EWS #57 Questions from viewers (8)
Dec 14, 2019
Topics:
Narad (0:00:48):
Namaste and welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Namaste. We'll continue a bit on this long subject of education. We had a couple of questions from the people in our audience. Please Lalita.
Audience (Lalita) (0:01:12):
The question that had come about certain subjects being redundant or being dampened away with, because we are looking at it only from what can I do with it. I remember when I was in school, we had a subject, poetry, where we were taught to recite, we were taught about metre, we were taught about the great poets, we were even asked to memorise it. And years later you can recall those lines and they come up at the most important moments when you need them, as life lessons as well as so much that you can take from it. But you can't really use it in the sense of how people look at it for jobs or things like that. So what would be considered redundant, what would be considered useful, that, there has been this whole shift. And also confidence to stand in front of people and recite. It made you so much more stronger. A lot of people today can't even read. I mean, if you ask them to read prose, they can't read because they have never been taught. So how can we bring these things back? How can we let people know that it's not just about, you know, job oriented stuff?
Sraddhalu (0:2:35):
Yes, one of the diseases of the modern age is this utilitarian mentality, that you value things only in terms of their utility and often utility in a job, in a very crude basic life survival pattern only. And you don't need poetry for that obviously. You may not even need music except as occasional entertainment or diversion to relax. But what does poetry do to you, if you look at the faculties which are engaged? You described already so many things including, the self-confidence to stand before a group of people and recite the poetry. But there are, there is the other aspect which is how you recite. The sense of expression of the meaning you put into the word and the particular vibration and force that you're able to bring into the meaning the way you say the word. All of these are faculties which are powers of expression and with precision and beauty and elegance of expression. There is no other activity in the school education which develops this faculty for example. And after all that, poetry is something even more profound. I think Sri Aurobindo puts it this way, music, poetry and art, together they form the perfect education for the soul. Think about it, what are those aspects, what are the qualities which poetry touches? Something so profound, so deep and then not only it draws those out because you have to dwell on something so fine and subtle, but also in the act of writing poetry you tap into those deeper parts of yourself and nothing in our current education touches those. I would put it the other way now, poetry, music, art should become compulsory, should even be an equally dominant part as let's say the more externalising forms of activities. Things which require you to dwell subjectively but also dwell on the finer, deeper and subtler parts of your subjectivity are what is most needed today. And automatically, indirectly, it becomes a kind of a moral education, if at all one had to give it a form.
Narad (0:04:59):
In my youth, we had a teacher. We were very young, and he would teach us Beethovan, he would show how the music came out of them. It was something I've never forgotten. It lives with you for the rest of your life.
Sraddhalu (0:05:26):
MmHmm. It forms your character. It just reminds me of another activity which is nowhere in current education and I don't know if even we can give a name to it, because it's something so abstract. We do have that with some of the teachers in the ashram school. You play a piece of music and have the child express the music in movement of the body. So just as a movement of music rises and then suddenly it opens out and bursts out into the splendorous, multi chant, how would your body express it? And literally you flow with that. And each child will do it differently. And then as you move out, and you catch the movement of the music in the body sensation, and you attune to it, and all the refinement that it has now flows through you and shapes you. So moving with music or dancing with music, whatever term you give to it, with a very crude, so ugly performance of children. And I have seen this in a school which is connected with the ashram, where the teachings are part of the ashram, the words of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother at least in intention. They had a public program of the year end where the children do some performance and suddenly they had these girls and boys, little children, aged 8 to 10, maybe younger, in couples, dressed, okay, doesn't matter what they dressed, it was a western attire, and they're dancing in couples. And the song was from one of these pop music things which was called Hello Barbie. Do you know the music? And it's the Barbie's partner who's telling Barbie, come on Barbie, let's go party, come on Barbie, let's go party, come on Barbie, let's go party. And then she answers, I'm your Barbie doll, I am your Barbie doll, you can do what you please with me, you can do what you please, I'm yours to do as you please, and what are these kids doing with the music, which is basically a rhythm going titi titi titi titi, so they are going (makes gesture) titi titi titi titi, they are swinging their hips. What can you do? There is no meaning, there is no beauty, there is no aesthetics. What can you express with a song like that, which has no meaning to that age group. First of all, ‘go and party’, is that what you want the children to listen to? Is that the role of the Barbie doll, that I am your doll you can do as you please with me? I mean it's such a crude and coarse sexual content for an adult theme but it's been given to children as a popular song for children to listen to and because that's what it is, the teachers have put it for those children who have been listening to it. And what do you dance with it? You just keep swinging your hips and whole consciousness comes here (points to hips) lower vital. If you let a child flow with a beautiful classical piece, Beethoven, you'll have a rising movement in the body, here you have a swinging movement and sinking movement of the consciousness. The mind is dulled and numbed and only the hips are agitating and that's all you have when you go into a disco that's all they're doing, swinging hips basically. And this is coming in schools all over the country today. Occasionally you have schools where, but again it's all cinema music, you have nothing else as a reference. Occasionally they take more artistic movements but replicating what was seen on the screen because that's your only reference. Where is the beauty of something given to you? Classical music, classical dance for example, is too formal, too structured, does not have elements for this group movement.
