Lateral inversion

Insights on alternative schools across India

 Index

Introduction

1. Background
2. Articles about alternative schools
3. What is 'education'?
4. What is an 'alternative' school?

Problems

5. Alternative as anti-mainstream
6. A good environment for the founder's children
7. The ideal learning environment
8. My System Vs Your System
9. Where do we come from?
10. Elitism
11. Experiment for adults
12. Problem Summary

Solutions?

13. On maps of knowing

14. Who is a wise person?
15. Feedback from the wise ones
16. The Guru principle

Conclusion

17. Final summing up

Annexures

Annexure A: List of alternative schools written about

Annexure B: A sample article
Annexure C: Voices on education
Mahatma Gandhi
Samdhong Rinpoche
E.F. Schumacher
Sri Aurobindo
Ravindra Sharma
Alan Watts
J. Krishnamurti
Annexure D: Voices on wisdom
Lao Tzu
Chuang Tzu
Ilam Peruvaluti and Kaniyan Punkunran
Bhagavad Gita excerpt
Marcus Aurelius
Introduction
1. Background

Do you have an interest in the alternative schooling movement in India? I have some insights about
these schools that may be new to you. It's going to take a little while to give you the background and I
will try here and in the rest of this small booklet, to keep the tone conversational and light. So, here
goes.

Our family's journey into the alternative schooling world started some ten years ago when we pulled
our children out of school. Aditi had finished her 4th standard, Srikant his 1st standard and 4 year old
Dinkar had not started school. Both my wife and I were clear that we had done most of our academic-
and-life-learning outside classrooms and the logistics of school for Aditi and Srikant (and Dinkar
waiting in line) was becoming unnecessarily complicated. So we pulled them out and that opened up a
whole new world of trouble for us. You see, once you take a decision like this, it becomes imperative to
figure things out for yourselves and, of course, there is no end to that process. Sending the children to
school would have outsourced this headache to people paid to deal with it.

How we managed to figure things out for our family without any large scale atomic explosions in our
lives is not relevant to the story here. But we did manage to meet, visit and spend hours talking to
people on all points of the alternative spectrum. Homeschoolers, organic farmers, composters,
renewable energy enthusiasts, pranayama evangelists, nature experts, vegans and, of course, people
working in the alternative schools in various parts of the country. So, when the time came to decide
what project to take up under my educational fellowship with Wipro, I thought of writing about the
alternative schools of India.

Behind the idea was some things I had noticed about these schools:

• There were many of them around and there was a wide variety of philosophies underpinning
them, but people outside the 'alternative' circles didn't know too much about them.
• The schools were so busy doing their own things that they didn't seem to have the time to find
out about or interact with each other.

I also, somewhat naively, thought that since this was the leading edge of the educational discourse in
the country, this would be where the least confused, wisest educators were to be found. So, looking
forward to meeting all these thought leaders, eager to tell their stories to the world from an insider's
perspective, searching for educational wisdom, I set off on a slow journey.

My overwhelming feeling was of disappointment!

Where that came from and what sparks of hope illuminated this despair is what the rest of the book is
about. Interested? Then, please read on.
2. Articles about alternative schools

I beg your leave to spend some more time talking about my project. I visited some 30 schools across
the country and wrote short articles about 24 of them. I was living in Bangalore at the time and there
seemed to be an alternative school at every street-corner. It was convenient to feature all of them and I
resisted the temptation with difficulty. Even then my first list of 30 schools had 10 schools from
Bangalore. Also, it was convenient to feature schools where I knew people, or knew people who knew
people. Unfortunately, this would have meant schools where affluent English-speaking parents sent
their out-of-touch-with-India children. (I grew up speaking Hindi outside and Malayalam at home and
got into written and spoken English only in college, but my children speak minimum Malayalam and
they are most comfortable in English. I think this is a BIG problem. But more about this later) But
fortunately, I spoke to someone at Eklavya, Bhopal at just the right time and she put me in touch with
some schools that gave my list some variety and depth. The schools I finally wrote about are listed in
Annexure A.

I used some ground-rules while writing about the schools:

• Keep it very short. Who has time to read nowadays? (That is also the reason that this booklet is
really a long essay with all the extra stuff pushed into the Annexures.)
• Use a conversational tone and use the school articles as a funnel, as a way to generate interest
about the school. The interested reader can then use the web-links in the article (or, of course,
do their own google search) to find out more information.
• I may disagree with parts of what a school was doing but the articles would be 100% positive.
No criticism. ALL the schools ARE doing good work in the overall context of how monstrous
normal schooling has become.

(Read a sample at Annexure B. The articles were published as a column called 'Alternatiview' in
Teacher Plus magazine. You can find them archived on their website.)

And the last point above brings me, in only a slightly roundabout way, to my need to write this book. I
finished writing the nice school articles and was telling the people at Wipro about my discomfort with
many of the schools – and the Wipro team said, why don't I write about where the discomfort came
from? The nice articles skirted controversy by focusing on the nice. I am going to talk about the not-so-
nice bits in the rest of this book. Which brings up the perfect opening for the –

Disclaimer:

I claim to be an expert only on the education of MY three children. So, everything I say about general
education in the following pages is an INEXPERT opinion. You, of course, are probably an expert. If
you disagree strongly with anything I say, just assume that you are right and I am wrong. (And just to
be on the safe side I will be very careful in not naming any names)

End of disclaimer
3. What is education?

A google search brings up the top result as:

education
/ɛdjʊˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/

noun

1. the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.

synonyms: teaching, schooling, tuition, tutoring, instruction, pedagogy, andragogy, coaching, training,
tutelage, drilling, preparation, guidance, indoctrination, inculcation, enlightenment, edification,
cultivation, development, improvement, bettering

2. an enlightening experience.

And the Wikipedia entry on education starts with:

“Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values,
beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, and
directed research.”

Which, for the algebraically inclined, is like defining variable x as x=y, where y is another variable.

Many people have tried to give a more functional definition. Some voices on what education is, or can
be, are collected together in Annexure C. Without leaning towards one or the other opinion in this
booklet, it seems to me that getting a child proficient in Integral Calculus or Organic Chemistry falls far
short of whatever way we define good education. If we want our children to grow up as good, cultured,
intelligent, honest, compassionate, ideal citizens of our country, it would appear that the current
educational system fails to address most of these qualities, and behaves like 'intelligent' equates to
greater than 90% marks in Maths and Science.

How, many of the alternative schools also get this wrong is what we will get to in a minute. But let us
start with what is an 'Alternative' school.
4. What is an 'Alternative' school?

There is such a bewildering variety of experiments going on under the 'alternative' label that it is
perhaps best to start with an explanation of what the term encompasses. The simple answer to 'What is
alternative?', seems to be 'Anything that is not mainstream or conventional'. And what is 'mainstream'?
Well, thats easier:

- Children burdened with big school bags, heavy workloads, tuitions, strict disciplined classrooms.
- Factory model schooling preparing children to be slaves to the dominant industrial world-view.
- Learning equated to testing. So that children who remember and learn by rote come up on top.
- Maths and science at the top of the heap and arts/sports/creativity at the bottom.
- Competition as a mechanism to perform better.
- No freedom.

Etc.

Therefore, anything that goes against the list above is alternative. And this brings us to the problems
that the alternative schools manifest.
Problems
5. Alternative as anti-mainstream

The mainstream is such a horror that many parents and teachers consider anything anti-mainstream as
good and this becomes the way some alternative schools define themselves. So the tenets become:

- The child should not be burdened with physical and mental stress.
- Learning should be a joyous process.
- Creativity/ arts/ sports should be co-curricular.

Etc.

The problem here is not that what's on the anti-mainstream list is not needed. Of course, these are the
minimum conditions that need to exist by default in any good learning environment. But after this,
what? Just ensuring these nice sounding conditions becomes the sole mission of many alternative
schools. To put it another way, some schools spend so much time worrying about the anti-mainstream
properties of their school that they have time for nothing else in their super-busy days.

We will talk more about this in the 'Solutions?' section of the booklet but the short version of why this
is a BIG problem is that setting the right conditions or structures for learning is not the same thing as
the process called 'learning' happening. And when we see that motivated or inspired children appear to
learn in the most mainstream, learner-unfriendly environments, one wonders whether the whole anti-
mainstream is not a colossal, self-indulgent, waste of time.

6. A good environment for the founder's children

Some of the alternative schools I visited were started by women who wanted to solve the problem of
setting up a 'good' environment for their own children. This is a good thing when viewed through the
lens of 'be the change you want to see', but I find myself viewing their motives with some suspicion.
Especially, in the cases where the founders leave the school after their own children finish school.

