ALTERNATIVE IDEALS FOR EDUCATION
edited from a speech by Osho, Rebel Press:

The education that has prevailed in the past is very insufficient, incomplete, superficial. It only creates people who can earn their livelihood but it does not give any insight into the living self. It is not only incomplete, it is harmful too – because it is based on competition.

Any type of competition is violent deep down, and creates people who are unloving. Their whole effort is to be achievers – of name, of fame, of all kinds of ambitions. Obviously they have to struggle and to be in conflict for them. That destroys their joys and destroys their friendliness. It seems everybody is fighting against the whole world.

Education up to now has been goal orientated: what you are learning is not important; what is important is the examination that will come a year or two years later. It makes the future important – more important than the present. It sacrifices the present for the future. And that becomes your very style of life; you are always sacrificing the moment for something which is not present. It creates a tremendous emptiness in life.

There should not be any kind of formal examination as part of education, but every day every hour of observation by the teachers; their remarks throughout the year will decide whether you move forward or you remain a little longer in the same class.

In life, nobody fails, nobody passes – it is just that a few people are lazy – because the idea of failure creates a deep wound of inferiority, and the idea of being successful also creates a different kind of disease, that of superiority.

Nobody is inferior, and nobody superior. One is just oneself, incomparable.