I remember in Europe, and this I am criticising, in India. I am in Europe now. It was in Austria in a school and it was again a year-end thing, I had a session with the teachers and there was this program. And there was this one group which came, it was young children with a recorder and all of them together and the teacher, very stiff, very serious, very austere atmosphere. The teacher goes with a sick tuck, tuck, tuu, tuu, tuu, tuu, tuu. They start playing a very complex, rich, classical piece. It's clear they worked very hard and they're playing it beautifully. Of course, it's too mechanical, it's too serious, there's no joy because it was suffering for them to go through that. And it finishes and everybody claps. Of course, you had to clap. It was beautifully done. And then comes the other side. This girl and somebody with a guitar and they hold the mic and they start swinging their hips twang twang twang twang and Jumping around and with a twang nasal American twang, it's in Europe. They sing some popular rock music something. And it's got a strong beat. So there's a boom boom boom and after a while the audience starts moving boom boom boom and after a while, audience starts clapping with the beat and everybody is excited and these people are singing out of tune, there is no structure, no beauty, no aesthetic. But they're happy expressing themselves and there's a freedom and joy of doing it. And I said to myself this is the future of Europe, either chaotic joy or austere, rigid, stiff harmony. You don't have the thing which is needed, which is a beautiful, collective, joyous, free expression but which can be harmonious and uplifting. Somehow the two things represented the split of these two faculties and if they could be brought together, if the formal more structured classical piece can be made more flowing and joyous or if this flowing free play could be made more elegant and harmonious and more highly expressive than just a coarse emotional play which passes as freedom. That's the correction required but I don't see that happening. It's difficult, it can be done easily.
Audience (0:12:00):
The same thing with poetry, like now it's more rap lyrics where they try to bring in rhyme and it's sort of a distortion of poetry. But then it's taken away dark tone also and everyone's listening to rap, you know, and there's no way to stop because that attracts them.
Sraddhalu (0:12:18):
Yes yes. And again I'll ask, can not rap be beautiful, uplifting?
Audience (0:12:22):
It could be, but generally...
Sraddhalu (0:12:24):
But what you get is actually heading for something very dark and that's what is promoted.
Narad (0:12:28):
I would like to ask you a question about the Mother’s system of education going back now nearly 80 years since she started. Is there any place in the world that is even attempting to replicate this?
Sraddhalu (0:12:46):
We have lots of schools which have drawn inspiration from the work done here. And I will even put it, not always consciously, that they tap into that inspiration which was brought, what was created here and the elements taken in. And then each school find its own particular manner and its own particular compromise. So in India for example, there are five schools which are called J Krishnamurti schools, which take similar ideas, similar objectives and do an excellent job with it. I see children who have been through that system, I can straight away recognize, oh this person formed individuality, a deeper sense of self-confidence, a more real sense of, I am not pretentious. You look in their eyes, you can see the person, not an appearance, not a dullness or a hypocrisy. They are real people. And all of them of course have a deep connection with that space. And that's one good example. But these are schools which were set up what, 40 years ago? Maybe more? Why aren't there more of these? It didn't happened because, and I'm speaking of India, the government had this enormously restricted system to control education and it is a remnant of the British colonial phase where anybody setting up a vernacular school had to have government professionals and fit into government standards but people setting up English schools were free to do what they wanted and people setting up schools under minority institutions which generally meant church control could do exactly what they wanted. So often what happened, the free space was given to the church schools and the vernacular schools were the worst because they were oppressed by the bureaucracy and the government controls.
