Truth vs Yoga Sutras

When Patanjali points at the truth, all the idiots see is the yoga sutras!

जननम-मरणम

पुनरपि जननम- पुनरपि मरणम

மருமகன்

மாமன் மடியில் முழு நிலவின் மணி நேர ஆழ்ந்த உறக்கம்!

Neill Neill Orange Peel

This is an extract from the autobiography of the legendary scottish educator A.S.Neill. I strongly recommend his book 'Summerhill school' and his autobiography 'Neill Neill Orange Peel' to anyone who plans to get anywhere near 'educating' a child (hir own or that of others)!

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A note on the title

Years ago, Hetney, a little boy at Summerhill, went round muttering to himself: “Neill! Neill! Orange Peel!” The phrase caught on and has lived for more than twenty-five years. To this day, small children follow me around chanting the words, and my usual reaction is: “Wrong again. Not orange peel—banana peel.

I have selected this rhyme as the title of my autobiography, because it sums up my life with children; indeed, it might be the motto for Summerhill, if we believed in mottoes. These words tell the whole story of my school and my life. They show how the gulf between generations can be bridged—or rather abolished—for they do not connote cheek or hate: they mean love; they mean equality. If every kid in the world could call his teacher Orange Peel, or an equivalent, my mail would not be filled with letters beginning: “I hate my school; can I come to Summerhill?”

Parent or teacher - You cannot boss the child!

The little boy’s chant shows that there is no necessity for a gulf separating pupils from teachers, a gulf made by adults, not children. Teachers want to be little gods protected by dignity. They fear that if they act human, their authority will vanish and their classrooms will become bedlams. They fear to abolish fear. Innumerable children are afraid of their teachers. It is discipline that creates the fear. Ask any soldier if he fears his sergeant major; I never met one who didn’t.

The Summerhill rhyme tells the world that a school can abolish fear of teachers and, deeper down, fear of life. And it is not only Neill that the kids treat with equality and fun and love; the whole staff are treated as pals and playmates. They do not stand on their dignity, nor do they expect any deference because they are adults. Socially, the only privilege the teachers have is their freedom from bedtime laws. Their food is that of the school community. They are addressed by their first names and seldom are given nicknames; and if they are, these are tokens of friendliness and equality. For thirty years, George Corkhill, our science master, was George or Corks or Corkie. Every pupil loved him.

Years ago, in one of my books, I wrote that when inter­viewing a prospective teacher, my test was: “What would you do if a child called you a bloody fool?” It is my test today, except that bloody—never a real swearword outside British realms—has been changed to a more popular expletive. More and more, I have come to believe that the greatest reform required in our schools is the abolition of that chasm between young and old which perpetuates paternalism. Such dictatorial authority gives a child an inferiority that persists throughout life; as an adult, he merely exchanges the authority of the teacher for that of the boss.

An army may be a necessity, but no one, barring a dull conservative, would argue that military life is a model for liv­ing. Yet our schools are army regiments or worse. Soldiers at least move around a lot, but a child sits on his bottom most of the time at an age when the whole human instinct is to move. In this book, I explain why the powers that be try to devitalize children as they do, but the mass of teachers do not understand what lies behind their discipline and “character molding,” and most do not want to know. The disciplinary way is the easy one. attention! stand at ease! These are the orders of the barrack square and the classroom. Obey! Obey! they say, but people do not obey equals; they obey superiors. Obedience implies fear, and that should be the last emotion encouraged in a school. In the U.S.A., it is the student’s fear of bad grades— idiotic grades that mean nothing of importance—or fear of not passing exams; in some countries—Britain among them, I hate to admit—it is still fear of the cane or the belt, or the fear of being scorned or mocked by stupid teachers.

The tragedy is that fear also exists on the teacher’s side— fear of being thought human, fear of being found out by the uncanny intuition of children. I know this. Ten years of teach­ing in state schools left me with no illusions about teachers. In my time, I, too, was dignified, aloof, and a disciplinarian. I taught in a system that depended on the tawse, as we called the belt in Scotland. My father used it and I followed suit, without ever thinking about the rights and wrongs of it— until the day when I myself, as a headmaster, belted a boy for insolence. A new, sudden thought came to me. What am I doing? This boy is small, and I am big. Why am I hitting someone not my own size? I put my tawse in the fire and never hit a child again. The boy’s insolence had brought me down to his level; it offended my dignity, my status as the ultimate authority. He had addressed me as if I were his equal, an unpardonable affront. But today, sixty years later, thousands of teachers are still where I was then. That sounds arrogant, but it is simply the raw truth that teachers largely refuse to be people of flesh and blood.

Only yesterday, a young teacher told me that his head­master had threatened him with dismissal because a boy had addressed him as Bob. “What will happen to discipline if you allow such familiarity?” he asked. “What would happen to a private who addressed his colonel as Jim?” I believe that in the Russian Army after the Revolution there were no barriers between officers and men. They were all pals. But the system failed, I am told, and the army returned to its old ways of class division and stem discipline.

Neill! Neill! Orange Peel! is a title that may shock the “dead” teachers. But it will be understood by students in all lands—barring those in Iron Curtain countries who are never allowed to hear of Summerhill. Why do I get hundreds of letters from children? Not because of my beautiful eyes—nay, but because the idea of Summerhill touches their depths, their longing for freedom, their hatred of authority in home and school, their wish to be in contact with their elders. Summerhill has no generation gap. If it had, half of my proposals in our general meetings would not be outvoted. If it had, a girl of twelve could not tell a teacher that his lessons are dull. I hasten to add that a teacher can tell a kid that he is being a damned nuisance. Freedom must look both ways.

