Integrating life with learning
Meenakshi Umesh
Sustainability is a way of life – a culture that is handed down through generations! Most of the problems of the present system stem from the fact that it has decided to maintain a distance from nature. In nature, everything is a process. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is separate. Continuity of life is at the core. Everything else submits to this law. The whole is nurtured by the parts and it nurtures and protects the parts in return. Every creature’s need is met to in entirety by the bounty of nature. There is no paucity of food, and when there is, the creatures discover new ways to survive. Everything flows in cycles; even the hardest of rocks erode, become sediment and melt again. Nothing is static.
Gandhiji saw that the traditional Indian way of life was sustainable. He realized that the education we had before colonization was very efficient in making knowledge available to the common people. Each village had been an independent entity that could govern its own needs and create its own resources. He realized that the human being is the most crucial of all resources and could create or destroy. He wanted to create individuals who could bring back the traditional culture of sustainability without the division of caste and colour.
Gandhiji realized that education is not just about literacy, but a way of life, a culture. He advocated the inclusion of work in education to give the child the opportunity to create something and while doing so learn critical thinking, deductive abilities, observation skills and finger dexterity without mundaneness! Gandhi realized that the way of life fostered by the west was unsustainable and asked us to follow a way of life that demands less from nature and lead lives of zero waste and productivity since childhood and his mantra was NAI TALIM. This approach was supposed to imbibe in children a love for nature, an understanding of the need for simple living and a vision of equality and justice for all.
Puvidham – the Beginning
I am no expert on education and I am still learning. My ideas on what a school should be are based on what I remember of my experiences in school. When I decided to start Puvidham Learning Centre, I did not know how children should be taught or what kind of environment they needed. I only knew that I did not learn anything of value during my school days. I realized that most of my memories were those of anger and resentment for my school and teachers. I did not want any child to look back on his or her school life and remember me with resentment. I wanted to give children the kind of freedom to move, inquire and learn that I would have liked during my childhood.
Puvidham Learning Centre is based on the ideologies of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and E.F. Schumacher. We use methods demonstrated by Maria Montessori, David Horsburgh, Rudolf Steiner and Janet and Glen Doman.
Our intention is to integrate life, work and learning and help children to synthesize knowledge through observation and experience. We do not subscribe to the segregation of learning into subjects because learning in real life is a holistic experience.
The environment and activities in a school must be such that they allow the children to explore for themselves without judgment and comparison. The activities need to be meaningful and constructive. Every member of the school community should experience freedom and the initiative that comes with it. When we understand our role in maintaining harmony in our environment, we learn a lot about ourselves and learn to respect one another.
Education must make individuals sensitive to others and to their own inner self. Sensitivity is the door to a wholesome philosophy in life and is the guide to self-discovery. Sensitivity gives space for creativity, scientific discovery, contentment and happiness.
We need a system of education that teaches care for the earth, non-violence, equality and autonomy. We need to redefine the basic needs from food, shelter and clothing to more basic things; clean air, clean water, healthy food, simple earth friendly shelter and handmade clothes.
Many of us are disturbed by the violence in society. We are horrified at the kinds of crimes committed. If we take time to understand why such things happen, we would realize that the seeds of crime are often sown in schools! The emphasis on success leads to extreme selfishness. This selfishness makes us insensitive to other forms of life and other humans. It ends up propagating inequality, unfairness, dishonesty, fascism, and destruction. So, if we want to change the society, we should change our schools.
If learning were integrated with life everything would be a learning resource. For example, when a child picks up leaves with wonder one can use them to teach anything from poetry to diversity, from writing essays to mathematics, from counting to patterns, from painting to aerodynamics, from photosynthesis to classification, from soil formation to geography, from why there are seasons to why birds can fly ….. I am sure you can think of many more topics deemed necessary to be learnt, but the difference is that when the learning is integrated it can be understood much earlier – even a class one student can understand the connections between seasons and leaf colour because he/she is learning through his/her own observations. He/she understands the connections and is creating knowledge!
Similarly, while talking about what they had for breakfast or dinner and what they had brought for lunch we can share our understanding of food and nutrition with the children and it becomes a science class where no one is bored or unable to participate. We can easily discuss carbohydrates, proteins and vitamins while analyzing the class menu. We can also impart an understanding of balanced diet and deficiency related diseases.
If we are doing organic farming in school, the children learn about how soil is formed, why it is important to conserve soil and water to grow food, the harmful effects of fertilizers and pesticides, the good and harmful insects, the weeds and herbal shrubs, the uses of mulch and even compost preparation. This kind of learning needs no examination. The children imbibe this knowledge through the act of farming and growing vegetables. They learn a lot more than may be prescribed in their textbooks. While marking their plot, measuring the height of the plant, counting the leaves or flowers they learn math; while observing the leaf pattern, flower petals, pollen, insects, etc., they are learning science; while writing their diary they are learning the local language or English; while working together and helping each other they are developing civic sense, while planning the work and taking on the leadership role for activities they are learning social science, while gathering knowledge about the origin of vegetables they are learning history, while talking to their parents about how life was in their childhood days they are learning history again!