And it's only in the last let's say five years, at best you can go back ten years but I'll still say 5 years is more like it. There has been sufficient liberalisation of the educational space that people began to start their own schools, everyone realises something is wrong with the educational system, every rich person now wants to open a school, because first of all it's enormously profitable, enormously profitable, the most profitable business you could have. If you do nothing and just have it work like a machine, dehumanising of course, but you make lots of money and you can multiply your schools. Literally you can double your entire school infrastructure every two years. That's the kind of money you make, pure profit. But that's not changing anything. It's just perpetuating the same perversion. But a lot of people are coming into it, seeing the profitability but wanting to make a change and often there it makes a nominal change but the people who are building in it are coming from the background of the old mind, so they still measure in terms of performance, exam passing but they want to throw in creativity so they bring in a bit of a mix. One of the ways by which people escaped the government control, which was too oppressive, was by switching allegiance to an extra-national entity. So we had the CBSE and ICC curriculums, which were both government controlled and very oppressive. So they switched to the IB, which is International Baccalaureate, which was more activity-based, more creative in its structure, closer, let's say, a few steps closer, not just one step, but several steps closer to an integral education approach, but still with major shortcomings. It is of course more expensive, it requires different kind of teacher training, because teachers have to be formed differently, more demanding in certain ways, more expensive because it has to pay a percentage of the school fees to the international entity. And I asked myself myself why could you have done it internally within India and to a great extent it was the perpetuation of the same colonial mindset that the government wanted to control education because it wants to control the mind, keep people always slavish. That has changed but to see it change in practice is going to take a while because the teachers have to change and that's not easy.
[Narad] Is it changing in the last few years?
[Sraddhalu] Yes.
[Narad] And what do you feel about it?
Sraddhalu (0:17:21):
Yes, it is changing. But to complete the earlier part of the question, Montessori system as well as the Steiner system, Waldorf schools, these are already in close alignment to the integral education approach, both of them also being contemporaries in some way to the work that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother did in this field. But subsequently you don't see anybody else doing something as radical. But right now the effort is on but then what happens is when you hire teachers and start making a change, you are facing first resistance in the teachers because they are used to a certain way. Let's say the teachers are willing and able to but they still need to go (through) a process of transition which takes at least in my experience three to four years before it stabilises into a new rhythm. But then there's a bigger problem, not of teachers. Teachers are well-meaning. Your management is well-meaning. Your school is ready. The parents are the next problem because they love their children. They are going to say what happens when my child passes through your school and then wants to get into a job? Are you going to get high performance in marks? And that's the pressure of society. And with all the good intention of the parents, you face the struggle that the parents will say that other child in the other school already knows all the maths tables by heart, my child in your school doesn't know maths tables by heart. So you're doing something wrong. So you're comparing now performances and then we have to say to them, look at the age of four you cannot teach maths tables, you're going to damage the brain. You have to tell them you're going to damage the brain. If you don't explain it they push back and they compel you now to go to some kind of a mixed mode. Even then, they don't have the confidence. So it takes a while for society and parents to change.
The good thing is a lot of parents today are becoming conscious and they want, they are looking for spaces, schools where their children could grow in a more nourishing atmosphere and it's difficult to find them. Especially when it moves higher up.
So at a younger age it's relatively easy because you don't have to do too much. It's a play space primarily. Once it gets into more formal education, that's where you have difficulty. And finally the linkage with the exam system when they transition into life, they need marks. So with the J. Krishnamurti schools for example, the last two years they had to accept exams. Our school gets away with it, the ashram, without exams because the government gives a special recognition that allows any child of our school to sit for any entrance exam and prove themselves. But if you want them to take a mark sheet and get entry somewhere, which doesn't have an entrance exam, then you have to plug into the national exam system. So the J. Krishnamurthy school in the last two years they have to do that. The moment you start doing that, it starts rippling back. One year before now you are preparing for it, a year before that you are preparing for the next step and it corrupts. But in spite of that, what they have given in the early stages is so good that the children are fundamentally different. I have had this experience again. I go to someone's house and this has happened many times the child now maybe in the teens, mid-teens comes in brief interaction and I look at the child and I say, my god, what a clear formed healthy individuality and but I have now come to recognize that quality. I asked the parents was she in a Montessori school and they say yes, inevitably. Now Montessori school typically stops by the age of 10. Very few attempt even to go further, but that period what was given stayed and has stayed in such a healthy way. In spite of the rest of the system they have come through stronger and more healthy. So in a way if you can take care of the early phase, the later phase however mixed, we will find our way through. It was the Jesuits who made this observation. Give your children to us till the age of six and we will determine their whole life. So its true.
