Why, What and How of Education

Why am I taking responsibility of the school at Barkheda?

Educating children is a responsibility that we’ve already taken on ourselves – our own children. We are very committed to it. Though we’re not experts in the area, we know that we’ll be able to do a good job, just as we’ve done a good job of raising them so far, though we weren’t experts at that either. Just expanding the scope of the responsibility to more children may be an incremental effort, but comes with significant incremental advantages - for our learning, the learning of our children and the learning of the kids in the school.

What the school does not mean to me.

• It is not for social cause nor is it aimed at resolving any social ill like illiteracy, unemployment, poverty gender discrimination or the like.
• It is not for rural children or urban children. It is for children.
• It will not prepare students for academic success. Academic success will be incidental.
• It will not be adjudged as successful on the basis of the growth in number of students, academic success of students, financial performance and media coverage.

Rekha & I have done some thinking about the ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the school. We’ve reached some answers. But, we’re sure that these answers are not all inclusive. Nor are they fool-proof and final. We realize that no answer is fool-proof and final. The benefit of collective thinking accrues when individual expertise, understanding and insight of all ‘dissolve’ such that the individuality of the expertise, understanding, insight and commitment ceases to exist. Also, conviction of a decision is much stronger if each individual is much stronger when one arrives at the decision. Therefore placing these answers for discussion will not be the correct starting point. Therefore, I’d like to begin the thinking process. The subject is vast and complex. Therefore I’ll try and pick threads for discussion and invite views.

Thread 1. Breaking of walls

I learnt this during a discussion with Rajesh Dalal and Saraswati. There are various walls which compartmentalize learning. For example, a wall exists between living and schooling. There is no evidence that learning happens only between 8 am to 2.30 pm, or that learning during these times has higher retention. On the contrary, all the learning other than the school hours may have higher retention because it is experiential.

Are there any other walls, which need to be broken?