"Reflections about Education"
Talk
Zélia de Toledo Piza
If we are so close of a new era, described as auspicious, then why that which we witness indicates exactly a contrary situation - individual misunderstanding, of the man which himself misunderstandings among groups, wars, tremendous game of interests, where ends are looked for, doesn't import the means?
The Theosophy explains that through the Law of the Cycles. There exists a Universal Law, present in all the details of the material world, starting from the vibration that characterizes the structure of the atom. This phenomenon repeats in scale of varied intensity, in the several processes of the life - in the man's life, birth, ascension and decline, in the life of the flower, in the life of the civilizations etc.
In Puranas, collection of symbolic and allegorical writings, supposedly written by Vyasa, the author of Mahabharata, we found the following citation:
After arriving to the climax of the descent, it begins having an inversion, it begins having new ascension, just as it is clear in Lao Tsé's philosophy, that affirms two poles exist in the universe, of opposite and complementary nature that are interacted - the principles Yang and Yin - symbolized in the symbol of Tai-Chi. Each cycle contains inside of itself the germ of the opposite pole. Then, inside of a positive cycle, it goes on increasing the negative. When it reaches a certain expansion, it inverts the position of the pole and the cycle passes to be negative with the germ of the positive that will tend to enlarge. It is exactly this the moment that we are living now, moment that we could characterize as chaotic, inside of which begins appearing the signs of a new era. This new era is known in the Oriental philosophy as Age of Gold and, for the astrology, it has been recognized as the Era of Aquarius.
That passage of the apex of a decline for an ascendant period is a difficult moment for the human being, because the impulses that brake the evolution, generated by the field of forces formed by a civilization are tremendous. The inversion of those pulses is difficult.
Also in Puranas, we found the affirmative that the universal life is subject to four cycles that they denominate of Ages:
Satya Yuga - Age of Gold
Tetra Yuga - slow decline
Dvapara Yuga - continuation of the decline
Kali Yuga - Age of the Iron or Black Age
We would be living now exactly this last cycle, characterized by a decline in all of the areas of the human life. As these cycles repeat and are interpenetrated, in Kali Yuga already begins germinating the Age of Gold, reason why, amid a true chaos, we begin foreseeing the great effervescence of new ideals and new goals. That is observed sharply in the education.
Making a retrospective look of the history of the culture, we see that it reached a moment of ascendant culmination with the Greek, entering later in decline in the Medium Age to begin the revival in the Renaissance.
I would say that this resurgence, initiated about the 1.500, still didn't get to reach a full acme because of several reasons of political and religious nature, and, above all, for his one sided, tendency that is marking the man's evolution through the times. The development in the mental field has been extraordinarily fabulous, but the man is not well with himself and he doesn't get to relate well, be in small groups, be in larger communities, be as nation or between nations, what means that there are gaps, there are flaws in the organization of his structure as a whole.
The great possibility for a resurgence, the great hope of the new era is deposited in the human being's education, not only of the child, but also and above all of the adult. The adult's education would be a vast theme for a specific lecture.
Considering the child that is the focus of this lecture, we see that she is replete of potentialities and eager for new discoveries. The education should include all of the areas of the human personality. It needs to be an integral education, in other words, holistic, that reaches the whole compound of the human person. While this if doesn't happen, we will continue witnessing coexistence dangerously tuneless among the human beings.
Naturally, an education, no matter how ideal is, to function, would need to be inserted inside of a favorable context, involving the social and economical particularly. We would have to think in a reformularization also in other areas of the national life.
The gear of the social life - survival needs, the life of the home, social differences, injustices -, the reality of the economical aspect - capitalism, consumerism of having things -, the way of being of the cultural area - that is without internalization, with literatures badly guided - they are unfavorable items to a progress in terms of the human being's humanization. That whole context, inside of which we are inserted, is turning the man more and more reduced in the development and in the exteriorization of his internal fullness.
But we will just stick to the section of the education, remaining opened, for approaches in other occasions, the other sections.
Which would that ideal education be?
Of the pedagogic point of view, and with grounding for education in the school of 1st degree, we will see in the sequence:
