Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. (Express photo by Praveen Khanna)Spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev Wednesday said schools should encourage the questioning of science and not treat knowledge from textbooks as absolute. Speaking at a conference of principals and officers of Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan and Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, Vasudev, popularly known as Sadhguru, said, “At school, and further at college and PhD levels, science is viewed as a religion and what is written in the textbook as ultimate.
This is the way of religion, not the way of science. Science should be an exploration… ‘Whatever is written in my textbook is true and nothing else but that’ — we have suffered this rubbish for a long time. We don’t have to take that into our future.”
Stating that “we are a nation of seekers, not believers”, he said India has a “very ingrained scientific temperament of a different kind”, where “we question everything with reverence”, but added that people are trying to subdue this. “Don’t kill this in classrooms… what is written in textbooks is not absolute,” he said.
The two-day event was attended by 1,800 principals from KVs and NVs on the inaugural day of the two-day KVS-NVS National Principals’ Conference held at New Delhi.
He also proposed shifting the education system from its aim of sending all students to universities, saying “we will not create a variety of people we need for this nation’s well-being”. Drawing a comparison to restaurants and trains with “first, second and third class” sections, he said education should also be crafted to suit the needs of “different classes”.