It is also noticeable that many of the alternative schools recruit teachers from their parent community.
The feeling I got was that instead of the confusions reducing, the addition of well-meaning parents only
adds to the problems of managing a dynamic school environment. And in the mad rush of trying to do
the right thing by their children, the parents end up not having time for themselves or for their children.

7. The ideal learning environment

Real estate is expensive! In fact many of the mainstream schools are investments funded by people
with a lot of money. Should I put my money into a hospital or a hotel or a school? Oh, a well-run
school, with the right rackets going, has a good ROI (return on investment). Buy the franchise of a
famous name and then you only need to buy a money counting machine to count all the cash that flows
in. Sad but true!

The alternative schools come to this from the other end. Often started by earnest young mothers and
fathers who only understand that their children should have a 'good' environment, they go all out and
buy land far away from anywhere (which is the only kind they can afford) and set up their ideal
learning environment. Perfect places for children to learn, only impossible to get to without traveling
50 kilometers one way. The poor small children bear the sleeplessness and stress that the intensity of
their parents and teachers visits upon them in pursuit of the ideal schooling project.
(It is perhaps appropriate to finish mentioning in a parenthesis here, that running a school as a business
is not something one intuits along with ones good intentions to run an ideal school. In business circles
it is said that you need at least 3 different types of full-time skills -- Finance, Marketing and Product
development. People who come to the school-running project typically understand more about their
product than about finance or marketing.)

8. My System versus Your System

The Waldorf system; Sri Aurobindo's Integral education; J Krishnamurti's system (which, it seems to
me, is a system that paradoxically refuses to acknowledge the need for systems); the Montessori
system; Mahatma Gandhi's Nai Taleem; and other systems that are cobbled together from an eclectic
mix-and-match of all such available systems. To me, the problem was exemplified by the elderly
gentleman from one famous system who had not heard the name of a famous school based on another
system.

I know that in our homeschooling experiment we had read up about all systems to figure out how to
proceed without going crazy. The question to ask is whether people who are heavily invested in one
system and are running schools that affect the lives of many students, should not study all available
systems to at least understand what the products in the 'marketplace' are.

9. Where do we come from?

If I think in English using western categories, I will not be very effective at educating children
grounded in the cultures of India. I will only be good at creating copies of other English-speaking
western-categories-thinking people like me.

(The problem may be more deep-rooted. I have just discovered the work of some scholars who claim
that all the subjects we learn in school, including of course the English language that is the medium of
communication and meaning-making, have hidden behind them a European Christian theological
foundation. And this is such deeply buried programming that most people, both in the west and east, are
unconscious of it. In India, where even the Christians come from a non-European Christian
background, it just leads to distance from ourselves and to deep cognitive dissonance. You don't think
so? It doesn't agree with your experience? OK. That is why this paragraph has brackets around it.
Slowly unfocus your eyes and the paragraph will vanish from view. Continue onwards and simply
forget I talked about all this.)

I come from an ancient culture that:

a. Has an unbroken history of science, technology, literature, arts and music that stretches back
thousands of years.
b. Is the birth-place of 4 great religions of the world.
c. Till as late as the 18th century, when the earth-plundering white imperial project gathered force, was
one of the most prosperous parts on planet earth.

My job can be to tell the children under my care where we came from, so as to make sense of the mess
we are in now. And give a vision of where we can go with the vibrant still-alive cultures that we are
still rooted in.
The problem here is that, even in the 'alternative' world, nobody is talking about this. (And to squash
the objection about why I write in English- Yes, I am part of the problem. But 'awareness is therapy'
says Western Psychology.)

10. Elitism

Most of the schools I visited were places where the affluent send their English-speaking, big-city
children. This is probably an occupational hazard of alternative schooling. It is usually only when
people have clawed their way up near the top of Maslow's needs hierarchy that they start asking
questions about conventional schooling. Or, in other words, it is only when the parents are in a
comfortable, upper-middle-class level that they typically find the room to experiment with the futures
of their children. (The future that is secure even if the children do no big-money-earning work in their
adult lives.)

So, elitism comes built-in with the basic tenets by which many of the schools function. The children are
unquestioningly comfortable and the schools end up perpetuating their sense of entitlement. For
example, the children may go through the most expensive boards of education or go abroad to finish
higher studies. In many cases the children appear to not have benefited much from the educational
experiments they underwent.

The non-competitiveness that is a part of the anti-mainstream sentiment, that many alternative schools
practice, appears to lead to the children taking longer to stand on their own feet. The parents having to
subsidize the children's educational journey for a longer time.

11. Experiment for adults

Some of the teachers I spoke to used these types of words- It is an experiment in adults learning to form
a close-knit community around the central philosophy the school follows. So, its primarily about the
adults and only secondarily about the children. Or, to put it more bluntly, the children are only a
pleasant excuse for the adults to gather around together to further their personal developmental
agendas. In cases where things are like this, the children probably figure it out before they finish school
and in some cases are not very kindly inclined towards their schools and teachers.

The experience of going to an alternative school is pretty intense for both children and teachers. So, it
is natural to form strong bonds with their peers and their teachers. When they turn away from the
alternative schools, this love sometimes turns to hatred.

12. Problem summary

There are many more headings I could have teased out of my experience of overall disappointment
with the alternative schools I visited. The summary is that I was looking for wisdom, for wise men and
women, and didn't find them in most schools. What I found mostly were earnest, unsmiling, young (and
some not-so-young) men and women, who take their jobs too seriously for it to be good for either
themselves or the children under their care. This is how I remember it.

Could it just be that I was suffering from indigestion that colored all my views? Could it be that I am
myself unsmiling and unwise, therefore unable to judge all these people right? Possible. Like I said
earlier, if you disagree strongly, you are right and I am wrong.
Solutions?
13. On maps of knowing

“GNM Tyrell has put forward the terms ‘divergent’ and ‘convergent’ to distinguish problems which
cannot be solved by logical reasoning from those that can. Life is being kept going by divergent
problems which have to be ‘lived’ and are solved only in death. Convergent problems on the other hand
are man’s most useful invention; they do not, as such, exist in reality, but are created by a process of
abstraction. When they have been solved, the solution can be written down and passed on to others who
can apply it without needing to reproduce the mental effort necessary to find it. If this were the case
with human relations – in family life, economics, politics, education, and so forth… – well, I am at a
loss how to finish the sentence, there would be no more human relations but only mechanical reactions;
life would be a living death. Divergent problems, as it were, force man to strain himself to a level
above himself; they demand and thus provoke the supply of, forces from a higher level, thus bringing
love, beauty, goodness, and truth into our lives. It is only with the help of these higher forces that the
opposites can be reconciled in the living situation.

The physical sciences and mathematics are concerned exclusively with convergent problems. That is
why they can progress cumulatively, and each new generation can begin just where their forbears left
off. The price, however, is a heavy one. Dealing exclusively with convergent problems does not lead
into life but away from it.” – E.F. Schumacher (Excerpt from 'Small is beautiful')

We navigate reality using some rules that we cobble together over our lifetimes. This could perhaps
point to why experience or age seems to make us wiser and more equipped to better deal with our lives.
The fact that we stumble along our ways, more or less intact, through our daily interactions,
relationships, situations, predicaments etc. without thinking too much about them, must surely be one
of the big miracles in our lives.

The other famous book by Dr. Schumacher, 'A guide for the perplexed', sets out to create a simple map
or model to unpack the sentence – 'Man lives in the world'. The book covers 4 things that detail out –
What is 'man'? What do we mean by 'live'? What do we mean by 'world'? Etc. I would like to talk about
just one of these ideas, hinted at in the excerpt above, that is relevant to this booklet.

The premises are:

a. Problems converge to a solution only in the realm of the abstract, in other words in the realm of
mental models.
b. Problems diverge to different context-dependent solutions in the real world.
c. Solving divergent problems brings into play our higher human capacities like love.

If you match these premises with your lived experience you will find them truthful. I did. So, what does
it tell us about systems of learning? Perhaps that 'systems' and 'structures', whether mainstream or anti-
mainstream or alternative, do not really work when you have to engage with a divergent problem like
interacting with a child to 'educate' him.

Let us look at a specific example of Sri Aurobindo's Integral education. One of the Sutras of Integral
education makes essentially the same point we are discussing here. In the language of contradiction it
states: Nothing can be taught! Pointing to the essential structureless-ness or the impossibility-of-
structuring-ness of all teaching and learning. When the schools that follow Integral theory take this
Sutra as a structure, they fall into the same trap.

So does it mean that all structure is bad? What should a wise teacher do? Let us start by defining her.
14. Who is a wise person?

