NEEV & The Quest for Freedom
Anurag Jain
Dear Friends,
I am sharing my response to one of my friend’s email with all of you, since it has to do with the vision of the new NEEV Vidyalaya. This marks a significant turn in our journey. Those who would like to remain associated with NEEV and support its journey, I would like them to hold no illusions about our vision. For only then, nothing would break us apart.
Friend : I was just reading your latest post on if people feel it different when contributing towards a school infrastructure than directly sponsoring a kid's education.
Well, I completely agree that the intention of the new school is to be more independent but purely from how people process associations, directly getting associated with a kid and receiving regular updates was something which kept people motivated and left them with a sense of directly improving someone's life. (The school infrastructure contribution would also lead to the same but the feeling of a direct correlation is lost.)
My Response : I agree that people feel more connected when sponsoring children because they get to 'feel' that they are bettering someone's life. To me this is a big illusion: an illusion which I no longer wish to advance. In shattering this illusion, I have, for the nth time in my life denied ourselves access to good sums of money. I guess, though I am not sure, I may have alienated about 90% of Neev's donor base.
Helping poor or rural children get educated so that they can get upwardly mobile is not the aim of my life or Neev's. Neither will this in anyway transform humans and society. And this is what most of my friends and donors - I suspect- may be imagining despite all my mails. Moreover I see this very movement as a disease, as something that requires transformation. So what is of utmost importance to us is to create a space for questioning and inquiring into the status quo of society. And that is what Neev is about.
What I want to do is to question society and to bring about a totally different form of education. This education would be so different that it would hardly be called education in the sense we hold this word. I want children to flower in freedom beyond prescriptions of boards, syllabuses and degrees. Such an education cannot be exactly 'instituted' because institutionalization itself is the beginning of loss of freedom of a human being. An institutional human being has given up his/her entire autonomy to the aims of the institution: whether politically, socially, economically or religiously.
For me an education in freedom would mean that the child is not compelled to come to school, compelled to do a certain degree and compelled to take up a certain job. An education for freedom would mean that the child is invited to a certain space for exploration into the whole of life and living. There are minimum guidelines for him/her to follow as long as he/she is not destructive.
It is not easy and flowery as it sounds, though; the child is already conditioned by parents, society and media. And moreover none of the parents would want their children to become free; they would like their children to earn money, acquire status and become known and respectable members of society. This very movement of becoming and ambition is the cause of disintegration of humans.
We are questioning this movement. But how many takers would there be for this. I have absolutely no hopes from parents because they are knee deep into the system. Only children, if anyone has to, would choose such a school. Even this seems a highly difficult option because parents pay for their fees, hence they decide which school they wish to send their children to. I do not yet know how to come out of this dilemma but I am beginning to believe that this can be made possible if we make education entirely free. In fact this is the direction we are trying to take in Neev: to make education entirely free in future so that we are not bound up parental expectations at all. This throws another challenge for us: to make ourselves and NEEV sustainable without taking fees from parents, or accepting donations from anyone who does not accord with our vision. This is the reason for us building the corpus fund and not hiring employees.
Rural areas facilitate such a revolution more easily because most parents in such areas have already lived and seen life without any form of institutional education. Even though rural areas have their own set of conditionings, they have a greater 'sense' of what it is to live in freedom, without the acrid smoke of ambition that snuffs out the lives of urban folk.
Where we operate currently, that is, Hurlung Village, is not strictly completely rural because it is close to the city. Moreover the coming of television, internet and mobiles have led to a cultural onslaught such that is quite lamentable. So we still do not have all the advantages of a rural setup.
I want all my friends to understand that Neev is about an exploration; about freeing humans from all institutions and their binding ideals. Our journey has a singular vector: total freedom from all conditioning - inner and outer.
I envision a school where children come of their own will, decide their own learning and do their own work. The school should be a space where there is an opportunity for farming, handicrafts - like carpentry, weaving, spinning, pottery, etc - and where children learn to be self-sufficient, rather than feed the industrial machine by becoming consumers. Consumerism spells doom for creative living. Above all, the teacher would engage children in self inquiry; knowing ones fear and desires, challenging their conditioning rather than strengthening their conditioning with should’s and should be's; either overtly or covertly through a curriculum sponsored by the state or government or board. This is the reason why we shifted our school to Hurlung Village where we can create such a space. Of course a lot of details have to be worked out. But the vision underscoring them is most important. We humans have a penchant for losing ourselves in details and losing the larger picture. Because being in touch with the larger picture means continuously asking uncomfortable questions and remaining with them.
What I am looking for now are friends who see the significance of this vision and this journey, which we have been slowly developing for the last two decades. It is only a sense of deep friendship that can bring us together: friendship which is not just fair weather friendship. As friends we are willing to learn, understand and change rather than hold on to our memories, opinions and biases. And this journey is trial by fire, not a pleasant walk in a garden.
Love,
Anurag