Deschooling Society and the space of NEEV Vidyalaya
Anurag Jain
Dear Friends,
This is an article that I have been wanting to write for a long time. However I was waiting for the right time to come. How does one know what is the right time? I don’t know, but it comes; when it comes you know that the time has come because it comes without choice. It comes with undeniable insistence.
Quite a few of my friends may have been puzzled by us closing down the sponsorship scheme. After all, what can be more noble than education. Like almost all things in life we operate unthinkingly, unquestioningly; imitating social norms and values. We want to remain within the fabric of society, adhering to it’s confused morals lest we lose respectability and be outcaste.
As I have indicated in my postings earlier, my concern has been to find freedom. For freedom, all conditionings have to be examined, everything held pious or impious by the most esteemed experts or authorities or scriptures of society. For freedom, one has to be the light for oneself.
Therefore my journey with NEEV is about finding this freedom from all conditioning, not about running an institution. Different people have been associated with NEEV at different moments of time and have shared my thought space for varying lengths of time. Most leave; mostly with some grudges, complaints when I fail to act in compliance with their expectations and values. Some remain. As a human being I get affected, rather deeply pained by all this but I continue with my journey seeing every thought, feeling and act in the light of awareness.
The closing of the sponsorship scheme was the culmination of my deconstruction of one of the most esteemed institutions of society : education. It took me two decades of intense work in education to finally see all edifices of institutional education crumbling in me. The final straw of my complete exit from education happened six months after I announced the closure of sponsorship scheme. I have reached the conclusion that all institutionalized education is a means of conditioning. It is an invention of society to serve larger interests and powers. If one has to find freedom, one has to scale the mountain alone. Life shall teach, not any particular institution. The whole world and all relationships becomes the class room.
As a consequence I no longer teach anyone anything. Shikha runs the school for developing her own understanding of education and for working out her own inner development. As far as I am concerned, society should be freed from schools. Deschooling society will lead to freedom. (I have borrowed this word from a book written by Ivan Illich, called “Deschooling Society”. I haven’t read this book though. Just the name and the concept appealed to me) This, of course, would come as outrageous to many of my friends so I am not writing all this so that I should be understood. I am writing more from the vantage point of saying what I stand for so that no one has any misconceptions in supporting me and NEEV.
I involve myself with carpentry and regular financial and accounting work of NEEV apart from my correspondences with my friends. I still try to raise funds for the NEEV Vidyalaya building which is also going to house the carpentry workshop and through which I do all the furniture work for school. At present there are not many elder children. There is Dinesh, a 15 year old who just ambles into my carpentry workshop whenever he sees it vacant and starts doing his stuff. This, for me, is his true education.
Apart from this I feel that we should create a space for people genuinely interested in self inquiry to come here and spend some time reading, reflecting and having dialogue. My friends, those who remain, come to meet me and spend time having dialogue so this gave me an idea that perhaps we can create a couple of rooms on our first floor of NEEV Vidyalaya for lodging and study.
So, for me NEEV Vidyalaya is more of a space than an institution. An institution moulds, a space exists extending a silent invitation to those who are interested. NEEV Vidyalaya is a space for Shikha to work out her understanding of education and inner self. It is a space for Dinesh to do carpentry without any instructor guiding and shaping him. For several months he would just come and watch. Gradually he started picking tools and doing simple cutting. And now he is doing a small project of making a toy wooden hut. There is no curriculum he is adhering to. There is no exam he is giving and he is getting no certificate of having completed a course in carpentry. I am not telling him what he has to do. The only thing I do is to prevent him from using power tools because he is young now. He is making the road as he walks in the space created by NEEV Vidyalaya. In future, NEEV Vidyalaya can also be a space where people can come for self- inquiry in a silent space, without any conferences, workshops, seminars or a guru with his/her lectures. I also think that if we can raise enough money for buying land, we can do and create space for some farming too !
In the beginning of my mail I mentioned that something spurs one to know that the right moment for an act has arrived. Well, I got spurred by a mail sent by one of my friends. I doubt that many of my friends would have come to this point in reading this post. But if you are one of them and still have the heart to go further I am sharing the mail from my friend and my response to it, below. There are many matters in the mail which I have not mentioned in the above post and which I thought would interest only the serious person.
Love,
Anurag
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Dear friend,
How could I ever forget you people ? Only that I was not pretty convinced of the wisdom of giving up the sponsorship program which to my mind served as a large boat ferrying many deserving children across. I decided to wait and watch in silence. Are the children also involved in the carpentry work ? Although it has little potential to become a viable means of earning a living in later life, yet it has got great educational value of inculcating respect for and love of physical labour. If the number of children is not going to exceed 50, it will be a phoenix type of Ashram, I suppose. I long to meet you both so will soon visit your "ashram" and will inform you prior to coming.
Regards
My Response :
Dear Friend,
Thank you so much for your mail. I understand your concerns.
I am no longer interested in ferrying people across because everyone has to do it for oneself. The question also is about where people want to go. I see that no one is interested in going across to other shore. All want to be ferried across to the upper echelons of society and for this I am totally out of question.
Even if we consider the aim of ferrying across to the other shore (Truth, Freedom and Love); after all my years in education I have come to the conclusion that education of schools or institution of any kind is only a barrier for the free development of an individual. Our society needs to do away with schools. Schools only exist to serve interests of larger powers of society. Every individual has to find a way out of society. Such a journey can never be institutionalized. Everyone has to scale the mountain alone. The best way to learn is to learn from life. And in life you shall come across people and situations that shall help you learn.
The school in NEEV runs today because Shikha wants to understand education and work out her own development. I am more interested in building it as a space of inquiry where people who are interested can come and spend some time reading, reflecting and having dialogue. Also do some carpentry and farming if I raise enough money to buy some land. I have completely given up education. It is Shikha's baby now.
I do carpentry because I love it. I find it useful to do many things and make almost anything. Wood is more useful than any building material if it is used sustainably because it is renewable. With wood, mud and a little of metals we can create and sustain entire civilizations. Wood serves all purposes from fuel to transport to housing to tools to furniture.
I don’t want to teach anything to anyone. To teach dignity of labour is very superfluous. These are all petty ideals. All ideals are petty and bourgeois. Love and not ideals is the real transformation. Ideals belong to the realm of thought. Love transcends thought. And this love cannot be calculated or arrived at through practice of ideals and virtues. Such love cannot be an aim or a goal or an ideal because all these come in the net of the known.
Love comes with total destruction of the self, destruction of the known, destruction of all ideals. It arises spontaneously. Anything which is practiced is not love. It is only thought masquerading as love.
No institutions can bring about such a destruction. This was the initial pronouncement of J Krishnamurti. It is surprising that later on he opened schools. And if you have seen his videos - I have seen them - he was not at all happy with the schools.
Love,
Anurag