A google search for 'wisdom' brings up the top result as:

wisdom
/wɪzdəm/

noun

1. the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise.
synonyms: sagacity, sageness, intelligence, understanding, insight, perception, perceptiveness,
percipience, penetration, perspicuity, acuity, discernment, sense, good sense, common sense,
shrewdness, astuteness, acumen, smartness, judiciousness, judgment, foresight, clear-sightedness,
prudence, circumspection, logic, rationale, rationality, soundness, saneness, advisability

2. the fact of being based on sensible or wise thinking.

3. the body of knowledge and experience that develops within a specified society or period.

The Wikipedia entry under 'Wisdom' starts with:

Wisdom or sapience is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding,
common sense, and insight. Wisdom has been regarded as one of four cardinal virtues; and as a virtue,
it is a habit or disposition to perform the action with the highest degree of adequacy under any given
circumstance with the limitation of error in any given action. This implies a possession of knowledge
or the seeking of knowledge to apply to the given circumstance. This involves an understanding of
people, objects, events, situations, and the willingness as well as the ability to apply perception,
judgment, and action in keeping with the understanding of what is the optimal course of action. It often
requires control of one's emotional reactions (the "passions") so that the universal principle of reason
prevails to determine one's action. In short, wisdom is a disposition to find the truth coupled with an
optimum judgment as to what actions should be taken.

Some diverse voices on what a wise person looks like in various traditions are collected together in
Annexure D.

The wise person or the 'illumined one' as per the Bhagavad Gita (which is an integral part of the
tradition that I consider mine) constitutes the rest of this chapter. Please skip it and substitute your
version of what you consider 'wise' if you feel the need.

(From the English translation of Bhagvad Gita by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood)

ARJUNA:
Krishna, how can one identify a man who is firmly established and absorbed in Brahman? In what
manner does an illumined soul speak? How does he sit? How does he talk?

SRI KRISHNA:
He knows bliss in the Atman
And wants nothing else.
Cravings torment the heart:
He renounces cravings.
I call him illumined.
Not shaken by adversity,
Not hankering after happiness:
Free from fear, free from anger,
Free from the things of desire.
I call him a seer, and illumined.
The bonds of his flesh are broken.
He is lucky, and does not rejoice,
He is unlucky, and does not weep.
I call him illumined.

The tortoise can draw in his legs:

The seer can draw in his senses.
I call him illumined.

The abstinent run away from what they desire

But carry their desires with them:
When a man enters reality,
He leaves his desires behind him.

(This is the short version. The remaining verses describing the illumined one are part of Annexure D)
15. Feedback from the wise ones

In the thirty schools I visited looking for the wise ones, I found some I could really look up to. They
were all women, all around sixty years old, and all of them said that they were not interested in the
alternative schooling movement and claimed to run mainstream schools. (Vidya Patwardhan of
Aksharnandan, Pune, replying to my very first email to her had said: 'Aksharnandan is a mainstream
school, exploring innovative spaces within. So cannot really be called 'Alternative'.)

By the definition given in chapter 4 their schools WERE alternative. I asked them all the same question
– What happens to your school when you retire? They said that they did not know. It wasn't that they
hadn't tried really hard to set up a successor. They understood the vital importance of a worthy
successor but seemed to realize that it was a process they had very little control over. They knew no
structure, no process that would bring another teacher to the place of wisdom they had arrived at. Let
me bring in some of their voices here.

Excerpts from the articles I wrote about alternative schools:

My visit to Aksharnandan renewed my faith in how much difference a small group of determined and
compassionate individuals could make. In my thank you mail to Vidya I wrote:

'Just got back home to Kerala and thought that I needed to send you this formal-ish thank you mail.

Thank you for the time you took out of your busy schedule to meet me. It was wonderful getting to
spend the 1.5 hours in the circle of your wisdom and warmth. I came away really inspired by what you
have done at Aksharnandan. You said that you are 'mainstream', well I think that many 'alternative'
schools can learn some basics about real education from Aksharnandan.'

I thought Vidya's response proved my point:

'Arun, I also enjoyed talking to you. 'circle of wisdom and warmth'! Well put, Arun but a bit
exaggerated. Would love to meet your family, perhaps next time I'm in Kerala.'

I think 'Wisdom and warmth' it is, and that is probably what reflects off from everything in the unique
'mainstream' experiment called Aksharnandan.

(From the article about Aksharnandan, Pune)

I passed through a playground full of busily playing children and waited 10 minutes as Dr Manjiri
Nimbkar, the head of the school, finished a meeting and then I walked into the most non-threatening
Principal's room that I have ever been to. Dr Nimbkar, wise-gentle-eyed, easy-smiling, sat behind a
table in a warm, informal, book-filled room where the visitors side of the table had a low bed. The high
sloping ceiling had temporary looking wooden beams but the overall feel was of a nice, cool,
comfortable space. Dr Nimbkar is Maharshi Karve's great-grand-daughter and Irawate Karve's grand-
daughter and carries her lineage lightly and gracefully.

…
Dr Nimbkar told me she spends most of her time in the school talking to people who walk into her
room at all times. What a wonderful job description (and executed with a smile), I thought, and how
refreshingly different from the picture of a school leader that we usually carry around in our heads.

(From the article about Kamala Nimbkar Balvidyalaya, Phaltan, Maharashtra)

Sushama is a soft-spoken, polite, gentle, wise woman. During the time we walked around the school
many teachers and children spoke to her. Her tone with everyone adult or child was courteous and her
interactions had the completeness of wisdom. She appeared like she was part of the in-group in all
these situations. We were passing in front of a class and there was a commotion happening. Some small
children were talking loudly and laughing. We stopped and asked what was going on. The children
explained that some of their friends did not neatly arrange their footwear in the designated place
outside the classroom so they were teaching them a lesson. The friends were away somewhere and the
laughing children had hidden their chappals under some bushes in the garden in front of the class. The
children told Sushama all this as if she were part of their gang and would see the justness of their
actions. I noticed that Sushama enjoyed the exchange but gave no adult value judgment like- 'OK, after
they learn their lesson please return their chappals;' or even- 'That is a good thing that you have done.'
Wisdom and compassion probably go together in people.

The school campus is spread out and the buildings are the same ones that Gandhiji walked through. I
don't know exactly what it is- the location next to the ashram, or the spread out buildings, or the large
trees everywhere, but there is something utterly charming about this school. It felt like the farm and the
trees and the buildings with their tiled roofs and the small and big people moving through it- all fit into
each other perfectly. There was a completeness to the picture. Perhaps the simplicity of the buildings
and the people or their connection with the local which Gandhiji emphasized so much. (This is not an
elite English medium school, the teachers and students speak Marathi all the time)

(From the article about Anand Niketan, Wardha, Maharashtra)

Resuming what I was saying, these wise educators, it turned out, hadn't been able to create or develop
other wise educators to take over from them when they retired.

But, isn't this the same thing that we are trying to do with children when we talk about good education?
Taking them towards knowledge, compassion, wisdom? Is that impossible then? Now, what do we do?
It is time to try to tie all the loose ends together and bring this booklet to an end.
16. The Guru principle

In the Buddhist tradition, the metaphor for how the Guru transfers wisdom to the student is like a lit
candle lighting an unlit one. Through a process of dialogue, teaching etc. the Guru inspires the
manifestation of wisdom in the student. (More details in the section on Samdhong Rinpoche in
Annexure C.)

This process presupposes a wise Guru, a committed student and a respectful, loving relationship
between the Guru and student. If this is the only mechanism that works, the schools with their large
numbers of children and their overworked teachers, both mainstream and alternative, appear to be
places where wisdom-making cannot enter.

Yet, the schools I visited, where the wise educators worked their magic, felt like vibrant learning
spaces. I came away with the feeling that it was only in the presence of a wise school leader that
schools lived up to their potential.

