LIFE
Schools of the future
Awarded writer Ben Okri's blue print of the universty of the future.
Ben Okri l June 2003 issue
In the future, centers of learning will teach at least one thing we do not teach today: the art of self-discovery. There is nothing more fundamental in education. We turn our students from our universities who know how to give answers, but not how to ask questions.
Our students do not come in contact with the centers of wisdom in our culture. They leave universities with skills for the workplace, but with no knowledge of how to live, or what living is for. They are not taught how to see. They are not taught how to listen.They are not taught the art of obedience. and how it preceds self-mastery.
They are not taught the true art of reading. True reading is not just passing our eyes over words on a page, or gathering information, or even understanding what is being read.
True reading is a creative act. It means seeing first, and then using the imagination. Higher reading ought to be a new subject. As we read, so we are.
I meet people in all walks of life, and most notoriously in the fields of literature and science, who, though professionals, do not actually read what is in front of them. They read what is already inside of them.
I suspect this is happening now as you read this page. All our innovations and discoveries, our creativity come from one source: being able to see first what is there, and what is not; to hear what is said, and what is not. But also to think clearly.
And even more important is the science of intuition. The academy of the future will have to engage this mysterious necessity of the value, the sublime value of intuition in our lives, and our work.
How to make those intuitive leaps that transformed the science and art of humanity a quality that is available to all, and made constant value to humanity - this will be the true turning point in the future history of our civilisation.
We need to widen, at base, and invisibly, the inevitable necessity of teaching students the need of self-discovery. People who can enrich the planet as human beings. We are the co-maker of this world we live in.
