Bhavya – some comments by Mamata
I am part of Bhavya, the 'school', which started in Bangalore a few months back. For very obvious reasons, we are very, very reluctant to call ourselves a school (even if alternative) and we really prefer to see ourselves as an extension of a home learning environment for children and adults.
The emphasis at Bhavya, is on allowing children to learn and grow in the presence of empathic adults and a rich indoor and outdoor environment. We are careful to ensure that as adults we do not interfere with the child's natural learning process through constant teaching. Many adults (including parents) spend the day with the children at Bhavya, responding to the child's needs and interests with empathy and acceptance. There are some parents who have previously home-schooled their children on their own and now see this as an extension of the home environment.
For the adults in this environment, responding to children in the here and now, has also involved observing our own fears and conditioning and this has often resulted in a lot of movement and growth for us, personally.
On being asked how to classify Bhavya:
Though we are a place where adults and children converge, giving each other space and opportunities for growth and acceptance, we would be very uncomfortable being listed as a 'school' (alternative or not), with all the connotations that the word school carries for us. We believe that none of us needs to go to a school to learn and that learning happens as a consequence of living life.
Question: What about 'Being Centres' or 'Growing Centres'?
Education and learning still sound a bit forced to me. You wouldn't send a plant to a learning centre to get educated. You would keep it where it gets enough sunlight and is safe from grazing animals, water it when it needs water, speak to it lovingly when it is lonely, but fundamentally the plant does all the growing by itself. You respond to the plant's needs in the here and now and not vice versa. And voila! One day you see a beautiful tree.
I feel a child's needs are as fundamental as that - love, space and sustenance and we tend to get mixed up with lots of methodologies and theories in an effort to hasten 'learning' or 'growth', losing the essence.
Physical space and sustenance are the easier things to provide. The ability to love unconditionally itself, (so life giving for yourself and the people around you) is not easy, and for me, personally has involved, and does involve, lots of learning and looking inside.
Bhavya has various interpretations in Sanskrit and may mean beautiful or true or vigorous depending on how you look at it.
- Written by Mamata