Narad (0:21:56):
Nadezhda, you had a question.
Audience (Nadezda) (0:22:00):
Yeah, you talked about the development of different faculties. Should we include in subtle faculties development into school program or is it kept separately?
Sraddhalu (0:22:16):
Whether school education should include subtle faculties, by which you mean parapsychological
Audience (Nadezda) (0:22:27):
yes, some kind of
Sraddhalu (0:22:29):
telepathy, psychokinesis, mind reading, sensing subtle things
Audience (Nadezda) (0:22:36):
Hmm…Not only these but also to understand high music plus some psychic development, something higher than just what you sound
Sraddhalu (0:22:49):
Yes, yes. So let me first touch upon this part and then we will go to the deeper soul aspect of it. This part, which is more what is called psychic abilities. Sri Aurobindo points to this in his writings on education. He says that there are further faculties which are involved in subtle senses which currently are not touched at all. And then he says but it is not impossible that in a future education these also will be included because they represent the further natural unfoldment in our evolutionary development. So just as the power of abstract intellect was not there, if you go back sufficient number of centuries and then it had to grow, similarly current existing faculties also have to refine into other directions, more subtilized including what is currently para-psychological must be included eventually. This is a very interesting example I saw and you'll see videos of it online today on YouTube. Little children in the age 10 to 12 who have this ability to read your mind and the person is given a blindfold, the child has a blindfold and then she tells you think of any word, you enunciate the word in your mind or the sentence and she tells you what you were thinking of. Very interesting and they are taught that and some of course are more skilled, some are less skilled but anybody could be taught that. I don't know what process they used to teach it. I also wonder how useful it will be. Certainly it will be useful if you want to be a spy, when you sit down next to people having a coffee and you listen to what they are thinking, it's a very useful faculty for that purpose anyway. But to do it for young children, why would you do it with young children? Because they are open to it. If you try to teach this to older children, older adults, you have to first pass through the filter of the part that says it's impossible, it's difficult, I can't do it. Or they slide into the normal rut of pattern of thought or experience. And so it's as if you have to catch them young enough before it has formed and then you can develop many things like this.
In China, there are persistent reports that Chinese government has a whole program to teach young children these psychic powers, including the power to influence objects at a distance, to move objects, to see things through or at a distance and so on, which is of course for them the military objective. But it is easier with children. Bending spoons is one of the forms in which you can show that the mind influences an object. I have seen it happen recently. I had occasion to do it. I think I mentioned it once. And what is interesting is there was a whole presentation in 19 late 80s, by I believe it was General Stubblebine. He was a very senior military person in the US military command. He I believe had the Pacific command, a whole fleet of ships or admiral or general, I don't remember now, but he was a big man, very famous, high level of authority and he made a presentation to the military at that time saying this is the future of the military. It's not your soldiers who are strong muscularly, who are skilled with their weapons, but people who have minds which are now skilled and he demonstrated it, he made them do spoon bending exercises, mind reading, remote viewing and so on. And even to the extent where he said it's possible to walk through a wall. It sounds so outrageous, I'm wary of saying it here but he said it actually, he spoke of these possibilities and said these things can be trained and this is the future of warfare. Imagine a person who has that ability and why not? Because these are part of the existing potential of our faculties, they are all yogic siddhis as we would say and if someone is trained in the siddhis, it doesn't need a spiritual development because most of the siddhis can be acquired by development of the vital consciousness only. If you have a spiritual mastery, they would come naturally as incidental to the spiritual freedom, but you can acquire them by training of a vital character. Wouldn't that be the future that you walk through a wall, read a mind, bend an object or one of the things they do, they send a punch of energy which can even bend steel, because you are operating at a level like the spoon bending, you don't care what the material is, you can bend it because it's steel, it's metal, you can bend it. So there was a whole line of thinking and then it all went blank, they suppressed that whole thing, it went behind the scenes, we don't know what they did with it.
