creating new learning spaces

Is it really possible for us in India?

Contrary to the populat misconception, unschooling and deschooling are not from the West or only for the West. We need to understand that Shiksha and Education are not the same. We need to reclaim the meaning of shiksha and forms like guru-shishya parampara. Shiksha is more cloosely rooted in self-organised and experiental forms of learning. some of the initial experiments with Nai Taleem and Shantiniketan also tried to embody these principles but somewhere along the wat, they also got corrupted in the framework of institutionalised education....

In villages and even in most towns and cities, you can still find opportunities for apprenticeship learning, you caneasily get to forest, you can experience life in a joint family (full of rich relationships of all ages.). We luckily do not have to go to zoo to see animals; we can interact with them on the roads and in the fields. one can learn yoga without going to yoga centre. everywher, you can find enough kabaad (so-called waste) to jugaad with, to make something useful, beautiful and durable. one quite fortunatley does not have to pay a lot of money to acess them.

We need to honestly re-evaluate what is 'forward' and what is 'backward' in India, unlike the west we are fortunate to naturally witness birth as well as dath , we ar ein many ways much better off than our heavily institutionalised western counterparts.

In west millions of dollors are spent to bring small babies into the classroom so that the middle school children could intertact with them for a few hours a week.

The real threats to these vibrant indigenous learning resources are the institutional viruses that pose a roses like hte campaigns against child labour. one of the leading reasonf behind the degradation of human health today comes from the lack of authentic physical work and labour in our lives. it is important to re-look at the link between using our hands/body, meaningful work and the growth of our mind, spirit and emotional well-being..

Ask people who are interested in sharing their own experience and experiments with learning in different ways in their own lives. we do not believe that educators alone can envision and make the deeper changes in education that are necessary for the 21st century. People will diverse worldviews who are leading/supporting real-world experiments across many different domains needs to be in the discussion.

So for those who are genuinely interested in ppursuing real shiksha and supporitng others to do the same,I would frankly encourage you to walk out of the school system and walk-on to creating something new-learning spaces and learning webs that embody a deeper vision of himan learning' one that do not rest on commodification, cometiton, compartmentalisation or compulsion' one that deepan human wisdon, imagination and friendship.

We each need to invest ourselves in creating our own localised alternatives and connecting these to each other in dynamic ways. There can and should be a world with many streams, not just one mainstream. it is time for us in India to evolve a more mature vision of social equality- one that is not built on monoculture or copying the hypocritical West