Just to dispel any misconceptions, here is a list of the kind of contradictory skills I think they embody:
- Truthfulness in words and actions.
- Kindness, politeness and respectfulness towards the adults and children in their schools.
- The ability to be politically incorrect and see, and deal with, things as they are.
- Knowing the futility of all mainstream and alternative models of education.
- Or to not have simple rules to live and teach by. They recognize that education is a divergent problem.
- A quick intelligence, the ability to see multiple perspectives, to hold things lightly and to smile.
- The ability to make the person talking to them feel at ease.
etc.
Conclusion
17. Final summing up

Professor Krishna Kumar in his very influential book 'What is worth teaching?' says:

“Let us look, for example, at the grade six-history text prepared under the auspices of the NCERT. It
'covers' Alexander, Chandragupta Maurya, Bindusara, and Ashoka in one paragraph each. If we look
more closely, we will appreciate the teacher's predicament when she tries to explain a sentence such as
this to eleven year olds:

"Alexander had invaded India because some of the northern areas were included in the great Persian
empire of the Achaemenid rulers"

Who were the Achaemenid rulers? Where was the Persian empire? What did it mean to 'include' some
areas of India in that empire? No teacher has the time to answer such questions, let alone the time to
allow children to explore them in the library (if there is one). No solution is likely to be found for the
problem of 'curriculum load' until it is diagnosed correctly. The problem of volume of content at any
grade level does not originate in the so-called 'explosion of knowledge', which is frequently referred to
in our country in discussions of curriculum It originates in the archaic notion of curriculum as a bag of
facts and in the equally archaic view of teaching as a successful delivery of known facts. Unless we
shed these notions and accept more modern, humanist concepts of curriculum and teaching, we are
going to remain stuck as teachers with impossibly large syllabi and fat textbooks to cover. The quasi-
bureaucratic organizations responsible for curriculum planning in our country will go on packing the
syllabi tighter and tighter, all the time seeking justification in the explosion of knowledge with which
our 'backward' country will have to cope. This process of mistaken action and legitimizing of action
can stop only if we recognize that curriculum planning involves a selection of knowledge, and teaching
involves the process of creating a classroom ethos in which children want to pursue inquiry. We hardly
need to add that a curriculum based on this view of teaching can be prepared, and implemented only
after the teacher's right to participate in the organization of knowledge and the child's right to autonomy
in learning are accepted.”
(From the last part of Chapter 1 of 'What is worth teaching?' by Professor Krishna Kumar)

The academic content of what the children have to study in school is large. When a teacher has to
transact this large load, in a classroom with many children, it becomes a superhuman task to stay
alternative. (If it was one teacher and one child or even one child alone with occasional inputs from a
peer or teacher, I think the problem becomes not only manageable but easy.)

So, here is the restatement of the overall problem with alternative schools:
IF what is required is a wise teacher
AND wisdom implies the ability to be uncaught, to be able to witness things non-judgmentally
WHICH requires some practice of silence, of self-reflection, of expressing love and joy and generosity
AND if the everyday teaching life is so hectic that it leaves no room to even breathe
THEN how the hell does the non-wise teacher become a wise teacher?
AND...

... in that case, the difference between mainstream and alternative schools is only cosmetic. And the
parents can quietly choose the nearest mainstream school that fits their budget.

Thank you very much for reading this far and this is... THE END
Annexures
 Annexure A - List of alternative schools about which articles were written

School name Location Website

The Learning Community Auroville wiki.auroville.org.in/wiki/The_Learning_Community
Aksharnandan Pune aksharnandanschool.org
Muni International Delhi muniinternationalschool.org
Anand Niketan Sevagram www.nayeetaleem.org
Al Qamar International Chennai www.alqamaracademy.in
Parikrma Bangalore www.parikrmafoundation.org
Abhaya Hyderabad www.abhayafoundation.org
Kamla Nimbkar Balvidyalaya Phaltan www.pragatshikshansanstha.org
Centre For Learning Bangalore cfl.in
Mirambika Delhi www.mirambika.org/Pgcw01.htm
Pallikkoodam Kottayam pallikoodam.org
Valley school Bangalore valleyschool.herokuapp.com
Digantar Jaipur www.digantar.org
Aman Setu Pune www.amansetumyschool.com
Bangalore Steiner School Bangalore www.bangaloresteinerschool.org
Manzil Delhi manzil.in
Sri Aurobindo school Pondichry sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/saice
Anand Niketan Democratic School Bhopal anbhopal.weebly.com
Poorna Learning Centre Bangalore poorna.in
Indus School Indore www.indusworldschool.com/indore.html
Shishuvan Mumbai www.shishuvan.com
Karmyog Gunakul Kolkata gunakul.karmyog21c.in
Bhavya Bangalore www.bhavyalearning.org
Integral School Hyderabad www.theintegralschool.org

The school articles appeared as a regular column in Teacher Plus magazine and are available online at:
http://www.teacherplus.org/category/alternatiview
 Annexure B - A sample article

Pallikoodam, Kottayam

Our house in Kerala is constructed by Nirmithi Kendra, the organization that Laurie Baker founded to
propagate his ideas about low-cost buildings. So I have been exposed to his characteristic style of
building-- exposed brick walls, brick arches instead of concrete lintels, brick jali work to let in light and
air, Mangalore tiles set inside roofs to reduce the usage of concrete and steel etc. And I am a big fan of
both the utility and the simple beauty of these structures. I was nevertheless enchanted by my walk
through the Pallikoodam school buildings in Kottayam. The story goes that Laurie Baker designed the
school buildings on condition that his daughter Heidi Baker could study there. If we have to have
structures to house schools, then this is exactly how they should be-- understated elegance and beauty,
different levels probably following the contours of the land, unexpected maze-like spaces, not a single
wall appeared to be following a straight line. Alice-in-wonderland-like I was never quite sure if I could
find my way back to the last space I came walking from.

I had an epiphany about the impact of the school building on nurturing creativity in children-- How can
you train your children to think out of the box if all your spaces are boxes? Ever since my visit to
Pallikoodam, I have been critically looking at the buildings of every school I go to. I have seen older
buildings, cheaper buildings, better decorated-by-children buildings, even a bus-shell building, but
nothing quite comes close to the statement that Pallikoodam makes. That it is possible to work with
nature, that the lush green outside and the simple inner spaces could merge effortlessly, that humility
and simplicity are great virtues, that the school infrastructure could be a constant reminder of the
beauty that human beings are capable of creating out of commonly available materials.

Pallikoodam was started in 1967 by Mary Roy, who is famous in her own right in Kerala for fighting
for property rights for Christian women, and doesn't need to bask in the reflected glory of being
Arundhati Roy's mother. The school started in a hall with seven students and later moved to the current
location as it grew. And in the experimentation with education that they have been doing, in the almost
50 years that the school has existed, they have figured out a great many things that work for them. Like
not having fixed text books, or their focus on making the extra-curricular an integral part of the
curriculum, or getting their boys and girls to become comfortable in each others company in the rigid,
patriarchal, small-town mentality of Kerala.

Dr Anuradha Rammohan the teacher who showed me around the school was warm, intelligent,
articulate, enthusiastic and curious-- perhaps some of the qualities that distinguish all good teachers.
What I noticed was happy, busy children everywhere. The few children who spoke to her as we walked
around spoke to her on terms of easy familiarity as if to a favorite relative rather than to a 'teacher'. And
in Pallikoodam the children refer to their teachers as 'Chechi'-- elder sister or as 'Kochamma'-- aunty.
The children are introduced to English only in class 3 and 'Namaskaaram' is the common form of
greeting. Being the father of three children who speak to me in Malayalam but invariably speak to each
other in English makes me see how valuable an early training in appreciating our mother tongue can be.

Pallikoodam stands as a shining example of the slow, steady transformation that a few wise teachers
can bring about in children's education. If you get a chance, do walk through its warm spaces and
experience it for yourselves.
Quick facts:

Been around for: 50 years

Number of teachers/ staff: 46

Number of children: 470

Classes handled: Nursery, Standard 1 to 12

USP: Pallikoodam is Malayalam medium in the lower classes. (Nursery, Std I and II)

Location: Kottayam, Kerala

Website: http://pallikoodam.org/
 Annexure C – Voices on education

Mahatma Gandhi
(Chapter 18 of 'Hind Swaraj' titled 'Education')

READER: In the whole of our discussion, you have not demonstrated the necessity for education: we
always complain of its absence among us. We notice a movement for compulsory education in our
country. The Maharaja Gaekwar has introduced it in his territories. Every eye is directed towards them.
We bless the Maharaja for it. Is all this effort then of no use ?

EDITOR: If we consider our civilization to be the highest, I have regretfully to say that much of the
effort you have described is of no use. The motive of the Maharaja and other great leaders who have
been working in this direction is perfectly pure. They, therefore, undoubtedly deserve
great praise. But we cannot conceal from ourselves the result that is likely to flow from their effort.

What is the meaning of education? It simply means a knowledge of letters. It is merely an instrument,
and an instrument may be well used or abused. The same instrument that may be used to cure a patient
may be used to take his life, and so may a knowledge of letters. We daily observe that many men abuse
it and very few make good use of it; and if this is a correct statement, we have proved that more harm
has been done by it than good.

