According to Osho, children are not just intelligent—they are born absolutely intelligent. Free of prejudices, second‑hand knowledge, and memory crutches, a child meets each moment from not‑knowing, responding freshly rather than reacting mechanically; that responsiveness is intelligence. Stupidity is learned later as society, schooling, and degrees substitute borrowed knowledge for awareness, luring us into comfort and conformity and dulling original seeing.
Kids start out truly smart because they look at everything fresh, and we make them dull by stuffing them with ready-made answers.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: OSHO, ARE CHILDREN REALLY SO INTELLIGENT AS YOU ALWAYS SAY THEY ARE? Intelligence is not something that is acquired, it is inbuilt, it is inborn, it is intrinsic to life itself. Not only children are intelligent, animals are intelligent in their own way, trees are intelligent in their own way. Of course they all have different kinds of intelligences because their needs differ, but now it is an established fact that all that lives is intelligent. Life cannot be without intelligence; to be alive and to be intelligent are synonymous. But man is in a dilemma for the simple reason that he is not only intelligent, he is also aware of his intelligence. That is something unique about man, his privilege, his prerogative, his glory, but it can turn very easily into his agony. Man is conscious that he is intelligent; that consciousness brings its own problems.
Are children really so intelligent, Osho, as you always say they are?
I said, "I don't know. I myself am puzzled because a single question and the teacher will say,'You go out! Unless you stop asking you cannot come in.' " And it was a good excuse for me to be outside in the air. And that was so beautiful to be outside with the birds and with the trees. So whenever I wanted to go out, just a question, any question would do -- any question that was unanswerable! I was turned out of one college, expelled from this university and that university. One university accepted me, but accepted with the condition that I would not ask any questions. I said, "I can accept that, but then you have to do one thing: that I will not have to go to the classes, because if I am in class and if the professor says something stupid, I will not be able…
Osho, are the children really as intelligent as you say they are, before the society starts destroying them?
A CHILD is pure intelligence because a child is yet uncontaminated. A child is a clean slate, nothing is written on him. A child is absolute emptiness, TABULA RASA. The society will start writing immediately that you are a Christian, Catholic, Hindu, Mohammedan, Communist. The society will immediately start writing the Bhagavad Gita, Koran, Bible. The society cannot wait. The society is very much afraid that if the child's intelligence is left intact, then he will never be a slave. He will never be a part of any slavery, of any structure of domination. He will neither dominate nor be dominated. He will neither possess nor be possessed. He will be pure rebellion. His innocence has to be corrupted immediately. His wings have to be cut, he has to be given crutches to lean upon so he never learns how to walk on his own feet, so he remains always…
Mr p'ang of ch'en had a son who was clever as a child but suffered from an abnormality when he grew up. When he heard singing he thought it was weeping; when he saw white he thought it was black; fragrant smells he thought noisome, sweet tastes he thought bitter, wrong actions he thought right. Whatever came into his mind -- heaven and earth, the four cardinal points, water and fire, heat and cold -- he always turned it upside down.
A CERTAIN MR. YANG TOLD HIS FATHER: 'THE GENTLEMEN OF LU HAVE MANY ARTS AND SKILLS, PERHAPS THEY CAN CURE HIM. WHY NOT INQUIRE AMONG THEM?' THE FATHER SET OUT FOR LU, BUT PASSING THROUGH CH'EN HE CAME ACROSS LAO TZU AND TOOK THE OPPORTUNITY TO TELL HIM ABOUT HIS SON'S SYMPTOMS. 'HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT YOUR SON IS ABNORMAL?' SAID LAO TZU. 'NOWADAYS EVERYONE IN THE WORLD IS DELUDED ABOUT RIGHT AND WRONG AND CONFUSED ABOUT BENEFIT AND HARM. BECAUSE MANY PEOPLE SHARE THIS SICKNESS NO ONE PERCEIVES THAT IT IS A SICKNESS. BESIDES, ONE MAN'S ABNORMALITY IS NOT ENOUGH TO OVERTURN HIS FAMILY; ONE FAMILY'S TO OVERTURN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD: ONE NEIGHBOURHOOD'S TO OVERTURN THE STATE; ONE STATE'S TO OVERTURN THE WORLD. IF THE WHOLE WORLD WERE ABNORMAL HOW COULD ABNORMALITY OVERTURN IT? SUPPOSING THE MINDS OF EVERYONE IN THE WORLD WERE LIKE YOUR SON'S, THEN, ON THE…
Osho, is the innocence of small children just ignorance, or has it got any value too?
The innocence of the children is ignorance, it is not true innocence. The true innocence happens only after the second birth. The true innocence happens only after you have reached your very core through awareness; that is the second birth, that is resurrection -- you are born anew. The first innocence of a child when it is born is only ignorance, but that ignorance is far more valuable than the knowledge that your so-called learned people are burdened with. So these things have to be remembered. Real innocence belongs to the Buddhas. They have lost their first childhood in knowledge and then they become aware of what they have lost. They have lost the precious, the essential for the non-essential, so they drop their knowledge. Dropping their knowledge they become innocent again. This is second innocence, second birth. In India we call such a person dwija, twice-born. He is a…