I do not want to be remembered as a great educator, for I am not. If I am to be remembered at all, I hope it will be because I tried to break down the gulf between young and old, tried to abolish fear in schools, tried to persuade teachers to be honest with themselves and drop the protective amour they have worn for generations as a separation from their pupils. I want to be remembered as an ordinary guy who be­lieved that hate never cured anything, that being on the side of the child—Horner Lane’s phrase—is the only way to pro­duce happy schooling and a happy life later on. As I am “Neill! Neill! Orange Peel!” to my little pupils, so I would like to be to all the children in the world — one who trusts children, who believes in original goodness and warmth, who sees in authority only power and, too often, hate.

Soon I must shuffle off this mortal coil, but I hope that coming generations will look back at the education of our time and marvel at its barbarity, its destruction of human poten­tialities, its insane concern about formal learning. I hope, against everything that makes me pessimistic: the wars, the religious suppression, the crimes. Cannot those who yell for the hanging of criminals see that they are treating a rup­tured appendix with aspirin? Will not society recognize that it is our repressive system, plus the poverty of our mean streets, plus our soulless, acquisitive society, that is making criminals and neurotics?

I confess to dithering. One day, when I think of the challenge of the young, I am optimistic; next day, when I scan the newspapers and read of rape and murder and wars and racialism, I become engulfed by pessimism. But I guess that ambivalence is common to us all.

Extract from the novel 'Theatre' by Somerset Maugham

"Have you made up your mind what you are going to be yet?"

"No, is there any hurry yet?"

"You know how ignorant I am about everything. Your father says that if you are going to be a barrister you ought to work at law when you go to Cambridge. On the other hand, if you fancy the Foreign Office, you should take up modern languages."

He looked at her for so long, with that queer, reflecting air of his, that Julia had some difficulty in holding her light playful and yet affectionate expression.

"If I believed in God I'd be a priest", he said at last.

"A priest?" Julia could hardly believe her ears. "That was all right in the sixteenth century.", she said. "It is too late in the day for that"

"Much."

"What is it that you want?"

Once gain he gave her his disconcerting stare. It is hard to know if he was serious, for his eyes faintly shined merely with amusement. "Reality."

"What do you mean?"

"You see. I've lived all my life in an atmosphere of make believe. I want to get down to brass tacks. You and father are all right breathing this air, it's the only air you know and you think its the air of heaven. It stifles me."

"Dear, we are actors and successul ones in that and thats why we have been able to surround you with luxuries."

"I'm very grateful for all that you have done."

"Then, what are you reproaching me for?"

"I'm not reproaching you. As a child, I used to believe in all the stage emotions you showed. But, when I realized it was all false, it shook me up badly. I decided I am not going to be fooled again by you."

"But, darling thats acting." She gave him her delightful and disarming smile. "I think your understanding is wrong."

"Of course you do. You dont know the difference between make believe and reality. You never stop acting. Its second nature to you. You act when there's a party here. You act to the servants, you act to father, you act to me. To me, you act the part of the fond, indulgent, celebrated mother. You don't exist, you're only the innumerable parts you've played. I've often wondered if there was ever a you or if you were never anything more than a vehicle for all these other people that you've pretended to be. When I've seen you go into an empty room I've sometimes wanted to open the door suddenly, but I've been afraid to in case I found nobody there."

She looked up at him quickly. She shivered, for what he said gave her an eerie sensation. She listened to him attentively, with a certain anxiety, for he was so serious that she felt he was expressing something that had burdened him for years. She had never in his whole life heard him talk so much.

"Do you think I am only sham?"

"Not quite. Because sham is all you are. Sham is your truth. Just as margarine is butter to people who dont know what butter is."

She had a vague feeling of guilt. "You can hardly say that your father does not exist."

"Poor father, I suppose he is good at his job. But he is not very intelligent, is he? He is busy being the handsomest man in England."

"I dont think it is very nice to speak of your dad like that."

"Have I told you something that you did not know already?"

Julia wanted to smile, but would not allow the look of somewhat pained dignity to leave her face. "Its our weakness, not our strength that endears us to those who love us," she replied.

"In what play did you say that?"

She repressed a gesture of annoyance. The words had come naturally to her lips, but as she said them she remembered that they were out of a play. Little brute! But they came in very appositely."You're hard," she said plaintively. She was beginning to feel more and more like Hamlets mother. "Don't you love me?"

"I might, if I could find you. But where are you? If one stripped you of your exhibitionism, if one took your technique away from you, if one peeled you as one peels an onion of skin after skin of pretense and insincerity, of tags of old parts and shreds of faked emotions, would one come upon a soul at last?" He looked at her with his grave eyes and he smiled a little. "I like you all right."

"Do you believe I love you?"

"In your way."

Julias face was suddenly discomposed."If only you knew tha agony I suffered when you were ill! I don't know what I should have done if you'd died!"

"You would have given a beautiful performance of a bereaved mother of her only child."

"Not nearly such a good performance as if I'd had the opportunity of rehearsing it a few times," Julia answered tartly. "You see, what you dont understand is that acting is not natural; it's art and art is something you create. Real grief is ugly; the business of the actor is to represent it not only with truth but with beauty. Its cruel to say that I am not fond of you. I'm devoted to you. You've been the only thing in my life."

"No, you were fond of me when I was a kid and you could have me photographed with you. It made a lovely picture and it was fine publicity. But, since then, you have not bothered much about me. I dont blame you. You had'not got time in your life for anyone but yourself."

Julia was beginning to grow a trifle impatient. He was getting too near to the truth for her comfort. "You forget that young things can be pretty boring."

"But then why do you pretend that you can't bear to let me out of your sight. Thats just acting too."

"You make me very unhappy. You make me feel as if I had'nt done my duty to you."

"But you have. You have done something to me for which I shall always be grateful to you. You'v left me alone."

"I don't understand what you want."

"I told you. Reality."