The ordinary meaning of education is a knowledge of letters. To teach boys reading, writing and
arithmetic is called primary education. A peasant earns his bread honestly. He has ordinary knowledge
of the world. He knows fairly well how he should behave towards his parents, his wife, his children and
his fellow villagers. He understands and observes the rules of morality. But he cannot write his own
name. What do you propose to do by giving him a knowledge of letters? Will you add an inch to his
happiness ? Do you wish to make him discontented with his cottage or his lot? And even if you want to
do that, he will not need such an education. Carried away by the flood of western thought we came to
the conclusion, without weighing pros and cons, that we should give this kind of education to the
people.

Now let us take higher education. I have learned Geography, Astronomy, Algebra, Geometry, etc. What
of that? In what way have I benefited myself or those around me? Why have I learned these things?
Professor Huxley has thus defined education: “That man I think has had a liberal education who has
been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will and does with ease and pleasure
all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine with all
its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order...whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the
fundamental truths of nature . . . whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the
servant of a tender conscience . . .who has learnt to hate all vileness and to respect others as himself.
Such a one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education, for he is in harmony with nature. He
will make the best of her and she of him.”

If this is true education. I must emphatically say that the sciences I have enumerated above I have a
never been able to use for controlling my senses. Therefore, whether you take elementary education or
higher education, it is not required for the main thing. It does not make men of us.
It does not enable us to do our duty.

READER: If that is so, I shall have to ask you another question. What enables you to tell all these
things to me ? If you had not received higher education, how would you have been able to explain to
me the things that you have?

EDITOR: You have spoken well. But my answer is simple: I do not for one moment believe that my
life would have been wasted, had I not received higher or lower education. Nor do I consider that I
necessarily serve because I speak. But I do desire to serve and in endeavoring to fulfill that desire, I
make use of the education I have received. And, if I am making good use of it, even then it is not for
the millions, but I can use it only for such as you, and this supports my contention. Both you and I have
come under the bane of what is mainly false education. I claim to have become free from its ill effect,
and I am trying to give you the benefit of my experience and in doing so, I am demonstrating the
rottenness of this education.

Moreover, I have not run down a knowledge of letters in all circumstances. All I have now shown is
that we must not make of it a fetish. It is not our Kamadhuk. In its place it can be of use and it has its
place when we have brought our senses under subjection and put our ethics on a firm foundation. And
then if we feel inclined to receive that education, we may make good use of it. As an ornament it is
likely to sit well on us. It now follows that it is not necessary to make this education compulsory. Our
ancient school system is enough. Character building has the first place in it and that is primary
education. A building erected on that foundation will last.

READER: Do I then understand that you do not consider English education necessary for obtaining
Home Rule ?

EDITOR: My answer is yes and no. To give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them. The
foundation that Macaulay laid of education has enslaved us. I do not suggest that he has any such
intention, but that has been the result. Is it not a sad commentary that we should have to speak of Home
Rule in a foreign tongue?

And it is worthy of note that the systems which the Europeans have discarded are the systems in vogue
among us. Their learned men continually make changes. We ignorantly adhere to their cast-off systems.
They are trying each division to improve its own status. Wales is a small portion of England. Great
efforts are being made to revive a knowledge of Welsh among Welshmen. The English Chancellor, Mr.
Lloyd George is taking a leading part in the movement to make Welsh children speak Welsh. And what
is our condition? We write to each other in faulty English, and from this even our M.A.s are not free;
our best thoughts are expressed in English; the proceedings of our Congress are conducted in English;
our best newspapers are printed in English. If this state of things continues for a long time, posterity
will, it is my firm opinion, condemn and curse us.

It is worth noting that, by receiving English education, we have enslaved the nation. Hypocrisy,
tyranny, etc., have increased; English-knowing Indians have not hesitated to cheat and strike terror into
the people. Now, if we are doing anything for the people at all, we are paying only a
portion of the debt due to them.

Is it not a painful thing that, if I want to go to a court of justice, I must employ the English language as
a medium, that when I become a barrister, I may not speak my mother tongue and that someone else
should have to translate to me from my own language? Is not this absolutely
absurd? Is it not a sign of slavery? Am I to blame the English for it or myself? It is we, the English-
knowing Indians, that have enslaved India. The curse of the nation will rest not upon the English but
upon us.
I have told you that my answer to your last question is both yes and no. I have explained to you why it
is yes. I shall now explain why it is no.
We are so much beset by the disease of civilization, that we cannot altogether do without English-
education. Those who have already received it may make good use of it wherever necessary. In our
dealings with the English people, in our dealings with our own people, when we can only correspond
with them through that language, and for the purpose of knowing how disgusted they (the English)
have themselves become with their civilization, we may use or learn English, as the case may be. Those
who have studied English will have to teach morality to their progeny through their mother tongue and
to teach them another Indian language; but when they have grown up, they may learn English, the
ultimate aim being that we should not need it. The
object of making money thereby should be eschewed. Even in learning English to such a limited extent
we shall have to consider what we should learn through it and what we should not. It will be necessary
to know what sciences we should learn. A little thought should show you that immediately we cease to
care for English degrees, the rulers will prick up their ears.

READER: Then what education shall we give ?

EDITOR: This has been somewhat considered above, but we will consider it a little more. I think that
we have to improve all our languages. What subjects we should learn through them need not be
elaborated here. Those English books which are valuable, we should translate into the various Indian
languages. We should abandon the pretension of learning many sciences. Religious, that is ethical,
education will occupy the first place. Every cultured Indian will know in addition to his own provincial
language, if a Hindu, Sanskrit ; if a Mahomedan, Arabic; if a Parsee, Persian; and all, Hindi. Some
Hindus should know Arabic and Persian; some Mahomedans and Parsees, Sanskrit. Several
Northerners and Westerners should learn Tamil. A universal language for India should be Hindi, with
the option of writing it in Persian or Nagari characters. In order that the Hindus and the Mahomedans
may have closer relations, it is necessary to know both the characters. And, if we can do this, we can
drive the English language out of the field in a short time. All this is necessary for us, slaves. Through
our slavery the nation has been enslaved, and it will be free with our freedom.

READER: The question of religious education is very difficult.

EDITOR: Yet we cannot do without it. India will never be godless. Rank atheism cannot flourish in this
land. The task is indeed difficult. My head begins to turn as I think of religious education. Our religious
teachers are hypocritical and selfish; they will have to be approached. The Mullas, the Dasturs and the
Brahmins hold the key in their hands, but if they will not have the good sense, the energy that we have
derived from English education will have to be devoted to religious education. This is not very
difficult. Only the fringe of the ocean has been polluted and it is those who are within the fringe who
alone need cleansing. We who come under this category can even cleanse ourselves because my
remarks do not apply to the millions. In order to restore India to its pristine condition, we have to return
to it. In our own civilization there will naturally be progress, retrogression, reforms, and reactions; but
one effort is required, and that is to drive out Western civilization. All else will follow.
 Samdhong Rinpoche
(Summary of talk on 'Education in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition' available at the
YouTube channel 'Shiksha dialogues')

- Objective of shiksha is to dispel ignorance and awaken wisdom

- Learning, teaching, arguments, debates, reading etc are all tools towards above
- The guru word is not used and Kalyanmitra is used in the Buddhist tradition. It assumes a peer
relationship and approachability

Three types of purush

adam, madhyam and uttam purush – need different levels of shiksha

Kalyanmitra's requirements/ tasks:

1. Dispel fear from the student. Remove 'i cannot do this' from the student
2. Imparting teaching
3. Remove difficulties of student

Students qualifications/ requirements:

1. Non-biased mind
2. Intelligence
3. Willingness to learn. Inquisitiveness

Kalyanmitra-vidyarthi relationship very important and very secret. Based on a common agreement/
determination to work towards the awakening of wisdom in the student.

Kalyanmitra wisdom cannot be transferred directly to the student. No shaktipath possible. The
metaphor used is a lit candle lighting an unlit one (no transfer of material from lit). So the awakened
Kalyanmitra through dialogue, teaching etc inspires manifestation of awakening in student.

Shiksha process. Threefold:

1. Sheel
2. Samadhi
3. Pragya
The above required to various degrees from learning the simplest tasks to achieving Buddhahood. At
lowest level we need discipline, concentration and knowledge to even learn to write the letter 'ka'.

