KAVYA NAG*
In his 1964 lecture titled ‘The Relation of Physics to other Sciences’, the physicist Richard Feynman speaks about the connectedness of everything.
A poet once said, “The whole universe is in a glass of wine.” We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough, we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth’s rocks, and in its composition, we see the secrets of the universe’s age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts—physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on—remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!
Often, it so happens that the things we do and the subjects we teach are compartmentalized into physics and geography, art and history and chemistry. We forget that Watson and Crick may not have won the race against Pauling to crack the structure of DNA, if Rosalind Franklin (and her excellent X-ray crystallography work) had not been in the vicinity! Note also that all of this is traditionally taught as a part of ‘biology’. This is but one example of the interconnectedness of every little part of the universe, while we, in our attempt to understand the world, break things down into smaller and smaller compartments.
Krishnamurti too speaks in depth about the intricate threads that connect all life. He refers in particular to the role of the educator in helping a student become more sensitive to the world around, and to the idea that we ‘are all together, we are all human beings, living on this extraordinary, beautiful earth.’1 One of the ways in which we can see the wholeness of things is when we are observing nature without a view to analyze or compartmentalize it.
In the Krishnamurti schools, the campus is designed to offer opportunities for this whole vision. The very idea of a large natural space for a school is intentional. Additionally, research now indicates that such spaces play an important role in learning, building social skills, wellbeing, and a closer connection with nature.2 Studies strongly suggest that when young people are disconnected from the natural world—physically, spiritually or emotionally— it has a marked effect on their wellbeing.3
Over the past year and a half, we have been working on building up a nursery and seed bank of native species of plants found in our eco-region (specifically the Southern Deccan Plateau Dry Deciduous Forests, of which The Valley School is a part). The intent is to conserve, in some small way, these fast-disappearing landscapes. In our efforts, we have come to depend on the trees (that literally grew up with the school themselves) for quality seeds that will propagate the next generation of saplings.
Satvan, the physical space in which we have the nursery, is a repository of species native to the region. A question we have been asking in the presence of these quiet growing things is how we can share this sense of wonder, observation and quietness with young learners. At the nursery, nature has been the inspiration and the questioner. It is often said that while we may think we are nurturing our garden, we are in truth just providing the right conditions for the plants to grow. The plant grows by itself, and a farmer knows this well. What he does, as the farmer, is to create the conditions under which the plant will thrive.
Is this not so with children too? Just like a seed, sitting there, waiting for the right conditions, children too come with their innate sense of curiosity and wonder about this world. How then, do we try to facilitate more collaborative learning in and from the outdoors?
It is with these threads that we started working on gently guided observational learning in nature for children, from the young learner aged about ten to the older ones who are all of seventeen. When children are given these opportunities—importantly, in the company of their peers—they develop not just a quality of silence and attention, but also build meaningful connections with each other, and a lasting bond with nature. This kind of engagement may already be integrated in the early years. However, there is an increased focus on classroom-based learning in the middle and high school years. Ironically, while studies have repeatedly shown that spending time outdoors is vital for children in their growing years, even subjects such as biology, ecology, environmental studies and geography—all subjects with obvious connections to the outdoors—are increasingly taught in the classroom setting, or in a laboratory. Learning in the field about the diversity of life, soil erosion, insect adaptations, geology, deep time, or mutualism is an immersive and lasting experience, and one that classroom learning cannot replace.
At one level, these are lessons about how plants can clone themselves outside a laboratory, how figs and fig wasps depend upon each other, how a rock of Peninsular Gneiss we stand on came to be formed over three billion years ago, or how a single drop of water from the pond can be so full of life. At another level though, these activities serve as an entry-point of sorts—a way of engaging with the natural world that employs multiple senses, draws on existing knowledge, and raises questions for further discussion.
Simple guided field modules are combined (when required) with a field biology kit. For example, students carry a dissection kit, a hand lens, and a pocket microscope (capable of magnifying an object 100 times) with them to observe different types of creepers and climbers, and study the structures that plants use to cling on to other surfaces. Students are encouraged to express aloud all their observations, especially when paired up with a buddy or two. As a guide, one is encouraged not to filter out any observations. This makes nature observation a social activity, and keeps observations in conscious working memory long enough for the brain to convert them to long term memories. The focus is deliberately moving away from learning the names of species—which plant, which bird, or which insect—and towards asking questions about the way they live, or how they fly, what they eat and so on.
A rewarding project we conducted recently with students of class nine was to observe the flowering parts of different types of grasses, one of the most successful families of plants worldwide. A small 50 ft x 50 ft area on the campus had more than fifteen different types of grasses. None of us knew the species names of the grasses, and nor was it the point of our exercise. The idea was to get each group of students to observe three types of grasses at close quarters, and either question or verify their theoretical knowledge of monocots and dicots, looking at the roots, shoots and flowering parts of grasses. Seeing the sheer diversity of plants around, students were able to really see how much variation exists in nature. They asked so many questions in that short duration of time: Why does a compound leaf sometimes look like a monocot leaf? Why aren’t grass flowers colourful? Why don’t they smell nice? Can I pull up the grass and see the roots? Why doesn’t it look like this in the textbook? Why does a spikelet look so different from a typical flower?
This kind of engagement in nature serves not just to question the physical world and learn from it, but also, as Feynman often said, it brings in an ‘enthusiasm for enquiry’. Hopefully, these short stints spark the questioning spirit in young minds, to set the tone for learning, collaborating and listening amidst nature. After all, isn’t this what makes us human, capable of seeing the wholeness of things?
- From Krishnamurti’s The Whole Movement of Life is Learning
- Sam M & Kouhirostami M, A Critical Review on the Impact of Combining Outdoor Spaces and Nature with Learning Spaces on Students’ Learning Ability, GRID, 2020
- Capaldi, C.A., RL Dopko, and JM Zelenski, ‘The Relationship between Nature Connectedness and Happiness: A Meta-Analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 2014. 5.