<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <title></title> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> WOW! you are a Courageous Leader! (not to be confused with a N k0rea title :-) which reminds me of an excerpt from Krishnamurti that I have had doing the rounds, precisely on how younger people have an easier time collaborating than so-called adults. Because of its potential OT nature, I am copying it below the fold to mitigate offense - I put in bold the relevant part, to make the load lighter... :-) BTW, reading in between the lines, it turns out it was not that you were reluctant, but rather your teachers? Nice of you to take up the blame. I feel so encouraged by your attitude, and much honored to learn from you Yama On 01/21/2011 10:04 AM, Dr. Gerald Ardito wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:AANLkTimBJCkSwePZQa=K3kYaA3pkrSaPgDYwth1qR0qk@mail.gmail.com" type="cite">Yama, Your response actually gave me an idea. In the various situations in which I have worked, I have been able to develop students (even at ages 9 and 10) to be real leaders. Perhaps they are the way in to this dilemma. I will find a way to add them to this community. Perhaps, just as in the classroom, when teachers (and others) find the students participating so actively and responsibly, they will be called to join in? What do you think. Gerald </blockquote> one of my favorite blogs, framablog.org, had recently a version of this text by Krishnamurti. Since great friends Padmanabha and Rama Rao run the Krishnamurti school in India, it all came together to make me wish to share this with y'all - the subject matter is something we all wonder a lot about: the purpose of education, cooperation... <blockquote>" One of the basic problems confronting the world is the problem of cooperation. What does the word "cooperation" mean? To cooperate is to do things together, to build together, to feel together, to have something in common so that we can freely work together. But people generally don't feel inclined to work together naturally, easily, happily; and so they are compelled to work together through various inducements: threat, fear, punishment, reward. This is the common practice throughout the world. Under tyrannical governments you are brutally forced to work together; if you don't "cooperate" you are liquidated or sent to a concentration camp. In the so-called civilized nations you are induced to work together through the concept of "my country," or for an ideology which has been very carefully worked out and widely propagated so that you accept it; or you work together to carry out a plan which somebody has drawn up, a blueprint for Utopia. So, it is the plan, the idea, the authority which induces people to work together. This is generally called cooperation, and in it there is always the implication of reward or punishment, which means that behind such "cooperation" there is fear. You are always working for something--for the country, for the king, for the party, for God or the Master, for peace, or to bring about this or that reform. Your idea of cooperation is to work together for a particular result. You have an ideal--to build a perfect school, or what you will--towards which you are working, therefore you say cooperation is necessary. All this implies authority, does it not? There is always someone who is supposed to know what is the right thing to do, and therefore you say, "We must cooperate in carrying it out." Now, I don't call that cooperation at all. That is not cooperation, it is a form of greed, a form of fear, compulsion. Behind it there is the threat that if you don't "cooperate" the government won't recognize you, or the Five Year Plan will fail, or you will be sent to a concentration camp, or your country will lose the war, or you may not go to heaven. There is always some form of inducement, and where there is inducement there cannot be real cooperation. Nor is it cooperation when you and I work together merely because we have mutually agreed to do something. In any such agreement what is important is the doing of that particular thing, not working together. You and I may agree to build a bridge, or construct a road, or plant some trees together, but in that agreement there is always the fear of disagreement, the fear that I may not do my share and let you do the whole thing. So it is not cooperation when we work together through any form of inducement, or by mere agreement, because behind all such effort there is the implication of gaining or avoiding something. To me, cooperation is entirely different. Cooperation is the fun of being and doing together--not necessarily doing something in particular. Do you understand? Young children normally have a feeling for being and doing together. Haven't you noticed this? They will cooperate in anything. There is no question of agreement or disagreement, reward or punishment; they just want to help. They cooperate instinctively, for the fun of being and doing together. But grown-up people destroy this natural, spontaneous spirit of cooperation in children by saying, "If you do this I will give you that; if you don't do this I won't let you go to the cinema," which introduces the corruptive element. So, real cooperation comes, not through merely agreeing to carry out some project together, but with the joy, the feeling of togetherness, if one may use that word; because in that feeling there is not the obstinacy of personal ideation, personal opinion. When you know such cooperation, you will also know when not to cooperate, which is equally important. Do you understand? It is necessary for all of us to awaken in ourselves this spirit of cooperation, for then it will not be a mere plan or agreement which causes us to work together, but an extraordinary feeling of togetherness, the sense of joy in being and doing together without any thought of reward or punishment. That is very important. But it is equally important to know when not to cooperate; because if we are not wise we may cooperate with the unwise, with ambitious leaders who have grandiose schemes, fantastic ideas, like Hitler and other tyrants down through the ages. So we must know when not to cooperate; and we can know this only when we know the joy of real cooperation. This is a very important question to talk over, because when it is suggested that we work together, your immediate response is likely to be, "What for? What shall we do together?" In other words, the thing to be done becomes more important than the feeling of being and doing together; and when the thing to be done--the plan, the concept, the ideological Utopia--assumes primary importance, then there is no real cooperation. Then it is only the idea that is binding us together; and if one idea can bind us together, another idea can divide us. So, what matters is to awaken in ourselves this spirit of cooperation, this feeling of joy in being and doing together, without any thought of reward or punishment. Most young people have it spontaneously, freely, if it is not corrupted by their elders. " </blockquote> </body> </html>