How to do the process. Three ways:

1. Shrutpragya - hearing and reading (knowledge)
2. Chintan-pragya - thinking, analysis, examination (verification)
3. Bhavanamayi pragya - 2 types contemplative/ concentration (experience)

Four skillful methods adopted by the Kalyanmitra:

1. Take care of all needs of student (food, cloth, book, teaching etc)
2. Skillful conversation
3. Observe his or her own behavior. Live the teaching. Be an example
4. Wisdom to understand likes/ dislikes of student and to tailor the teaching accordingly
 E.F. Schumacher
(Excerpt from 'A Guide For The Perplexed)

First, let us look at solved problems. Take a design problem – say, how to make a two-wheeled, man-
powered means of transportation. Various solutions are offered, which gradually and increasingly
converge until, finally, a design emerges which is simply 'the answer' – a bicycle, an answer that turns
out to be amazingly stable in time. Why is this answer so stable? Simply because it complies with the
laws of the universe – laws at the level of inanimate nature.

I propose to call problems of this nature convergent problems. The more intelligently you study them,
the more – whoever you are – the answers converge. They may be classified as 'convergent problem
solved' and convergent problem yet unsolved'. The words 'as yet' are important; for there is no reason,
in principle, why they should not be solved some day. Everything takes time, and there simply has not
yet been time enough to get around to solving them. What is needed is more time, more money for
research and development (R&D) and, maybe, more talent.

It also happens, however, that a number of highly able people set out to study a problem and come up
with answers that contradict one another. They do not converge. On the contrary, the more they are
clarified and logically developed, the more they diverge, until some of them appear to be the exact
opposites of the others. For example, life presents us with a very big problem – not the technical
problem of two-wheeled transport, but the human problem of how to educate our children. We cannot
escape it; we have to face it, and we ask a number of equally intelligent people to advise us. Some of
them, on the basis of a very clear intuition, tell us this: Education is the process by which existing
culture is passed on to the next generation. Those who have (or are supposed to have) knowledge and
experience teach, and those who as yet lack knowledge and experience learn. This is quite clear, and
implies that there must be a situation of authority and discipline.

Nothing could be simpler, truer, more logical and straightforward. When it is a matter of passing on
existing knowledge from the knowers to the learners, there must be discipline among the learners to
receive what is being offered. In other words, education calls for the establishment of authority for the
teachers and obedience on the part of the pupils.

Now, another group of our advisers, having gone into the problem with utmost care, say this:
'Education is nothing more or less than the provision of a facility. The educator is like a good gardener,
who is concerned to make available good, healthy, fertile soil in which a young plant can grow strong
roots and extract the nutrients it requires. The young plant will develop in accordance with its own laws
of being, which are far more subtle than any human being can fathom, and will develop best when it
has the greatest possible freedom to choose exactly the nutrients it needs'. Education, in other words, as
seen by this second group, calls for the establishment not of discipline and obedience, but of freedom –
the greatest possible freedom.

If our first group of advisers is right, discipline and obedience are 'a good thing', and it can be argued
with perfect logic that is something is 'a good thing', more of it will be an even better thing; and this
line of logic leads to the conclusion that perfect discipline and obedience would be a perfect thing …
and the school would become a prison.

Our second group of advisers, on the other hand, argues that in education freedom is 'a good thing'. If
so, more freedom will be an even better thing, and perfect freedom would produce perfect education.
The school would become a wilderness, even a kind of lunatic asylum.
Freedom and discipline/obedience – here is a perfect pair of opposites. No compromise is possible. It is
either the one or the other, in any real situation. It is either 'Do as you like' or 'Do as I tell you'.

Logic does not help us because it insists that if a thing is true, its opposite cannot be true at the same
time. It also insists that, if a thing is good, more of it will be better. Here, however, we have a very
typical and very basic problem, which I call a divergent problem, and it does not yield to ordinary,
'straight-line' logic; it demonstrates that life is bigger than logic.

'What is the best method of education?' in short presents a divergent problem par excellence. The
answers tend to diverge; the more logical and consistent they are, the greater is the divergence. There is
'freedom' versus 'discipline and obedience'. There is no solution – and yet, some educators are better
than others. How do they do it? One way to find out is to ask them. If we explained to them our
philosophical difficulties they might show signs of irritation with this intellectual approach. 'Look here,'
they might say, 'all this is far too clever for me. The point is: You must love the little horrors.' Love,
empathy, participation mystique, understanding, compassion – these are faculties of a higher order than
those required for the implementation of any policy of discipline or freedom. To mobilize these higher
faculties or forces, to have them available not simply as occasional impulses but permanently: that
requires a high level of self-awareness, and that makes a great educator.
 Sri Aurobindo
(Excerpt from Professor Kireet Joshi's website)

Sri Aurobindo speaks of three principles of teaching, and when implemented, they provide a sound
basis of a system of natural organisation of the highest processes and the movements of which the
human nature is capable. They also form the basis of the theory and practice of integral education,
which has been propounded in detail in Sri Aurobindo’s book, The Synthesis of Yoga and the Mother’s
book, On Education.

In brief, the three principles of teaching are as follows in Sri Aurobindo’s own words:

“The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher is not an instructor or
taskmaster, he is a helper and a guide. His business is to suggest and not to impose. …The second
principle is that the mind has to be consulted in its own growth. The idea of hammering the child into
the shape desired by the parent or teacher is a barbarous and ignorant superstition. It is he himself who
must be induced to expand in accordance with his own nature. … The chief aim of education should be
to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use. …
The third principle of education is to work from the near to the far, from that which is to that which
shall be. … A free and natural growth is the condition of genuine development. …”

There are, according to Sri Aurobindo, three instruments of the teacher: instruction, example, and
influence. The good teacher will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth
of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will not impose his
opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and
sure as a seed, which will grow under the benign fostering within. He will know that the example is
more powerful than instruction. Actually, the example is not that of the outward acts but of the inner
motivation of life and the inner states and inner activities. Finally, he will also acknowledge that
influence is more important than example. For influence proceeds from the power or contact of the
teacher with his pupil, from the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into the pupil, even
though in silence, all that which the teacher himself is or possesses. The good teacher is himself a
constant student. He is a child leading children, and a light kindling other lights, a vessel and a channel.

Ravindra Sharma
(Excerpt from talk given in Seminar on Indian Perspectives of Education)

The methodologies of teaching and learning were very diverse and interesting. There were no time
constraints. No sitting in this or that way etc. There was a great singer from Adilabad called Narayan
Rao. He went to Baroda to become a chela of Fayaz Khan Sahib. He was one of the crowd of chelas
and stayed near the guru for many months. The Guru, of course, was totally oblivious of most of his
many chelas including Narayan Rao. And one day when the guru was singing a new taan, Narayan Rao
unthinkingly said, “Wah ustaad.” This was the only voice from the crowd of chelas sitting in front of
the Guru. Khan sahib stopped in mid-song and imperiously asked, “Who said that? Who said wah
ustad?” When Narayan Rao tentatively put his hand up, he was asked who he was. Narayan Rao told
him he was also one of the chelas. “Oh, so you are one of my chelas,” said Fayaz Khan Sahib, “Why
did you say wah ustad?” Narayan Rao timidly said that he thought that the new thing the Guru had
done was great. Khan Saheb said, “Oh, you understood that it was a new thing. You can now go back
and teach using my name.” Narayan Rao's studies were officially over.
 Alan Watts
(Excerpt from a talk on youtube entitled 'How to get out of your own way')

The whole idea of self-improvement is a will-of-the-wisp and a hoax. That is not what its about. Lets
begin where we are. What happens if you KNOW beyond any shadow of doubt that there is nothing
you can do to be better. Its a kind of a relief isn't it? Now you say-- Now what will I do? We are so used
to making things better, leave the world a better place than we found it, sort of thing. I want to be of
service to other people and all those dreadfully hazy ideas. Theres that little itch still. But supposing
instead of that – seeing that there isn't anything we can really do, to improve ourselves or improve the
world – If we realize that that is so, it gives us a breather, in the course of which we may simply watch
what is going on. Watch what happens. Nobody ever does this you know. Therefore, it sounds terribly
simple. Looks almost as if its not worth doing. To watch whats happening and what you are doing by
way of reaction to it. Just watch it happen. And don't be in a hurry to think you know what it is.

Look at things without fixing labels and names and gradations and judgments on everything? Watch
what happens. Watch what we do. Now, if you do that, you do at least give yourself a chance. Then it
may be, that when you are in this way freed from busy-bodyness and being out to improve everything,
that your own nature will begin to take care of itself. Because you are not getting in the way of yourself
all the time. You will begin to find out that the great things that you do are really happenings. For
example – No great genius can explain how he does it. Yes, he says I have learned the technique to
express myself. Because I had something in me that had to come out. I had to know how to give it out.
So, if I were a musician, I had to learn how music is produced. That means learning a musical
instrument, or learning a technique of musical notation, or whatever it may be. If I want to describe
something I have to learn a language. So that others can understand me. I need a technique. But then
beyond that I am afraid I cannot tell you how I used the technique to express this mysterious thing that
I wanted to show you.

