The Need For Bhavya: Our Rationale
A. The Situation Today
The world-view that dominates today is intensely competitive, materialistic, mechanistic and ecologically violent, based on an assumption that the human power to know, manipulate and reconfigure is absolute and infinite. This egocentric world-view is reflected in the schooling methods that are popularly in practice, inculcating children into this doxa while still very young. Through the ages, schools have been a reflection of the wider society, reinforcing these dominant attitudes. While societal attitudes have created the prevailing system of child-rearing and education, these, in turn, reinforce those same attitudes. There is no escape. The vicious circle continues.
Consequently, children are taught not to rock the boat, to maintain the status quo at any cost, and they are rewarded when they do so. They grow up convinced that they may never question adult authority, or offer opinions of their own which might challenge those in authority. Often, by the time they are adults, they have been socialized so completely into these attitudes that they become those adults themselves. They have never known another way. Thus, a whole society is created which will not question authority. There is grave danger in creating masses of people who do not think for themselves, but are quick to obey blindly. Adolf Hitler once said, “What good fortune for those in power that people do not think.”
We are concerned that educated adults, on an average, seem unable to live cooperatively with one another. Attempts to resolve problems are often made through violent means, leading to much destruction of life and property, creating more anger and distress. If after all the “education” that people receive, society is left in such a state of confusion and destruction, what is one to deduce? How many more Godhra-Gujarat or September 11-Afghanistan-Iraq disasters do we need to wake us up? From where did this violence really originate and from where would sensitivity, love and empathy come? We feel that, as a society, we need to reflect upon this, seriously, before considering any form of education for our children. This widely prevalent system has undoubtedly failed.
In our work with children, we did not feel justified in training them to adjust to the society described above. We were convinced that we may not teach our children, directly or indirectly, that to succeed they have to be competitive, materialistic, and aggressive – to win at all costs. A redefining of “success” in more productive and positive terms had opened the door to a completely different set of possibilities for us. We felt that the answer lay in a serious consideration of these questions:
What is the purpose of education?
What is the relationship between our educational practices, learning, the growth of the individual and the growth of society?
What is the root cause of the extreme anger, violence and mindlessness we face in today’s world?
What would help us make this world a place which nurtures Life?
We recognize that our children are growing into a world which is alarmingly complex and challenging. In order to be able to survive as well as to halt, in a constructive way, the forces which are so steadily destroying the thread of our society, our children are going to need to apply all their creative abilities, their critical thinking skills and their problem-solving skills. Our children need to grow up as kind, caring human beings, who can co-exist in harmonious, productive relationships with one another. The conventional educational process, unfortunately, does not provide any space to develop these abilities.
B. Our Search
As adults dissatisfied with the conventional educational system, there were three issues which troubled us. The questions which repeatedly hit us were:
1. Why were children mostly so disinterested in learning?
2. Why was there so much noise everywhere – in classrooms, outside classrooms – just about everywhere? Why was “discipline” such a problem in most schools?
3. Why were teachers, generally, such an unhappy and frustrated community?
While we didn’t have any answers to these questions then, one thing we knew for certain was that there was going to be no meaningful learning as long as these problems persisted, and also that we could never feel motivated to continue working in an environment which seemed to bring nothing but frustration to all involved.
It became clear that the noise which seemed to fill the schoolrooms and corridors and grounds was not coming from outside. It was noise from the inside – inside the children and the adults. It was the noise which had just collected in all our heads from the millions of unresolved issues from our very early days.
Hence we decided to let go. We relaxed the environment. We removed all ideas and practices which shackled the child or instilled fear in her.
We observed that every child who came to us came with her own learning agenda. She could keep herself very busy through the day in her own work (what we call ‘play’). This free play was very essential to help her to make sense of her world and all its complexities. With each new learning that her self-driven exploration brought, she found a new equilibrium. As there was no external attempt to rush her learnings, she found each new equilibrium in a state of peace and she found her inner balance. There was no mounting restlessness within her.
When free play was denied her or even curbed to varying degrees, the child did not have the opportunity to find her inner balance at her own pace. She felt rushed and frustrated because the learnings did not come easily to her. In this state she was a distracted child, unable to focus her mind, intensely, on anything.
