Education and Conditioning

Is it possible for us to look directly at systems of education without preconceived notions and theories? Can one look at the reality of education, what 'actually' is without excuse or justification? Because if we justify then we excuse the reality of 'what is' and are unable to perceive the truth of the moment.

Education is a attempt to impart knowledge to 'individuals' in a communal environment that fosters competition and rewards those who are capable of excelling psychologically and physically. It is a system of punishment and reward. Can one realize that the actual fact of education is the teaching of violence. The differentiation of levels of accomplishment harbors the psychological implication of violent behavior. To educate is to alienate and create an atmoshpere of competitive dissonance. Violence may take the form of the physical or the psychological. Violence to another or to one's self. We take the innocence of mind and create an individual who is indoctrinated with fear and suspicion. These are the individuals who will spend a lifetime trying to undo what parents and educators have done to them. As educators one may include not only parents but also religious and political entities. If we look at what our children have become we must realize that they only mirror what we are, what the pressures of society have created. If we are unable to change ourselves, fundamentally, then we cannot expect our children to change, to be any different than what has gone on before. Therefore we cannot expect the world to become less violent through the accumulation of education or knowledge. There must be a fundamental understanding of the nature of thought and cumulative effect that experience has on formulating the self. One must be taught to differentiate between what is reality and what is a projection of the accumulated self. One must realize that a separated individuality is an illusion, a creation of thought which is seeking continuity and relevance As long as one seeks the conformity of the known there will be suspicion and violence. We repeat what we know, because we are unaware of the truth of freedom.

We separate according to intellect, physical ability and the sociological. "We" create the failures and the success'. We do not allow the freedom and creativity of each individual to blossom according to each one's own biological inference and capacity. We instead chastise, criticize, and belittle those who do not fit within the narrow confines of our staid and conflicted requirements for what is considered an education. Higher education is little more than rote memory, which does little to prepare one for the reality of life. As the educated, we are all failures, because that is what we have been taught to be. No success is enough, no money is enough, no acknowledgement is enough. One is always failing at something. We are caught in the mentality of having to become something. We are in reality this, but we aspire to be that. That is the conflict of life of what we call living. Because we cannot accept who we are, we cannot accept others. The violence that we inflict on ourselves is also the violence that we inflict on others.

This programing of violence starts when one is very young. Education and schooling which separates and further divides according to so-called aptitude, is the precursor of a system of reward and punishment. Society worships the successful and the celebrity. We give them power, but we also want desperately for them fail. Because success and failure is what we have been taught. We are programed to experience success so that we can fail. One cannot exist without the other, they are two sides of the same coin, which is fear.


To be educated is to be conditioned. The self, the ego is the result of the accumulation of knowledge. It is the conditioning of insecurity, conflict, and violence. To realize freedom through example and self realization is to discover intelligence which is consciousness of the unconditioned.