Sraddhalu (0:27:53)
But if you can train adults, it will eventually become a part of human society as a potential and of course children will be part of it. Now maybe premature, but what is relevant and this is what is important for us. Prepare them for the higher faculties of the mind, which is intuition, prepare them for the deeper sensitivities of the soul and psychic being which is the basic psychic influence and its subtilization and the turn of its heart to the beauty, the true, the good and the discrimination of what is right and what is not aligned to that which is divine. These are two things which represent our immediate spiritual evolution and to prepare for this would be an essential component and it is independent of age. You would begin as early as you can and it would begin with an environment which is conducive to the psychic sensitivity with the teachers themselves trying to live by that a space which is full of that vibration and a child will grow into it spontaneously because it's full of that vibration subsequently all your methodologies of teaching would take into account these principles.
And one of ways it should not be done is to scold a child. The moment you scold a child, what's the first thing that happens? Child closes. Second, you have created fear and with fear the psychic influence is going to be covered up and with fear the child is going to hide, the child will deceive, the child will lie because you scold it. Very simple and if you want the psychic to lead, the soul's values to guide the personality you cannot allow fear at whatever cost no fear. What do you do then? A child makes a mistake. Well, let's deal with the consequences. What happens as a result of this? Let's follow through, if you did something which is intentionally harmful, well now you go and apologise, correct for it, set it right, do what you know to be right. And it can be done in ways which are affectionate and caring where you act by psychic values. You cannot say, I will act by my conventional values and expect the child to grow psychically. So the demand on teachers is enormous. And Mother expected something far more than what we achieved even in the ashram school.
You know, in the story of the ashram school, when the Mother started the school, when there were children, they had to be looked after, they needed to be taught, a few people were given that responsibility, all of them came from the old educational background. Sri Aurobindo's writings were there, Mother was there to elaborate, her commentaries were there, but none of them cared or were aware perhaps and then one day it was Tanmaya who told us this. He said he went to the Mother and said, Mother, Sri Aurobindo says like this, but this is what we're doing in the school. It's completely the opposite, and Mother says, at last somebody is thinking. She'd been saying things for so long but that's how the human mind is. So she had to struggle through so much of this human dullness or inertia or even outright refusal. So Tanmaya was encouraged, he started his own activity section which was called free progress and whatever grew out of it. And there was a split in the school. There were the teachers who refused, who opposed, saying these are newfangled ideas we don't believe in all this. We will do it our way, we know better and the others who were in this. Now why was this important? Because it represented the struggle of the old world against the new world and if it had to happen at that point under Mother's direct supervision, well you can imagine. It's a universal problem and that's what we are seeing today. So there's this whole old world and then there is this new consciousness and there is a struggle ongoing. So when you ask is it going to happen, is it happening? Yes, it is happening but there is this struggle.
Narad (0:32:10):
Some of these people of the old world were very well educated, very highly evolved.
[Sraddhalu] very formed in their thought power.
[Narad] And still they resisted.
[Sraddhalu] Yes, because of a fundamental block or lack of the inner psychic, let's say, sensitivity or perception.
[Narad] We already covered about parents in education. What should teachers of such school look like? What kind of training should they receive or keep on receiving along with teaching practice?
Sraddhalu (0:32:55):
Yeah. So I'll put it inside out, not so much what you can do from outside in as a training, but the teachers themselves, if we take this as a standard. And now I'm going to set aside everything else regarding the education, just these two values of the psychic and the intuitive. The teachers themselves must be already seekers, adorers of these values. It doesn't mean they have attained to anything exceptional, but the fact that they are seeking is already good enough. There is a very interesting conference that took place many years ago. It was in one of the centres associated with the ashram and it was organised with five people were given the themes of physical education, vital education, mental education, psychic and then spiritual. And so everybody went through the physical, vital, mental when it came to the psychic, there was a person very highly respected, very deeply sensitive in his and very creative in his expression. He stood up and he said, who can speak about psychic education? We have no right to speak about it until we have realised our psychic. So it's better we keep silent. That was so sad because it's a huge error. It is as contrary as, it's as bad as saying, oh here we have psychic education, I'm going to teach you psychic. That's silly, it's stupid. On the other side, I cannot teach the psychic, it's too essential because I don't have it. It's as stupid. Straight away, what does psychic education represent in form?