Striking of the inner balance through self-directed exploration required a longer stretch of time than children were usually given in the traditional system. As we incorporated into the child’s day, changes which respected her position, we found that the noise inside her seemed to come down and, in time, the noise outside grew less and less. In other words, the restlessness which prevented each child from recognizing her own interests and drives and, therefore, from pursuing them in a constructive way, decreased, gradually. All we needed to do was to try and develop the environment to keep with the children’s interests to the best of our ability. The children in the new set-up continued to explore. We, the adults, continued to interact with them - we listened to them, talked with them, discussed with them, and empathized with them.
They continued to explore their environment as freely and systematically as any scientist would, uninterrupted by the adults around them. In time as they were ready we began to read to them stories, and sometimes, we would read to them about the very things they explored and investigated. We helped them to learn how to read. They played with numbers. They learned how to write. The development of thinking skills was a natural component of the approach adopted in all these areas. In other words, we began to give to them some of the tools they needed in order to become self-dependent learners driven by an inner need to know, investigate and learn. It seemed crucial that we did nothing to kill this drive. The children automatically began to take responsibility for their own learning. We then structured our program in such a way that we would take from their real and significant learning experiences, as little time as was needed for them to develop the basic tools to keep this learning process going for life. It was very important that this was accomplished without taking away from them the time they desperately needed to keep their scientific minds alive.
For instance,
A child sees a butterfly sitting on a leaf for the first time in her life. Her own thinking powers are being exercised at a pace comfortable to her. She is absorbing the shape, the colours, the patterns on the wings and so many more things that we cannot even imagine any more, as conditioned adults. The child is thoroughly fascinated by the butterfly. The next time she sees another butterfly she notices the same things and, perhaps, a few more new things. She might notice that this creature is so much like the one she saw some days ago. She might notice that this, too, has the same pattern on its two wings, yet it is a different pattern to the one on her last butterfly, and so on... Over time she sees more of these creatures. She continues to make her own observations, comparisons, and she begins to draw certain conclusions.
This is a deeply satisfying experience for every learner. We, as adults, need to be careful that we do not deny children these very valuable experiences and, thereby, limit their perspectives as our own have been limited by teachers who taught us too many facts too soon in our lives.
Science is best explored in this manner because the child’s natural environment is packed with possibilities for scientific experiences and our attempt to pick and choose for her at this stage severely limits these possibilities and, worse still, it transfers the learning responsibility onto the teaching adult.
When the children have absorbed enough from the environment in this manner, they are better able to make sense of what they encounter in these subjects later on in their lives.
We have observed that the children who have experienced this program from the very outset for a minimum of 4-5 years exhibit a tremendous amount of inner settlement coupled with a deep interest in learning. They are well able to direct their own learning. The natural learning abilities with which the children are born are strengthened and they are able to engage positively with themselves and the world around them.
We feel strongly that the child’s growing environment must foster self-motivation, responsibility, inner strength (coming from a clear understanding of one’s self) and a zest for life.
C. The Way Ahead
As a community of people who have felt deeply, the connection between the problems that ail society today and the emotional violence experienced by children in their homes and schools, we have made a conscious decision to work towards bringing about the much-needed change. We believe that we can make a change.
So how do we bring about this change? How do we bring about the much-needed improvements which will help us evolve into a mature, just, and humane society, which reveres the way of peace?
We believe that for a person to genuinely live a life of peace, she must first know peace. To know peace she must have experienced unconditional acceptance from the earliest years of her life. Every time we impose ourselves upon children, deny them the freedom to express their feelings, demand certain behaviours from them against their natural inclinations, scold them, humiliate or ridicule them, judge and label them, never give them a hearing, we abuse them. We deny them peace.
All the punishments, moralizing stories and sermons through which we try to teach children to be considerate, unselfish, forgiving, sharing, loving, tolerant, patient… are really a wasted exercise because these traits cannot be taught. A child who has always been respected by her parents quite automatically becomes considerate towards them and others, as she grows. On the other hand, all the moralizing in the world will not make her considerate if her parents treat her thoughtlessly, without respect.
At Bhavya we have created a humane environment in which each child can learn and grow in accordance with her nature. The environment here preserves the child’s dignity, innate sensitivity, originality, initiative, problem-solving attitudes… and all the qualities we would like to see in humanity. It is of great importance to us that we sustain, at Bhavya, a program which preserves the core of the humanity and the Life that exists in each one of us. In this endeavour, we believe, that all of us have a significant part to play.