Doug Noon at Borderland, on good teaching

Doug's article includes a few quotations from J. Krishnamurti, a writer previously unknown to me. The main idea is that teachers should do more than raise their students' test scores; they should teach the whole child, which crucially means respecting their differences and helping them be the best of what they are, rather than vainly trying to make them all into little copies of ourselves.

My favorite part is this quotation from Krishnamurti's book called Education and the Significance of Life.

To understand a child we have to watch him at play, study him in his different moods; we cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes and fears, or mould him to fit the pattern of our desires. If we are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and hindrances in our relationship with him and in his relationships with the world. Unfortunately, most of us desire to shape the child in a way that is gratifying to our own vanities and idiosyncrasies; we find varying degrees of comfort and satisfaction in exclusive ownership and domination.

Surely, this process is not relationship, but mere imposition, and it is therefore essential to understand the difficult and complex desire to dominate. It takes many subtle forms; and in its self-righteous aspect, it is very obstinate. The desire to ‘’serve” with the unconscious longing to dominate is difficult to understand. Can there be love where there is possessiveness? Can we be in communion with those whom we seek to control?