EDUCATION
Learning to be yourself
MEENAKSHI THAPAN
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In the 75 years of its existence, Rishi Valley School has worked to maintain a balance between the mind and the heart and to develop the best talent and the most sensitive humanism essential for a sane and just society.
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PHOTOS: COURTESY RISHI VALLEY SCHOOL
A different world: Younger children enjoy outdoor classes.
SILENCE is essential to a quiet mind, as a chattering mind cannot be creative, reflective or energised with the passion to create a different world. Every evening, children from the senior school, quietly gather atop a ridge to watch the setting sun behind the three hills that mark Rishi Valley's existence over the centuries.
As the sun sets, sometimes with a magnificent visual display, teachers and children are silent for about 15 minutes, allowing themselves to be still, letting the silence sweep over them, refreshing them for the evening hour of prep ahead. The silence that fosters the meditative mind, creativity and intelligence goes together with the intense activity of a rich and diverse academic programme, with the pressure of projects, presentations, tests and examinations in the senior school.
This is not a contradiction that serves to engender conflict, as some educationists may argue, but a strategy, by maintaining a balance between the inner and the outer, the psychological and the technical, the mind and the heart, to develop the best talent and the most sensitive humanism essential for a sane and just society. It is significant that Rishi Valley came into being at a time when J. Krishnamurti had expressed his dissent to his proclaimed role as World Messiah and in his celebrated statement said that his only intent was to set man unconditionally free. Conformity, imitation and "fitting in" find no place in his educational process.
Although Krishnamurti viewed schools as "communities" of people working together, Rishi Valley undoubtedly has an organisational structure that provides the infrastructure and material support for the unfolding of his vision.
There is a well-structured curriculum, organised around the norms and guidelines of the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations and students learn about different subjects but also prepare for the Board exams.
The younger children experience greater freedom in learning and enjoy outdoor classes, a less rigidly structured curriculum, more freedom and therefore more physical and psychological space in which they can grow, by looking, listening and touching, through discussion and play, in the classroom and outside. At the heart of the school's existence as an educational institution lies the child's experience of freedom and vitality in an atmosphere of emotional security and well-being.
Teacher-student equations
This is provided by the complete ease with which teachers relate to students, whether this is in the classroom, on the sports field, in the dining room or house. Rajan is loved not only because he is a brilliant teacher but also because he plays basketball with them with unsurpassed passion; Sid sir is considered an amazing teacher for his command over English Literature and his oratorical skills; Kartik is loved for his yarns which encompass life in Rishi Valley when he was a student and dreams about the future; Susan akka for being lovable Suzie; Sunil sir as much for his Scorpio as for his "cool" attitude; Ramola sir for his affectionate banter; Shantaram sir for his endless fund of PJs delivered in lazy tone with dancing eyes; the legendary Sathibai akka for her affection for the girls in her care and the garden in her backyard; and so many more...
This does not, however, mean that students do not experience constraint in the form of rules and norms for appropriate behaviour and dress, of what is acceptable and possible, within the space opened up by freedom in school life.
The new school hospital built in the Kerala style.
All students, whether in the junior or in the senior school, experience this constraint in one way or another, oft heard in the protest, `But, why akka, why?'
Their submission to it is simultaneously marked by rebellion, contestation, negotiation and strategisation. Children openly argue with teachers, protest against the imposition of some rules, hotly discuss the impositions among themselves, negotiate with teachers and house-parents, strategise and evade impositions and also submit to them.
The Democracy Board in the senior school is a vibrant forum, which carries articles, points of view, poems and prose by students about different dimensions of school life.
The dress code and the "grub" policy in school are the most debated topics between teachers and students, so do we or do we not wear faded jeans, sleeveless tops, chunky earrings, and may we or may we not eat "illegal" grub?
Teachers join in the discussion and, sometimes, the problem is resolved to the students' satisfaction; more often, not. Then, students "crib" and complain, "what's the point of writing anything at all?"
And when it is time to leave school, and senior students are making their two-minute farewell speeches, there are tears and recriminations for time lost in complaints and criticism. And sage advice, not to lose time and enjoy every moment while you can.
Rishi Valley is remembered by alumni not only for friends, fun and freedom, for teachers and their foibles, but also for that special quality or experience that is carried in a tiny measure and somehow expands to fill one's consciousness in an immeasurable manner.
As the school-leaving class told me last year, they are taking with them the quality of "innate goodness" that is "out there", "intangible", "inexpressible" but an undeniable part of their experience of everyday life. They said, "You feel it. It's in the air and it enters you." And when they go out into the world, they are recognised as being somewhat different.
A teacher of Philosophy in the premier undergraduate college of Delhi University said, "Students from Rishi Valley have a different spin. They are different. I don't know what it is but they are different." They perhaps lack artifice and are just themselves.
Teachers who have spent many years in the valley are loath to leave it even during vacation; it is more than a school. There is a rich and vibrant programme of rural education and health care, natural history and bird studies, ayurveda and herbal therapy, afforestation and rainwater harvesting, and much else. Rishi Valley is a way of life for them.
And why do parents think of Rishi Valley for their children? Perhaps to give them back their childhoods, which are destroyed in the education shops that pass for schools in cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Perhaps to fulfil their own search for a lost childhood. Perhaps to yield to Krishnamurti's promise of a new mind and a transformed world.
The writer teaches Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.
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