The Earth cannot afford even one more human being

Questioner: What kind of change our education system needs to have so that our coming generations can live together in peace and fulfillment?

Acharya Prashant: Why must you think about the coming generations? Is this not the language of the old matriarch who first of all ensures that the women in the family keep giving birth, that the cycle of lust, pregnancy, and procreation continues. If you are so bothered about coming generations of kids, the first thing you would have ensured that kids keep coming. Now you will have a quarrel with me.

We were at Bhopal yesterday. They had created a place not far from the city, where they have lions and leopards and tigers all exhibited. Then I started reading about the conditions of these animals and their numbers are rapidly falling. It’s almost as if tomorrow they would be extinct. And the place I am mentioning I found tigers, leopards but no lions. So, I just started reading a bit on lions and I discovered that in India the lions are now found only in Gujarat and in the last two years itself India has lost close to 20% of its total lion population. Do you know why the lions are disappearing? Because people are having kids. The jungles have become so small, half of the lions of Gujarat are living outside the protected areas. The protected areas are not big enough to accommodate any decent number of lions. So, where are the lions living? Outside the protected areas. And there they constantly come in touch with the populations and populations are burgeoning. And these coming generations that you are so fondly talking of, they need land. Their kids need food. So, every successive generation rather every year trees are being cut and that is bringing these animals in contact with man and when an animal comes in contact with man you know who would survive and who would be dead.

If you really want to educate kids, educate kids of this generation and not the coming generation and educate kids of this generation not to have kids.

Do not talk the language of the old and deeply conditioned grandmother whose deepest wish is that the tribe keeps growing. If you would have followed me to this point you would have also seen what would be the shape that the right education for today’s generation should take?