Concepts, theories, numbers, languages all are secondary skills when compared to the skill of learning about oneself – what each one likes, enjoys and wants from others. The primary task is to develop a self-concept in the child that is positive. The children should believe that they are good, resourceful, ingenious, enthusiastic, co-operative, free to express themselves, sympathetic and wonderful.
The challenge then is to create a learning environment where the adults and children interact as equals and learn from each other while living a simple life growing their food, making their clothes, creating their dwellings and cooking their food! Simply living!
The curriculum and methodology
Keeping all these requirements in mind, we classify our learning into five basic modules: The Sun, the Earth, Water, Air and Space. The five elements are essential for survival. The children learn about their physical properties and experience these elements through their five senses. The mentor or teacher just draws the children’s attention to certain aspects of the elements that they are relating with the concepts learnt. Our curriculum has evolved from these fundamentals. The classes include storytelling and singing as a fun mode of conveying and sharing ideas, values and vocabulary.
The teachers write stories and songs based on the concepts that the children need to learn. The children draw to express what they have understood from the stories and songs. The children are free to move in and out of the classroom, so long as they do not disturb the others. The school is run by a children’s parliament. They elect their leaders and ministers, and the teachers are there to help and guide. There are no locks on doors and cupboards. Waste is completely recycled. There are dry composting toilets whose compost is used in the garden and all wash water is channelled to trees. We make our own bathing and washing soap organically and use ash for washing utensils. We make our own toothpowder too!
Emphasis is laid on re-use of paper, proper use of learning material and respect for other living things in the environment, be they ants, lizards or people. Counting, sorting, classifying, measuring, and measured drawings, scaled drawings and geometrical drawings like rangolis are used to learn mathematics.
Drawing and painting is an important expression of the children’s inner worlds. The children are happy to draw and paint, and we are happy to learn about their inner most dreams and challenges through the pictures they share with us. Attention and time is given for drawings of plants and trees, flowers and insects, sceneries and buildings. The children learn about the intrinsic details of an object by observation and drawing. Many questions and discussions are generated among the children as they learn from what others have observed and they themselves missed.
The children are divided into groups. On an empty plot of land, they decide and mark the portion they want to grow plants in. They measure it, draw it to scale, design the rows and decide what they want to plant, determine the quantity of seeds they will need; then mulch, water and watch their plants grow. They measure the rate of growth, count the number of flowers and compare with the number of fruits. They observe and sketch the plant parts, and the insects and birds that visit. Finally, they compute the time they spent gardening and the quantity of vegetables they could harvest and make a cost analysis of their activity. They also learn to make natural pest control extracts and vermi-composting. They learn to identify plants and use them for medicine, food, composting or mulching.
Other activities include carpentry, where the children make toys, puzzles, useful articles like key hangers and pen stands. They are involved in the maintenance of the library and they read a lot. They also do construction activity. They make their own snacks, bake bread and make pickles. They design and stitch their uniforms and make their own medicines too!
They relate to the surroundings through these experiences and their knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, language and social science evolves from these experiences. Drawing helps internalize the knowledge. Their knowledge is thus continually updated!
Since the emphasis is on generating wonderful experiences which will help the children build a happy, loving, trustworthy and honest world, we make sure that the children have enough opportunities to meet visitors and interact with them. They travel to other parts of the country. Travel opens up their horizons and they bloom with their experience. This approach has a two-fold objective: Firstly, it makes the experiences at school relevant to the student’s life. Secondly, it empowers the child to believe and adopt this method of practical learning throughout their lives.
Children gain experience even outside the classroom when they help out at home, while socializing and during play. In our school, these experiences are discussed, validated and used to build positive responses. The children can bring up their concerns and they are considered with seriousness, as we respect the learning that it provides.
The purpose of education in the present scenario should be to support the child to understand his/her role in the society, undertake positive action to improve the resources, allow the development of a humane society where the differences between people are ironed out, empower children to analyze the problems of the present world and find ways to combat them, understand his/her place in the web of life and learn to live in harmony with all the other species and last of all we need to provide for ourselves and our community. The world is fast changing and the information that is in the textbooks is growing obsolete even before the books tear! In this kind of situation, the only real empowerment for a child would be to learn on his/her own and apply that knowledge in their day-to-day life challenges.
We want our children to be able to discern right from wrong, the valuable from the superfluous and evolve a way of life for themselves doing whatever they choose to do without bias for any profession. We need no examinations to validate this method of learning. The children give their best. If we can allow the children to learn without the stress of competition and allow them to make things with their hands at least up to the eighth grade, we can hope to save their childhood. This way of learning is the right of every child!
The author started Puvidham Learning Centre (www.puvidham.in), based on Gandhi’s Nai Talim after she decided to move to Dharmapuri, a village, from Mumbai. Her move came after she realized that city life was harming her and her children. She can be reached at director.meenakshi@puvidham.in.
