Benjamin Creme on Education

“To me, education is every activity that fits a man, woman, or child for the fullest expression of their potential. Coming into incarnation at a certain stage in development, carrying on from a previous life, we have a given potential in terms of soul expression, intelligence, and physical equipment, whatever that brings into this life. Education is the preparation of a man, woman, or child, on physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual planes, to bring out their potential in any given life...”

“In today's sense, education is a feeble thing indeed, ensuring only the minimum requirements for an understanding and control of man's environment... Few there are who learn more than the rudiments of life's meaning and purpose, caught up, as most people are, in the daily struggle for existence. Whole nations, today, are all but illiterate still. Elsewhere, facts-full minds stand idle for lack of meaningful work. Education for jobs has replaced education for life while, more and more, the stresses and strains of such imbalance erupt in violence of all kinds.”

“Up until now, education in most countries has been very nationalistic. People have been taught the history of their nation, usually in a very biased form: everything that nation did was good, and everything other nations did was bad. This has given a very jaundiced, and quite incorrect, vision of the world to the developing child. I would say that education, in the first place, has to show the child that it is a member of a world family. Today, most education, for what it is worth, is education for jobs. People are simply fitted to make their living in the outer commercial world under the whip of competition. This will change. Competition has to give way to co-operation.”