If we could tell people that, we would have schools where we would infallibly train musical geniuses.
Scientific miracle-minds. And there would be so many of them that we wouldn't know what to do with
them. Geniuses would be a dime-a-dozen. Because what is fascinating always about genius is that the
fellow does something that we can't understand. He surprises us. But in the same way we cannot
understand our own brains. Neurology knows relatively little about the brain. Yes, there is this, which
can perform all these extraordinary intellectual and cultural miracles, but we don't know how we did it.
But we did! We didn't have some campaign to have an improved brain over the monkeys or whatever
may be our ancestors. It happened!

All growth you see is fundamentally something that happens. But for it to happen, two things are
important. The first is that, as I said, you must have the technical ability to express what happens. And
secondly, you must get out of your own way. But right at the bottom of the whole problem of control is
– how am I to get out of my own way? And if I showed you a system – lets all practice getting out of
our own way – It would turn into another form of self-improvement. Here's the dynamics of this thing.
And we find this problem, repeatedly, throughout the entire history of human spirituality. In the
phraseology of Zen Buddhism – You cannot get this by thinking, you cannot attain to it by not thinking.
It is only as getting out of your own way ceases to be a matter of choice, when you see that there is
nothing else for you to do – when you see in other words that doing something about your situation is
not going to help you, when you see equally that trying not to do anything about it is not going to help
you – where are you? – where do you stand? You are non-plussed. And you are simply reduced to
watching.
Now you may say, I need some help in this process, and therefore I am going to find someone else to
help me. It may be a therapist, it may be a clergyman, it may be a guru. It may be any kind of person
who teaches a technique of self-improvement. Now, how will you know if this person is able to teach
you? How can you judge, for example, whether a psychotherapist is effective or a charlatan? How can
you judge whether a guru is himself spiritually wise or merely a good chatterbox? Well of course you
ask your friends, you ask his other students or patients. And they are all of course enthusiastic. You
have to be enthusiastic when you bought something expensive. If you bought an automobile which
turned out to be a lemon, its very difficult to admit that it was a lemon. That you were fooled.

And it is the same when you buy a religion or an expensive operation. But what people do not
sufficiently realize is that when you pick an authority, whether it is a psychotherapeutic one or a
religious one – YOU chose it. Or in other words, this fellow or this book or this system is the right one
is your opinion. And how are you competent to judge? After all if you are saying to this other person or
other source- I think you are the authority – Thats your opinion. So you cannot really judge whether an
authority is a sound authority unless you yourself are a sound authority. Otherwise, you may just be
being fooled.

So, you see when you select an authority to help improve yourself, it is like hiring the police, out of
your tax money, and putting them in charge of seeing that you obey the law. Can't you take care of
yourself? But nobody seems to want to be in charge of themselves. Because they feel they can't do it.
St Paul said – “To will is present with me. But how to do good I find not. For the good that I would, I
do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do.” So, thereupon we are in difficulty. Because trying to
improve yourself is like trying to lift yourself up in the air by tugging at your own bootstraps. And it
can't be done!
 J. Krishnamurti
(Excerpt from 'On education')

You know, you live in one of the most beautiful valleys I have seen. It has a special atmosphere. Have
you noticed, especially in the evenings and early mornings, a quality of silence which permeates, which
penetrates the valley? There are around here, I believe, the most ancient hills in the world and man has
not spoilt them yet; and wherever you go, in cities or in other places, man is destroying nature, cutting
down trees to build more houses, polluting the air with cars and industry. Man is destroying animals;
there are very few tigers left. Man is destroying everything because more and more people are born and
they must have more space. Gradually, man is spreading destruction all over the world. And when one
comes to a valley like this - where there are very few people, where nature is still not spoilt, where
there is still silence, quietness, beauty - one is really astonished. Every time one comes here one feels
the strangeness of this land, but probably you have become used to it. You do not look at the hills any
more, you do not listen to the birds any more and to the wind among the leaves. So you have gradually
become indifferent.

Education is not only learning from books, memorizing some facts, but also learning how to look, how
to listen to what the books are saying, whether they are saying something true or false. All that is part
of education. Education is not just to pass examinations, take a degree and a job, get married and settle
down, but also to be able to listen to the birds, to see the sky, to see the extraordinary beauty of a tree,
and the shape of the hills, and to feel with them, to be really, directly in touch with them. As you grow
older, that sense of listening, seeing, unfortunately disappears because you have worries, you want
more money, a better car, more children or less children. You become jealous, ambitious, greedy,
envious; so you lose the sense of the beauty of the earth. You know what is happening in the world. You
must be studying current events. There are wars, revolts, nation divided against nation. In this country
too there is division, separation, more and more people being born, poverty, squalor and complete
callousness. Man does not care what happens to another so long as he is perfectly safe. And you are
being educated to fit into all this. Do you know the world is mad, that all this is madness - this fighting,
quarreling, bullying, tearing at each other? And you will grow up to fit into this. Is this right, is this
what education is meant for, that you should willingly or unwillingly fit into this mad structure called
society? And do you know what is happening to religions throughout the world? Here also man is
disintegrating, nobody believes in anything any more. Man has no faith and religions are merely the
result of a vast propaganda.

Since you are young, fresh, innocent, can you look at all the beauty of the earth, have the quality of
affection? And can you retain that? For if you do not, as you grow up, you will conform, because that is
the easiest way to live. As you grow up, a few of you will revolt, but that revolt too will not answer the
problem. Some of you will try to run away from society, but that running away will have no meaning.
You have to change society, but not by killing people. Society is you and I. You and I create the society
in which we live. So you have to change. You cannot fit into this monstrous society. So what are you
going to do?

And you, living in this extraordinary valley, are you going to be thrown into this world of strife,
confusion, war, hatred? Are you going to conform, fit in, accept all the old values? You know what
these values are - money, position, prestige, power. That is all man wants and society wants you to fit
into that pattern of values. But if you now begin to think, to observe, to learn, not from books, but learn
for yourself by watching, listening to everything that is happening around you, you will grow up to be a
different human being - one who cares, who has affection, who loves people. Perhaps if you live that
way, you might find a truly religious life.
So look at nature, at the tamarind tree, the mango trees in bloom, and listen to the birds early in the
morning and late in the evening. See the clear sky, the stars, how marvelously the sun sets behind those
hills. See all, the colors, the light on the leaves, the beauty of the land, the rich earth. Then having seen
that and seen also what the world is, with all its brutality, violence, ugliness, what are you going to do?

Do you know what it means to attend, to pay attention? When you pay attention, you see things much
more clearly. You hear the bird singing much more distinctly. You differentiate between various sounds.
When you look at a tree with a great deal of attention, you see the whole beauty of the tree. You see the
leaves, the branch, you see the wind playing with it. When you pay attention, you see extraordinarily
clearly. Have you ever done it? Attention is something different from concentration. When you
concentrate, you don't see everything. But when you are paying attention, you see a great deal. Now,
pay attention. Look at that tree and see the shadows, the slight breeze among the leaves. See the shape
of the tree. See the proportion of the tree in relation to other trees. See the quality of light that
penetrates through the leaves, the light on the branches and the trunk. See the totality of the tree. Look
at it that way, because I am going to talk about something to which you have to pay attention. Attention
is very important, in the class, as well as when you are outside, when you are eating, when you are
walking. Attention is an extraordinary thing.

I am going to ask you something. Why are you being educated? Do you understand my question? Your
parents send you to school. You attend classes, you learn mathematics, you learn geography, you learn
history. Why? Have you ever asked why you want to be educated, what is the point of being educated?
What is the point of your passing examinations and getting degrees? Is it to get married, get a job and
settle down in life as millions and millions of people do? Is that what you are going to do, is that the
meaning of education? Do you understand what I am talking about? This is really a very serious
question. The whole world is questioning the basis of education. We see what education has been used
for. Human beings throughout the world - whether in Russia or in China or in America or in Europe or
in this country - are being educated to conform, to fit into society and into their culture, to fit into the
stream of social and economic activity, to be sucked into that vast stream that has been flowing for
thousands of years. Is that education, or is education something entirely different? Can education see to
it that the human mind is not drawn into that vast stream and so destroyed; see that the mind is never
sucked into that stream; so that, with such a mind, you can be an entirely different human being with a
different quality to life? Are you going to be educated that way? Or are you going to allow your
parents, society, to dictate to you so that you become pad of the stream of society? Real education
means that a human mind, your mind, not only is capable of being excellent in mathematics, geography
and history, but also can never, under any circumstances, be drawn into the stream of society. Because
that stream which we call living, is very corrupt, is immoral, is violent, is greedy. That stream is our
culture. So, the question is how to bring about the right kind of education so that the mind can
withstand all temptations, all influences, the bestiality of this civilization and this culture. We have
come to a point in history where we have to create a new culture, a totally different kind of existence,
not based on consumerism and industrialization, but a culture based upon a real quality of religion.
Now how does one bring about, through education, a mind that is entirely different, a mind that is not
greedy, not envious? How does one create a mind that is not ambitious, that is extraordinarily active,
efficient; that has a real perception of what is true in daily life which is after all religion.

