Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold …
WB Yeats: The Second Coming
Living in the twenty-first century, one often feels that we have spiralled out of control. Yet, the human spirit is indomitable. It strives to make sense of that very chaos which whirls the world around. This is the spirit which seems to underpin many of the articles in this current Journal, whether one is talking about life or education or both. In contrast to this image of a storm which seems to uproot us all the time, there is also the metaphor of a river which flows along steadily. Krishnamurti often uses the river imagery:
The river is flowing steadily, deep and wide, but this pool is heavy with scum because it is not connected with the life of the river, and there are no fish in it. It is a stagnant pool, and the deep river, full of life and vitality, flows swiftly along.
—J Krishnamurti: Think on These Things
While one yearns for the centre to hold, there is also the fear of stagnation and the rot setting in. The first article by Shashidhar captures the essence of this conundrum in his article aptly titled ‘Flow of Meaning: Our house is in Disorder’. In what he alludes to as ‘the crisis of consciousness’, he urges us to examine alongside him the collective response to this crisis. He seamlessly explores how the collective response could be tied in with the individual response and cautions against the falsity of bringing in a division between the two. He candidly examines the ideas that contain the seeds of this division. He looks at dialogue as an effective functional tool in an educational space or a community that lives and works together. He concludes:
Thanks to this ethos of dialogue, there are many times when we share ‘as one’ the same reality and meaning flows. And when this happens, there is a quality of relatedness without conflict; there is the joy in cooperation and a release of creative energy that is palpable to all.
The last pages of the Journal hold an interview article with Brian Jenkins, the founder of the Sholai School. With him we traverse his journey of how the school began—how this centre has held together under the teachers who have assisted the students in ‘deepening their perception of life and understanding the many self-centred ways in which we are creating religious, political and psychological divisions among human beings, destroying Nature and damaging the Planet’.
Other writers too have written about their journeys as they navigate the space of teaching and learning with its everyday crises and conflicts. However, amidst this day-to-day business of steering this space, they are also aware of a different kind of creative energy which makes them seek deeper truths and make meaning of life. In a subtle way, the reverse is also true. They seem to have begun with certainties but somewhere along the way they begin to question the basis of these concretely held beliefs. It reminds one of a tiny poem by Richard Edwards:
When I was three,
I had a friend Who asked me why bananas bend,
I told him why, but now I’m four
I’m not so sure1 ….
From this tentativeness also, one could arrive at a truth of sorts. Vipula Mehta, in her article ‘You Don’t Need All the Answers! What it Means to Learn with Children’, feels liberated as she acknowledges a growing comfort with uncertainty and allowing conversations to ‘flow’ without a destination in mind. Kalpana Sharma on the other hand begins her journey with a ‘sense of space of flow in the buildings’ in Rajghat School. She asks the quintessential question of ‘What role can a space offer in facilitating the process of learning and flowering, in fostering creativity and curiosity?’ In her article, ‘Inclusive Spaces and an Alternative Curriculum’, she looks into the core of an inclusive curriculum which revolves around all the three—the head, heart and hands.
When Jenner muses: ‘The vivid, colourful ideas in my head seemed to fade into dull shades of grey the moment they left my mouth’, it strongly evokes Noam Chomsky’s phenomenal words ‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’. Like stones set in a piece of exquisite jewellery, we have four articles which look into the visible and not so visible process of thinking. Meredy Benson’s article ‘Visible Thinking: Systems Thinking as a Teaching Strategy’ works on the premise that much of our thinking stays in our head and we articulate only a fraction of it. By making visible that mode of thinking, she tries to make connections between and among those thoughts; thereby leading us to question thinking and understand it more deeply. By seeking links between one’s own thought processes and that of others, she shares some valuable teaching tools in an approach she terms as ‘systems thinking’. Jenner on the other hand begins his article, ‘Are we Slaves to Language?’ on a similar premise and tries to examine it through the lens of evolutionary biology. His approach is however more to understand and quell the questions that arise and understand the deeper process of thinking when expressed as language rather than any pedagogic process. In ‘Growth Mindset in a Math Culture’, Serra Benson values deep thinking, brain plasticity and the belief in one’s ability to learn. In what she terms a transformative shift in teaching mathematics her focus is on sharing strategies rather than speeding towards solutions. For Kavitha ‘learning a language’ is unravelling several layers of fragrant memories. In appreciating the beauty in a language, one also understands human life at large. She goes on to highlight the differences and commonalities in learning a first and a second language.
