To teach or not to

ST Team

'Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you,' says atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. We must relook at how we teach our children and what we wish to teach them in a way that does not make them bigoted adults. For this, it is imperative that we first stop treating them as unenlightened minds, for they have their creative genius, which, if allowed to flower independently, results in untrammelled learning.

A child is at her creative best because her perceptions are honest and pure, unpolluted by preconceived notions and social conditioning. What she sees is what she interprets from her own perspective, which is unsullied and fresh. No wonder children are so good at finding solutions to problems. They are not yet conditioned to get hassled about what others may think of them. They are free thinkers, in short, free spirits.


J Krishnamurti says, 'The ignorant man is not the unlearned, but he who does not know himself.... Understanding comes only through self-knowledge, which is awareness of one's total psychological process. Thus, education, in the true sense, is the understanding of oneself, for it is within each of us that the whole of existence is gathered.'

Today is Children's Day