Well appreciation of beauty, of truth, of an environment conducive to the sacred and these one can easily create and it can be done on many levels starting with the physical and then the emotional and then the thought environment and of course even a spiritual content of it. To say that we can't speak of it until we have it is silly. Equally to say that we will teach you to be psychic is foolish, because that's not how it's done either. But you can create an environment. And so what should be the requirement of the teachers? That they themselves seek that and then as they grow into that the environment grows with them, which was what the Mother attempted here in the ashram. And it worked with those teachers who were genuine, who were sincere, in their own way. Some of them had their own peculiarities which Mother had to intervene to correct. So there was one teacher who said, ‘well, you know, nothing can be taught. So we are all going to sit down, close our eyes and meditate and the knowledge will come of its own’. The teacher had to be removed. But the idea behind that, is the principle is that, obviously you are going to help through an environment and through an activity to grow or the teacher needed training, I don't know. But with goodwill, with a certain state or quality or sensitivity of heart, all the rest can be taken up. A simple goodwill would be your starting point and a general alignment to this ideal. So the teacher would tend to become inevitably in some mode of self-culturing. I am avoiding the word yoga, I am avoiding the word sadhaka. Self-culturing, culturing of consciousness and refining, growing etc. and that itself creates the environment suitable for that. So what would the teachers look like? They should be in constant mode of self-culturing, minimum. Then as you go into specific areas of specialisation, you would need specific tools and competencies in those areas. But if you have this much, I think the rest will be done because you are helped. And just as there are regressive forces there are so many energies waiting to pour, so many possibilities and all they look for is a few people of goodwill and aspiration.
Narad (0:37:18):
But you spoke about not scolding a child, there were teachers who hit children. And thats even worse.
Sraddhalu (0:37:24)
Yes. Even in the ashram it happened.
[Narad] Even in the ashram, yes.
[Sraddhalu] Fortunately in the human evolution in the last 50 years that is considered unacceptable, to hit a child in any in any school anywhere in the world, except the most crude which are still belonging to a perverse stage. But in any reasonable school, it is unacceptable that you hit a child. Corporal punishment is out. That's already a big progress. But the mass grows slowly and it is led by the small focal points, which will be the entry into the new consciousness and the new world. We need more of that. And one of the ways it will happen is by decentralising the educational control, allowing spaces to evolve in this way. There is a recent phenomenon I have come across. I find it happening all over India now, little pockets, parents come together to form their own little school for their children. And some of them are already trained in various kinds of Montessori or other systems and then they try to create their own space and then grow with it. There are community of houses of like-minded parents and children and so they can create a space like that. I found this happening in China interestingly. I don't know if I mentioned it here. So I was recently in a meeting, we were in Thailand and there were several people from China. One of them has a child who was very unusual, very conscious and she found her space. She was in Beijing, it was not the best environment. Again China has the same kind of drilling education. She found a space 30 kilometres out of the main city, little village and there's a community they found, at least seven parents who came with the training of the Waldorf school and so they said, okay let's start our own little school, we'll teach our own children. So all these parents who had the similar ideal, they came together and started their own space and it's growing. And I believe this will be one of the ways in which the transition will be made into a new approach of education.
[Narad] So it's more of a home schooling extended?
[Sraddhalu] It's as if the parents become the teachers, you create your own school. Yes. And they are competent, they are certified for that. So they can, and they formed the school officially and then other parents came who joined, put their children in. And it can grow with the children.
Narad (0:40:11):
You have travelled to so many areas of the world. You have spoken to us mainly about India. What have you seen in other countries that is progressive?
Sraddhalu (0:40:23):
In education? Pockets like this. Everywhere there are pockets where conscious people gather there are not enough pockets So I more often than not I meet parents who are looking for a space they can put their child the parents have the sensitivity and They don't have enough either other parents or they don't have a school system where they could put it in because where they could put their children in because to build a school requires too many government certifications and none of them have the capacity or it's beyond their financial capability. So it's as if and especially in Europe you see this that the system is so entrenched. Either you have to buy an existing school and change it which becomes too expensive or impossible or you compensate for the school with home schooling but the school influence is still strongly negative or the good schools are too expensive and then you can't afford it. What happened in the example I gave in China is much more interesting because parents could come together and form a school which I am surprised the Chinese system could allow that. That if we could make the whole process simpler then we could allow a lot of these small communities to form, that would be the only way. Otherwise I don't see much, the best schools are too expensive. Waldorf school is a good example. Too expensive. Montessori always too expensive and the parents have to spend double or triple of the normal school to put them in something like this, which shouldn't be the case, isn't it?
