Krishnamurti Centre, Rajghat
$7000 foreigner fees
Krishnamurti was adopted by Annie Besant at age 13. No formal education. We are all seeking, learning about life. As an adult he disassociated himself from any organizations, orthodoxy.
2 schools abroad (1 in UK, one in CA)
fear and authority are not main drivers of educational process. Want a sense of order, but not regimentation, not discipline child in any way. It's a fairly porous campus, right next to city, like at any place with children of this age, there are temptations just around the corner. Challenge to keep children here, without having to force children in there or herd them into following rules and regulations. Idea is we would like to bring adults together who are interested in this type of education. This is an experiment for adults about how to bring order in our own lives and share it with the children. Lots of boarders, even some from city. Fairly difficult mix, and we don't have grading systems, comparisons by ranks, exams, etc., ,not up to 8th grade. Thereafter they go for board exams in 10th, try to train them for what is expected of them. How do we run a program without what most teachers would have in their armory to bring a class together and instruct them. Here it's a question of how to work together with children.
I asked question about how they vary class/systems/procedures depending on age of children. Naps, rest time varies, plus this is a residential program, so they have entire day open, lots of opportunities to engage the children, not just the classroom time.
Melinda asks about exam performance, reports are okay. Their graduates do as well as other kids, on average. Some kids leave after 10th, this school doesn't give any special preparation for exams. They do not believe in competition per se. You compete against yourself, not against others. That is a core belief here. There are many kids who come in with difficulties in previous schools, bullying, punishments, criticism, etc. They have been traumatized. There are some kids who take a year or so for acclimation to this very new environment, and speaking frankly, there are kids who struggle with the rigors of the outside world upon graduation. This school builds self-esteem from inside, not from beating your neighbor.
There are many schools that can boast better records in terms of getting kids into top universities. It's not too hard to take an 85%er and take them to 90%. Let's see them do that with 35%er, 40%ers. India faces another problem too, lots of kids who are in top 10% or even top 5% yet cannot get admitted to the school of their choice. What do you do with that? How does a child face that situation. We are not trying to become a bigger school, we are trying to become a better school. We never have a class more than 25 students. The children do not relate to us as teachers. They call us di or didi, which means older sister, or beya, older brother. It is only the most senior members who get called sir.
When you are relaxed, you can meet the pressures of outside. You do not need to be aggressive to meet pressures, you don't need to have tension, or to intimidate others. You need to be relaxed, calm. You can meet the needs of outside if you have settled the energies inside.
Dolores: how do you relax?
Important to have a campus like this, away from main street, in nature. Children should be in touch with nature. We learn from that without consciously doing anything about it. We are not instructing the child to look at nature and learn from it. Two minutes of quiet at end of morning assembly.
This is Krishnamurti's challenge, it's almost impossible to achieve, but we are at least trying it. Krishnamurti never gave any doctrine, specific practices or techniques...said this leads to narrowness of thinking. He wanted to be based in freedom. Truth is unknown. So you begin not with assumptions, but with a sense of "I don't know". You use system of negation, things that you understand as not true. When you see the falsity of things (such as "I am Indian, you are American", these are just labels.) How do we listen, to ourselves, to each other, to nature?
No one can give you freedom. You must earn it through right behavior, right thinking. Many of these are practices we have not examined.
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Morning assembly: 20 minutes
held in room where Shiva was believed to have first stepped foot on earth. The road connecting the school to the main road of town is the road Buddha walked to the river. On the other side there is a spot where he rested after crossing the river.
Assembly hall here was designed by a renowned architect of the 1920s. They describe the campus not as classrooms, but "learning centers". The assembly hall is about 60' long, about 25' high, very open with 4' x 4' maroon tiles on floor. Sixteen ceiling fans whir overhead. The doors have tiered geometric "arches" that remind me of California. About 400 students eventually come into the hall, there were only half that number up to the last 3 minutes when throngs poured in. Older students choose the music for daily morning assembly,
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Return to hotel, Wendy S. still not feeling better. Serious bummer. She'd been sick all night, morning wasn't much better. We both napped when the group returned. I woke at 2:35, just in time to grab quick lunch and head out for heritage walk. Sights from that are detailed in the CSIST (crazy shit I saw today) post.
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