The purpose, the aim and drive of our schools, is to equip the child with the most excellent technological proficiency so that the student may function with clarity and efficiency in the modern world. A far more important purpose than this is to create the right climate and environment so that the child may develop fully as a complete human being. This means giving the child the opportunity to flower in goodness so that he or she is rightly related to people, things and ideas, to the whole of life. To live is to be related. There is no right relationship to anything if there is not the right feeling for beauty, a response to nature, to music and art - a highly developed aesthetic sense.
I think it is fairly clear that competitive education and the development of the student in that process . . . are very, very destructive. We must be very clear in ourselves what we want - clear that a human being must be the total human being, not just a technological human being. If we concentrate very much on examinations, on technological information, on making the child clever, proficient in acquiring knowledge while we neglect the other side, then the child will grow up into a one-sided human being. When we talk about a total human being, we mean not only a human being with inward understanding, with a capacity to explore, to examine his or her inward state and the capacity of going beyond it, but also someone who is good in what he does outwardly. The two must go together. That is the real issue in education: to see that when the child leaves the school, he is well established in goodness, both outwardly and inwardly.
I feel that it is important for parents to be aware equally of their children's talents as well as limitations, and allow them to develop in their own way. Our students are our joy and pride. Thank you for entrusting them to our care.