According to Osho, change children's conditioning by removing them from parental and sectarian imprinting and raising them in a commune: separate hostels, mixed-age caregiving, half the day for academics and half for creative crafts, free access to all literature, and teachers trained in meditation and non-imposition. Parents visit on holidays. Reform teacher colleges to teach nonconditioning. Such a free, loving environment matures intelligence without superstition or political/religious programming.
Let kids grow in a loving community with wise, non-pushy guides, lots of choices and hands-on crafts, without being forced into parents' beliefs.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
A child will always be helpless. It seems to be impossible to avoid the conditioning process that starts from the day the child is born. How can this be changed?
Just as I have been telling you: children should belong to the commune, not to the parents. Children with parents have been in great trouble for centuries, because to be with parents is bound to be a conditioning. They belong to some religion, they belong to some church, they belong to some political party; they go on putting their own superstitions into the heads of the children, directly or indirectly. And every child becomes conditioned. Children should belong to the commune; the parents can have them on holidays. The parents can go and live with the children in their hostels and it will be far more loving. Twenty-four hours a day together destroys love; it is better that children should be away. The children will be much freer. They should be in the hands of teachers who are trained in meditation, who are trained for non-conditioning the children, for not…
Osho, does a child not have as much right to privacy and freedom from parental conditioning as the parents themselves expect?
Jimmy: 'Yes, Mum, there wasn't time to take them off.' The first-grade teacher was talking to her class about nature and she called it 'The World Around You'. She asked little Helen in the first row, 'Now, Helen, tell everyone in the class. Are you vegetable, animal or mineral?' 'I'm not any of those,' she replied promptly. 'I'm a real live girl!' A little fellow who was fishing off the end of a pier lost his balance while trying to land a fish and fell in the lake. Several men who also were fishing nearby rushed to his aid and pulled him out. 'How did you come to fall in?' one of the men asked him. 'I didn't come to fall in,' the kid said. 'I came to fish!' A large family was finally able to move into a more spacious home. Some time later an uncle asked his nephew,…
Beloved Osho, is there any biological chance of an unconditioned, free and loving relationship between child and parent?
Give the child all your experiences. Make him aware that he was conceived in a very loving orgasmic moment, that love is a great gift of existence. And you have to make love the central point of your life, because only through love can you step beyond blind nature into the world of super-nature, where no blindness exists, where you become a seer. Yes, it is possible, but not possible through biology alone. It is possible if you are courageous enough to make your love your temple, your place of meditation. Then you will be attracting a soul already having the potential of uniqueness. And then give him every possibility for freedom, even if it goes against you. The freedom of your child is more valuable, because your child is the future of mankind. Your days are past. What does it matter if it goes against you? What have you…
Osho, how can children be made inward-looking?
And secondly, never try—by pressure, by insistence—to lead a child toward any “good” direction. That very thing will become the biggest wall against going in a good direction. It may happen that while he is small he obeys you—because he is weak and you are strong; you can frighten him, threaten him, even do violence to him. And never imagine that parents cannot be violent with their children! Parents have committed such immeasurable violence against children. It simply doesn’t look like violence. Whenever we press someone down, we are being violent. The child’s ego is wounded. But being weak, he bears it. Today or tomorrow, when he grows up and power comes to his hands, by then you will be old and weak—and he will take revenge. The mistreatment of elderly parents by their children has its cause in the parents themselves. What they did to the child in his…
Osho, do you feel, sir, that a new education could bring about a revolution that frees the individual and creates a beautiful society?
Two things are certain: 1) First, we must save new children from the old. Half of education’s task should be to protect children from the stupidities of the past. At present, education initiates them into those past follies—it inducts them. The foolishness that has gone on for thousands of years, we teach to new children too. The primary work is to save them from the errors of the past. 2) Second, where the past went wrong, we must do the opposite. Instead of fighting sex, sex should be known and understood. Instead of fighting anger, it should be recognized and known. This knowing will operate on two planes. One: there should be laboratories where such experiments are conducted on a large scale. And two: each person should become a laboratory himself, continuing his own experiments. Just as we eat every day and sleep every day, so too every day we…