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Developing Awareness in Teachers Towards Values
53 "After all, if you want to understand something, you have to be in a passive mood, do you not? You cannot keep on thinking about it, speculating about it or questioning. You have to be sensitive enough to receive the content of it".()
Therefore, the teacher has to be sensitive like a photographic plate so that he can clearly know himself and his pupils as well. As soon as the teacher develops sensitivity, the process of self-understanding begins and he starts understanding not only the superficial layers of consciousness but the deeper as well, which are much more important and difficult to know. It is the deeper-laver of the consciousness in which our motives, intentions, confused demands, anxieties, fears and all appetites are hidden. Therefore, it is so important to develop sensitivity so that the inner self could be understood. The following is the Chant representing the process of self-awareness as preceived by Krishnamurthi :
"Silent Observation without Idnetification Comparison Condemnation
Sensitivity
Or
SELF-AWARENESS”
The state of self-awareness is the state of all bliss in which the mind is totally alert, (), and passively disinterested, devoid of identification, comparison and condemnation. In this state the teacher is surely implict with all kinds of values as his vision is unhindered with any motives or desires. It is the state of freedom in which there is no prejudice, desire or anxiety. Neither there is any kind of covetousness which is detrimental to possess a clear vision. Understanding the Pupil
If once the teacher is able to develop passive sensitivity or self-awareness, it would be easier for him to understand his pupils. The pupil comes from entirely different family background which crystallized with different kinds of prejudices and complexes. Unless the teacher has a clear and a free perception, he cannot understnad his pupil. And without that understading he cannot exert adequate influence on him to mould him in the right direction,
What is happening today is that both the teacher and the pupil are pulling cach other apart in different directions. Asa result, every kind of deterioration in respect of values is perceptible. Therefore, in order to arrest that degeneration and deterioration, the teacher needs to be very alert and positive in his thinking so that he can perceive things as they are. Only then he can determine a wholesome direction for his pupils. Children at the primary stage of schooling are like fragile material which need
January-March 1993
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