Early in his journey as a transformative educator, Krishnamurti had suggested:
‘And if you are interested in teaching, and also in what I am saying, then you will find out the method of teaching… You want me to lay down the principles; I cannot do it. But you will find out for yourself how to work, how to draw the principles out of what I have been saying, if you are interested as teachers. For teachers, it is not a peculiar profession. I do not think it is a specialist profession: it is a human profession; you need not be scientists who are specially drawn. You are human beings, and from that you are to approach it — your teaching and everything else.’
—J. Krishnamurti – Varanasi, 1933
The twenty-ninth issue of the Journal of Krishnamurti Schools, as with the previous twenty-eight issues, continues to explore, grapple with and seek clarity around this very human profession of teaching.
Fittingly, in the opening article, O R Rao scans the vast landscape of life on earth and describes the human quality of ‘self consciousness’ as bringing in a new dimension of being on earth. The ability to self consciously question the ‘self’—What is my nature? Why is there suffering? —sets the human being apart from other creatures. ‘The elephant with all its intelligence and capacity for empathy remains an elephant and nothing else. It does not question itself or the world.’ It is human beings who have the potential for transformation. Quite without intention, yet pushing a similar point, the journal concludes with a conversation between Steve Smith and Alok Mathur on how the human mind occupied with measurement, scores and placings, leaves the ‘terrain of the human psyche untouched’. Without questioning the hidden depths that control our everyday behaviour, ‘we shall remain barbarians at heart’ avers Steve at the beginning of this exchange. They go on to explore the place of meditation and inquiry in the field of education.
Between the first and last pages of the journal are a wide range of articles that explore and grapple with essential questions of being a teacher and a human being. Based on their lived experiences, each writer seeks clarity on different dimensions of teaching and learning.
Govind Krishnamoorthy, a clinical researcher and practicing psychologist, describes how fear is so entrenched in our educational institutions that responses of competitiveness, one-upmanship or anxious withdrawal may not be seen as simply ‘failures of character’ but as ‘predictable responses of a nervous system that has been trained to see danger everywhere.’ Drawing on his time as a student in Krishnamurti schools, he suggests that a different kind of education might prepare us to meet life differently. As if glancing off this article, there is a significant realization for a teacher who had been trained to say ‘no’ in his earlier years of teaching. After years of saying ‘no’, Aaron Gardner found the freedom to say ‘yes’ to children. This, ‘the gift of saying yes’, liberates both teacher and student.
Jessica Kokkebaeker marvels at the curiosity and depth of experience which young children bring to learning. She strives to find a space for learning that connects children to the environment, the community and to themselves; in which children are invited to ‘think, feel, act and reflect.’. Speaking of her work with older students, Vidya Premkumar says that the ‘boundaries between classroom, laboratory, and outdoors are porous… Biology does not belong to one space. It moves, just as life does.’ Her account of various contexts in and around the school campus, which her students engage with, is indicative of the subtle processes of observation and learning about the living world. She remarks that, when this subject is taught within the four walls of a classroom with a focus on recall, fear narrows observation and curiosity gives way to caution,. She reminds us that learning does not announce itself loudly and instead happens in quiet moments of attention. While the forest has always been imagined as a ‘grand green space’ far away from our urban lives, V Arun’s article brings a particular forest vividly to life. Teachers and students enter this forest as learners and stumble upon new lenses to look; new ways to understand the forest intimately. He concludes by sharing that ‘Life [in the forest] is so rich and one cannot wait to experience it to the fullest.’
Teaching is a deeply ‘human profession’. It is in relationship that one teaches and learns. The ability to observe, to listen, to be sensitive to the moment is what makes learning a living process. Ashwin Prabhu recognizes how closely students can be invited to observe a historical structure or artefact when they are in direct contact with it, and the teacher is not looking for the one right answer. In teaching Physics, Harpreet Hura realizes that if he intervenes too early ‘I force a premature collapse of a student’s thought process’. As a language teacher, Bhaween Sawlani feels it is important to inculcate in students the facility to find the words that express one’s thoughts effectively in a manner he likens to ‘a sculptor who works on his material’. When selecting picture books with stories reflecting cultural diversity that may develop empathetic responses in children, Keerthi Mukunda suggests that a sensitive appraisal of the texts and pictures is required of the teacher. She needs to keep in mind that every story is ‘one slice of a truth and every voice, one representation.’
There are difficult questions too that the teacher must ask as they relate with their students. Krithika Thandapani notices as she watches children how easy it is to make assumptions, to interpret a child’s behaviour quickly and how these ‘overshadow the quieter perceptions’ that become visible when she pauses to listen. Vivek Mishra would perhaps concur. He says that schools need spaces that breathe, where children can ‘unfold’ at their own pace, where not everything has to be loud and visible. V Rajiv on his part notices ‘diminishing spaces’ for sustaining fuller conversations among people and feels that such spaces of conversation within academic learning hold a deep place in a student’s life.
Education ‘is not a preparation for life , education is life itself’, said John Dewey. Can schools be places where every child belongs? A place where their social and emotional well-being is as significant as academic learning? When we do not pack education into convenient boxes with well-defined outcomes, we might discover innate capacities which could otherwise ‘atrophy’. We need to create spaces that allow for the emergence of a quality of intelligence that is ‘harder to name and still harder to find’. These are some of the issues that Rina Raphael, Sharanya Rengarajan, and Shikha Dutt raise for readers, even as they report on different initiatives in schools that they are part of.
Drawing from his work in a ‘small school’ Sharad Jain insists that a school does not emerge from any individual’s vision or efforts. Instead, a school is a shared space involving teachers, children and parents equally. ‘One needs to talk together, challenge, be challenged and change when needed—to co-create a living environment of inquiry’.
Two significant concerns occupy Indian society as well as the world today. Responding to a reader’s question on what might nurture intrinsic motivation in students from the varied sections of a highly stratified society like India, Proteep Mallik writes from his experience at a university that aims to promote social justice and equity. He feels that, for students from different sections of society, colleges must attempt to build a connection between the classroom and the broader surroundings and that this may bridge the ‘cloistered life of a school pupil and the independent life of a college-going adult.’ Responding to the ongoing ‘Climate Crisis,’ Pallavi Phatak argues that traditional schooling ‘is designed around futures that are collapsing’ and makes the case for an urgent shift in our consciousness as well as educational aims. She proposes ‘climate education’ as a necessary tool to till the soil that could lead to a more inclusive and regenerative future.
Finally, as a centrepiece in this Journal, the reader is invited to accompany seven teachers as they introspect on the teachers who have influenced them, and on persons and situations that have shaped them both as teachers and as human beings.
We hope that the honesty of inquiry in these writings, and their collective acknowledgment of the vastness of the field of education, may leave the reader with new questions, some insights and an empathy for our human condition.
Jayashree Nambiar
June 2026