Rationale
Obviously there is a great void in the process of education today. The physical growth is not considered except to 'look beautiful'. The need for the physical to be trained; that the physical is the 'servant of the mind' and will work as is expected of it is a concept that is rarely inculcated in the children.. The mental growth - we consider all languages, math and subjects as part of mental growth of a child - is given great importance. However, the complementary growth of understanding and thinking is again given a miss. The emotional is hardly touched upon. Even the new jargon - emotional intelligence - talks of emotions as though removed from what one does or learns. To take an example, the third standard text talks of storms as 'destructive'. Storms destroy, true, but what about what causes storms and what is released in the process. And finally the spiritual - which integrates all the other three to make a whole person.
Perfect emotions + perfect associations + perfect memory = creativity / a thinking mind.
We wished to take these ideas of the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Pondicherry) and see if we could truly educate our child. So, we did not put her in any school but have taught her at home ourselves. She is now 31.
At school, we work the same way as we do with Nirupama. Of course, the results are spectacular in some cases, in some, where the home environment is even more poor than normal, the children have been able to absorb only so much. So we have, as anywhere else, a broad spectrum of outcome. Our single criterion is that the children are happy. All of them are extremely happy coming to school. We can also say confidently that our children enjoy the learning process, that they are the least destructive of children and that we are making an impact in the village through them. The children are natural leaders in their own 'streets'.
It would be more appropriate to say that it chose us. When we were looking for land near Mumbai to start the school, we met Swami Dayananda Saraswathi of Arsha Vidya Gurukulam. He suggested that we move to this village, where he said there is a need. We came to AVK in December 93 to make advance payment for the land and moved to the village in March 94. We built a small house in the campus and moved in, end June. August 15th, we began the school in a small open thatched shed.
Not really. We did miss our people and listening to many languages. It was tough with reference to the village reaction the first few years. When we started school in 94, we requested permission of the panchayat to light up the road to the school which they refused. Today we are accepted enough for the people to bring poles, ensure electrical connection and generally take care of the school properties.
What keeps us going are the children, the adventure of the work: we've taken to writing texts that are used in the schools we have helped start; our mobile library has also helped nearby schools. Each day brings its own lot of challenges and meeting them is fun.
We have enclosed some reports that we have made over the last few years and that may give one a fair idea on our school functioning