What have we got so far? Where to start?

[विश्वासो वासुकेयः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

शुक्लाम्बरधरं विष्णुं

शषिवर्णं चतुर्भुजं।

प्रसन्नवदनं ध्याये

सर्वविघ्नोपशान्तये॥

नत्वा सरस्वतीं देवीम्

शुद्धां गुण्यां कुर्मो वयं।

आर्यसंस्कृतिशिक्षायै

शालां गीर्वाणिकेन्द्रिताम्॥

एवं अनुष्टुभ्भ्यां मङ्गलमुक्त्वा प्रारभामहे।

Dear all,

1] There are 28 members in this mailing list. Thanks for spreading the word and for joining in what must be a movement. Please do more of it if you have not done so already!

2] I have temporarily set the email delivery settings of all members to "All mail". This is because I was not sure whether many members had chosen "No email" as their delivery option by mistake. Please feel free to revert delivery according to your desire.

3] First thing, let us take stock of our resources. Put money to one side, let us see if you have contacts useful in this endeavour, such as - 

  z] You - how do you think you can help? With preparing the mountain of paperwork (syllabii, legal documents etc..)? Budgets? Management?

  a] teachers, or others acquainted with school budgets

  b] someone familiar with the American education system, accredition institutions etc..

  c] lawyers who can help with incroporation etc..

  d] accountants

  e] others you can think of.

[c] and [d] will be useful at a later state.

4] The school should start small - say provide one or two grades. I would like to hear your thoughts on which grades this should be. <-- special attention for those educated here, and of parents of such.

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Vishvas /विश्वासः

[विश्वासो वासुकेयः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

Thanks to shreelakshmi-ji and vivek-ji for their responses. It is great to see your enthusiasm with this project.

shrI-vivek knows someone who has started a school, hopefully we should be able to ask them questions and get better ideas as to where to start.

 

4] The school should start small - say provide one or two grades. I would like to hear your thoughts on which grades this should be. <-- special attention for those educated here, and of parents of such.

I will go off on a limb and say that 10 year olds (4th grade?) have a fair bit of attention span and may be easy to teach. Plus there will be no pressure for college admissions and the like. So, let us start a 4th grade school. What say?

* Where do we start, in order to make a 4th grade school?

Let us for now forget the beaureaucracy and imagine in detail what the school will do. I mean, what subjects will be taught, and what will be the syllabus. Throw in your wild ideas, we can systematize and filter them later.

To start - I would pitch for us to use the famed khanacademy [ https://www.khanacademy.org/about ] videos. Sal Khan has produced an excellent idea to disrupt the education system for the better. So, basically, children learn at their own pace, depending on their interests using his videos. Progress will be measured constantly, and children will be supervised and guided, of course. 

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Separately, a response to any lingering mother-tongue guilt we may have is included below.

 

have always wanted to learn and teach them samskrutam along with our mother tongue

With the preference going to mother tongue first samskrtam takes back seat..

I definitely agree with you on the importance of the regional languages being taught. Our school ought to support any regional language with some minimum number of interested students. But, samskrtam would be taught to all; the reason being that:

• serves as the "unifying" or basic language at the core of bharata's culture
• People from any region who would be interested in this samskritam school would be interested in it.
• To be *really* good at any regional language, to understand its classical poets, knowledge of samskritam. Take for example any good avadhaani in Kannada or Telugu - such as shataavadhaanii R gaNesh.
• Looking at Fiji and Maldives, where people from diverse regions went, yet today they speak hindii, it definitely seems wise not to expect as strong an assamese community in the bay area as - say - hindii.
• I am reminded of this K Elst article - we may take what we will from it.

[विश्वासो वासुकेयः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 4:15 PM, विश्वासो वासुकेयः (Vishvas Vasuki) <vishvas...@gmail.com> wrote:

4] The school should start small - say provide one or two grades. I would like to hear your thoughts on which grades this should be. <-- special attention for those educated here, and of parents of such.

I will go off on a limb and say that 10 year olds (4th grade?) have a fair bit of attention span and may be easy to teach. Plus there will be no pressure for college admissions and the like. So, let us start a 4th grade school. What say?

* Where do we start, in order to make a 4th grade school?

Let us for now forget the beaureaucracy and imagine in detail what the school will do. I mean, what subjects will be taught, and what will be the syllabus. Throw in your wild ideas, we can systematize and filter them later.

To start - I would pitch for us to use the famed khanacademy [ https://www.khanacademy.org/about ] videos. Sal Khan has produced an excellent idea to disrupt the education system for the better. So, basically, children learn at their own pace, depending on their interests using his videos. Progress will be measured constantly, and children will be supervised and guided, of course. 

For reference, here is what the public school curriculum looks like. Can one of us (shrilakshmi-ji/ kiran?) begin drafting a syllabus by going here, and using the public school curriculum and your own vision as a reference? To edit the google doc, you will need a google account - please ping me with that info and I will grant editing access..

[विश्वासो वासुकेयः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

+ akhila (बालशिक्षिका), govinda-varya for comments.

That is a very useful comparison. Luckily, for teaching samskritam, we don't have to start from scratch - we can probably afford to be relaxed in that direction. Samskrita Bharati USA, which has been teaching  kids at various levels for many years, has developed a suitable result-oriented approach to teaching (I believe partially by looking at what St. James school does). Besides that, it would be profitable to look at what St. James school does. From my personal experience as both a teacher and student of samskritam, I know it works in adults.

I also agree that we can and should teach kids earlier .. but problem is to find a good starting point. Starting at 10 years old would be:

a] easier for teachers,

b] easier for the school to demonstrate good results,

c] convince parents to try the school [1].



[1]: I have heard people express opinions (which I don't agree with) about how an "international" environment is in early years is helpful for their prospects/ adjustment as adults in the western society.

On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 9:15 PM, Shreelakshmi Krishnamurthi <shre...@yahoo.com> wrote:

yes i'll take a look (but won't be able to do much till weekend)

Also i wanted to comment about the 10yr old thing
i agree that 10yr old have more attention span so teaching might be easier... but we could start way before that with talking to speak and just write devnagri script.

i have seen some (i will try to dig it out one of these days) language class paper work at my sons class mostly mandrin and spanish... but their weekly/monthly targets would looks like
1. learn 10 fruit / vegetable names
2. learn to say 1 to 10
3. month names and days of the week
4. greeting words and sentences etc

this is how my now 4th grader started (in K) learning spanish and now at 4th grade he can speak a few sentence in spanish.

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From: विश्वासो वासुकेयः (Vishvas Vasuki) <vishvas...@gmail.com>
To: Shreelakshmi Krishnamurthi <shre...@yahoo.com>
Cc: samskrita...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2013 5:30 PM
Subject: Re: What have we got so far? Where to start?