Now, let us find out what is the real meaning and intention of education. Can your mind, which has
been conditioned by society, the culture in which you have lived, be transformed through education so
that you will never under any circumstances enter the stream of society? Is it possible to educate you
differently? `Educate' in the real sense of that word; not to transmit from the teachers to the students
some information about mathematics or history or geography, but in the very instruction of these
subjects to bring about a change in your mind. Which means that you have to be extraordinarily
critical. You have to learn never to accept anything which you yourself do not see clearly, never to
repeat what another has said.

I think you should put these questions to yourself, not occasionally, but every day. Find out. Listen to
everything, to the birds, to that cow calling. Learn about everything in yourself, because if you learn
from yourself about yourself, then you will not be a secondhand human being. So you should, if I may
suggest, from now on, find out how to live entirely differently and that is going to be difficult, for I am
afraid most of us like to find an easy way of living. We like to repeat what other people say, what other
people do, because it is the easiest way to live – to conform to the old pattern or to a new pattern. We
have to find out what it means never to conform and what it means to live without fear. This is your
life, and nobody is going to teach you, no book, no guru. You have to learn from yourself, not from
books. There is a great deal to learn about yourself. It is an endless thing, it is a fascinating thing, and
when you learn about yourself from yourself, out of that learning wisdom comes. Then you can live a
most extraordinary, happy, beautiful life.
 Annexure D – Voices on Wisdom

Tao Teh Ching of Lao Tzu

(Translated by John C. H. Wu)

LXIV

What is at rest is easy to hold.

What manifests no omens is easily forestalled.
What is fragile is easily shattered.
What is small is easily scattered.

Tackle things before they have appeared.

Cultivate peace and order before confusion and disorder have set in.

A tree as wide as a man’s embrace springs from a tiny sprout.

A tower nine stories high begins with a heap of earth.
A journey of a thousand leagues starts from where your feet stand.

He who fusses over anything spoils it.

He who grasps anything loses it.
The sage fusses over nothing and therefore spoils nothing.
He grips at nothing therefore loses nothing.

In handling affairs, people often spoil them just at the point of success.
With heedfulness in the beginning and patience at the end, nothing will be spoiled.

Therefore, the sage desires to be desireless,

Sets no value on rare goods,
Learns to unlearn his learning,
And induces the masses to return from where they have overpassed.
He only helps all creatures to find their own nature,
But does not venture to lead them by the nose.
 Chuang Tzu
(On the behaviour of the high form of man)

The man of character lives at home without exercising his mind and performs actions without worry.
The notions of right and wrong and the praise and blame of others do not disturb him. When within the
four seas all people can enjoy themselves that is happiness for him. When all people are well provided,
that is peace for him. Sorrowful in countenance, he looks like a baby that has lost its mother. Appearing
stupid, he goes about like one who has lost his way. He has plenty of money to spend and does not
know where it comes from. He drinks and eats just enough and does not know where the food comes
from. This is the demeanour of the man of character.

The hypocrites are those people who regard as good whatever the world acclaims as good and regard as
right whatever the world acclaims as right. When you tell them that they are men of dao then their
countenances change with satisfaction. When you call them hypocrites they may look displeased. All
their life they call themselves men of dao and all their lives they remain hypocrites. They know how to
make a good speech and tell appropriate anecdotes in order to attract the crowd. But from the very
beginning to the very end they do not know what it is all about. They put on the proper garb and dress
in the proper colours and put up a decorous appearance to make themselves popular but refuse to admit
that they are hypocrites.

2 Poems from ancient Tamil

(Translated by A.K. Ramanujan in 'Poems of love and war')

This world lives because

This world lives

because

Some men
do not eat alone,
not even when they get
the sweet ambrosia of the gods;

they've no anger in them,

they fear evils other men fear
but never sleep over them;

give their lives for honor,

will not touch a gift of whole worlds
if tainted;

there's no faintness in their hearts

and they do not strive
for themselves.

Because such men are,

this world is.

-- Ilam Peruvaluti
Every Town a Home Town

Every town our home town,

Every man a kinsman.

Good and evil do not come

from others.
Pain and relief of pain
come of themselves.
Dying is nothing new.
We do not rejoice
that life is sweet
nor in anger
call it bitter.

Our lives, however dear,

follow their own course,

rafts drifting
in the rapids of a great river
sounding and dashing over the rocks
after a downpour
from skies slashed by lightnings-

we know this
from the vision
of men who see.

So,
we are not amazed by the great,
and we do not scorn the little.

– Kaniyan Punkunran
 Bhagavad Gita Excerpt
(Slokas 54 to 72 of chapter 2, translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood)

ARJUNA:
Krishna, how can one identify a man who is firmly established and absorbed in Brahman? In what
manner does an illumined soul speak? How does he sit? How does he talk?

SRI KRISHNA:
He knows bliss in the Atman
And wants nothing else.
Cravings torment the heart:
He renounces cravings.
I call him illumined.
Not shaken by adversity,
Not hankering after happiness:
Free from fear, free from anger,
Free from the things of desire.
I call him a seer, and illumined.
The bonds of his flesh are broken.
He is lucky, and does not rejoice,
He is unlucky, and does not weep.
I call him illumined.

The tortoise can draw in his legs:

The seer can draw in his senses.
I call him illumined.

The abstinent run away from what they desire

But carry their desires with them:
When a man enters reality,
He leaves his desires behind him.

Even a mind that knows the path

Can be dragged from the path:
The senses are so unruly.
But he controls the senses
And recollects the mind
And fixes it on me.
I call him illumined.

Thinking about sense-objects

Will attach you to sense-objects;
Grow attached, and you become addicted;
Thwart your addiction, it turns to anger;
Be angry, and you confuse your mind;
Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience;
Forget experience, you lose discrimination;
Lose discrimination, and you miss life's only purpose.
When he has no lust, no hatred,
A man walks safely among the things of lust and hatred.
To obey the Atman
Is his peaceful joy:
Sorrow melts
Into that clear peace:
His quiet mind
Is soon established in peace.

The uncontrolled mind

Does not guess that the Atman is present:
How can it meditate?
Without meditation, where is peace?
Without peace where is happiness?

The wind turns the ship

From its course upon the waters:
The wandering winds of the senses
Cast man's mind adrift
And turn his better judgment from its course.
When a man can still the senses
I call him illumined.
The recollected mind is awake
In the knowledge of Atman
Which is dark night to the ignorant:
The ignorant are awake in their sense-life
Which they think is daylight:
To the seer it is darkness.

Water flows continually into the ocean

But the ocean is never disturbed:
Desire flows into the mind of the seer
But he is never disturbed.
The seer knows peace:
The man who stirs up his own lusts
Can never know peace.
He knows peace who has forgotten desire.
He lives without craving:
Free from ego, free from pride.

This is the state of enlightenment in Brahman:

A man does not fall back from it
Into delusion.
Even at the moment of death
He is alive in that enlightenment:
Brahman and he are one.
 Marcus Aurelius
(From book 11 of 'Meditations', translated by Gregory Hays)

Characteristics of the rational soul:

Self-perception, self-examination, and the power to make of itself whatever it wants.

It reaps its own harvest, unlike plants (and, in a different way, animals) whose yield is gathered in by
others.

It reaches its intended goal, no matter where the limit of its life is set. Not like dancing and theater and
things like that, where the performance is incomplete if it's broken off in the middle, but at any point –
no matter which one you pick – it has fulfilled its mission, done its work completely. So that it can say,
“I have what I came for.”

It surveys the world and the empty space around it, and the way it's put together. It delves into the
endlessness of time to extend its grasp and comprehension of the periodic births and and rebirths that
the world goes through. It knows that those who come after us will see nothing different, that those
who came before us saw no more than we do, and that anyone with forty years behind him and eyes in
his head has seen both past and future – both alike.

Also characteristics of the rational soul:

Affection for its neighbors, Truthfulness. Humility. Not to place anything above itself – which is
characteristic of law as well. No difference here between the logos of rationality and that of justice.