in the now. It is not something we will acquire in the future. Can the teacher and the student live a life together in which they move together, in their daily meetings? 

That demands intensity. An intensity that follows from realizing that there is only this moment now and that I am completely responsible in this moment for the way I behave, feel, think, act. This intensity does not allow the mind to slip into postponement and irresponsible action.  

Is it possible to create places where this living and learning together can take place? I think it is possible, whether through home-education or through a small school or through other forms of co-operative action. When many flowers get the opportunity to blossom the landscape will transform into a beautiful wave.