Narad (0:42:06)
Yes, another question.
Audience (0:42:09):
In Russia if you see, there are around 300 communities where the people have left the city and go to the forest and make some groups and live together. And also in the south part of Russia, near Black Sea, the new way, the school, not only Montessori or Waldorf, the school of Shchetinin, with the government help, where the children teach other children. It is a very interesting experience and it is a grown up, senior children and the age grouped together.
Sraddhalu (0:42:54):
Yes, peer learning. Excellent. Very interesting. I didn't know about this, but this is the way it will have to happen, increasingly. And these may become little schools of their own and at some point when the children are sufficiently formed they could go into more formal environments for the higher learning where it may not matter so much at all. But that's the advantage of Russia because the period of communism has created a fertile space for community formations and that was I suppose the whole point of that phase. What you see in most of Western Europe is fragmentation of society. The community is getting more and more fragmented and the sense of sharing is almost gone or the people are so extremely lonely that even it gets to the point of being desperate. But when they do meet, they are so disparate to reach out that suddenly a community forms. And especially if they come from a more refined background, they are looking for others of that type. If they meet, then it is very interesting to see how very quickly they work, they care for each other and work together. You don't see that in India. In India, it is much more each one to yourself because there is a scramble. There is not enough of opportunity, too many people. So coming together to cooperate is not so easy. It will change now because that tide has changed, the sense of lack was a remnant of the colonial phase. Earlier, the Indian culture always had an excess, it always had more to give. Nobody ever went hungry until the colonisation started then the whole thing was reversed. You were taught to live in extreme of distress and insufficiency. That phase has flipped, let's say, in the last 15 years about, but it takes a while now and I think the new rhythms are emerging. But when it happens in India, it will be similar to Russia, because the sense of communities is still very strong in India.
Narad (0:45:15):
What about somewhat spiritually advanced people like Sufis? Have they done anything?
Sraddhalu (0:45:26):
To start a school requires an institutional backing and a financial strength. Mostly, what I see Religious institution starting schools does not change the educational content. It leaves largely the school following the framework that the teachers are trained in, into which they add a little bit of their teaching from their religious or other content. So either certain of their practices will be infused in the school or some of their philosophy will be taught or quotations from their teachers will be introduced. But that's about it. It doesn't change the pedagogy itself and the manner in which the learning and growth takes place. So maybe already that is a small improvement instead of having nothing at all. But it's not the solution which is required. I will add to this as a conclusion of our discussion on this theme of education, if you are concerned for your own children, start by reading. Read, there is a whole volume of what Mother had to say to the teachers of the ashram school on how to bring up the children, how to teach, the whole volume on education and Sri Aurobindo's writings on education. Engage yourself with the educational process in the schools where your children are present and based on the things we have discussed, start making the difference at home. At the very least in your house, create that nurturing environment where the child can grow without fear with these deeper psychic and spiritual values.
And if you can do just this much, it will begin the larger ripple effect necessary to change circumstances in society. If you are able to take it a step further, form such small groups with like-minded parents, form your own little communities. Even if you can't form a school, let it be the community where the children come home to and they can do their own peer learning after school, instead of sending the child to a mind-numbing tuition class, let the children teach themselves and look after each other in their own way and that will be their tuition. Maybe the older ones teaching younger ones and caring for each other. But these are the ways in which we have to start the change. When the last phase of radical change of school system took place in Europe, there were the church controlled schools which taught only church teaching and there was nothing close to formal education of the kind we have today where you learn things and nobody saw how that could ever change. The new schools sprouted up where they took learning for the sake of learning. They were small in number, they were weak in power, but what happened was, as they grew, the older structure of schools just died out. They were replaced, they didn't change. Something like that may happen now also. We start in our own space to make the change and either the older schools now catch up because otherwise nobody goes to them or they die out. But we have to begin and that's our responsibility here.
Narad (0:48:54):
Namaste.
[Sraddhalu] Okay. Namaste.