In a total shift of gears, Sanjay Mathur poses hard hitting questions in his article, ‘Teaching History and Civics in Challenging Times’. He questions as to what happens when students are non-inclusive and do not ‘flower in goodness’. He works on the premise that ‘sensitive topics require sensitive and respectful discussions’. He urges that one must raise good questions, seek facts, understand different points of view and not take sides. With richly illustrated live examples, he tackles these questions head on and urges teachers to be cognizant and self-aware of their own predilections, even as they nurture the spirit of critical enquiry in their students.
A different kind of reality is challenged in Srinivas’s ‘The Obsessive Pursuit of Success’ and Prathima’s ‘What are we Doing to Our Children?’ As Srinivas succinctly puts it: ‘The constant struggle of the self in pursuit of fulfilment or success often causes conflict between what (or where) one is and what (or where) one wants to be.’ Prathima bemoans the loss of students’ voices in the various scenarios she paints, of a world where the watchword is academic achievement, even as she cautions parents against succumbing to and transferring this pressure onto their children.
Based on her six years’ experience, Priyanka Soman traces her journey as a teacher and discovers how teaching middle schoolers is a two-way street. She speaks of the connectedness and mutual learning that a teacher experiences in their company. Kaavya Nag in ‘The Wholeness of Things’ embarks on a journey of discovering the wonder of the ‘intricate threads that connect all life’. She muses on Satvan, the physical space in which children are growing a seed bank among other things. In yet another project-based learning approach, Soumya Das draws attention to a different kind of seed—seed of an idea. The initiative soon leads to a movement of ignite, innovate, inspire. Ajin Thomas and Tarun Suri too explain the process of designing and conducting their field study of a peri-urban area through an inter-disciplinary approach.
One can see how in all these studies, there is always an underlying schema to connect with ideas, nature, society or/and the self. Prabha Chaitanya sums it up beautifully in the opening lines of her article, ‘Explorations into Learning and Living’:
What enables learning? When there is a natural rhythm or flow to life there may be a conducive environment for learning. What then is a natural rhythm in the context of living our daily lives? A feeling of oneness, perhaps, along with a careful listening to the cues and subtle directions that nature and human interactions provide us.
She too uses the metaphor of ‘flow’ and unravels the natural flow that enables learning. She organically explores this through various strands listed here: free will, natural flow, hindrances to the flow, emergence of clarity, clarity to learning, learnings in an adult, learning in a child, the purpose of learning and so on, embedded within other larger questions.
We have a small separate section wherein some of the editors have reflected upon ‘what it means to be whole’. These are four short pieces no more than five hundred words, each unique in its deliberation of this central question. In different ways they attempt to respond to Krishnamurti’s challenge in the opening extract: ‘… what matters is a holistic way of life… not [just] intellectual, but the whole psyche, the whole being, the whole entity, which is now fragmented. These are intended to open up conversations that seek to penetrate the inner landscape and eventually find expression in the outer world.
There are two very special stories about trees. Alka Singh and Rachana Pandey relate an incident woven around a protest by a group of new girl students in a college who question the cutting of an old neem tree which had become etched into their lives. The article is aptly titled ‘Between the River and the Trees: An Ode to the College by the Riverside’. Rajasree’s ‘Tryst with the Banyan Tree’ is a more intimate and personal account of a tree that speaks to her. She describes it as a magical and humbling moment.
What is more humbling is the act of sharing such a precious moment with the readers. In conclusion, it may be said that the storm that is wrought by the disorder in the world finally finds its quietude. That is what going through this Journal feels like:
I go among the trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
Around me like circles of water…
Wendell Berry: I Go Among Trees2
Anantha Jyothi
April 2025
- ‘When I was Three’, poem by Richard Edwards.
- ‘I Go Among Trees’. Wendell Berry, This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems, 2014.