When I was growing up in a government colony, we had a grassy ‘ground’ between the rows of two-storey flats. This meant that in the fifty or so homes surrounding the ground there were enough children to play all sorts of games. The grassy ground was large enough to allow us to play football and…

Principle 1 of true teaching: Nothing can be taughtAll learning happens within the child. No teacher can have direct control over it. The teacher is a helper and a guide. They can only attempt to draw the attention of the student to where the knowledge lies and thus assist him/her to see it.– From ‘Learning…

(Continued from last week…) Young potential educator (Ype): I am not saying that I agree with you but you have certainly given me some food for thought. Tell me some more about modern education. Me: Let us look at it from two perspectives. Think of a large school. A school with thousands of children, hundreds…

I was talking to a young man who wanted to leave his corporate job and go back to his town to start a school and I thought that the (slightly exaggerated version of the) conversation we had may be useful to other young people interested in education. The conversation went something like this… Me: Why…

Today morning a friend read out some poems of Bahinabai Chaudhuri. Bahinabai was a Marathi poet who wrote about the life she experienced in rural Maharashtra. One of her popular poems titled ‘sansaar’ starts with the lines: अरे संसार संसारजसा तवा चुल्ह्यावरआधी हाताले चटकेतव्हा मिळते भाकर! (O, life, life, like a tava on the flame,…

This is the second part of the talks I had with Dr Prabhakar Pandey, a professor at Sanchi University. The first part is available here. The main points made by Dr Pandey are: – The Upanishadic sutra says – ‘sa vidya ya vimuktaye’.– Vidya or gyan is the goal and shiksha is the technique to…

I recently recorded two videos about Shiksha in the Indian tradition and found that it opened up many new perspectives for me. The videos are each almost one hour long and I don’t think many people will go through them. I thought of extracting the main points to generate interest in seeing the full video.…

As part of the videos that I have been creating for the Asli Shiksha YouTube channel, I did an interview with two of my three children and something that I consider important emerged from that exercise. When people find out that our children are homeschooled, one type of question that comes up repeatedly is about…

Some years ago, we lived in a house with a pond and our two boys spent long hours swimming and lounging around in the water. It was like having a private swimming pool of our own. However, there is a fundamental difference between a pond and a swimming pool, and in this post I would…

I have a slightly disturbing idea about education that I want to present to you in a slow, roundabout manner that resonates with the leaves dancing and shining outside my window against the backdrop of a bright blue Bangalore sky… Two days ago, I was on a call with some close friends and the question…