Home Schooling has come to roost in Indian homes. The breed of parents who wish to fiercely protect their rights to bring up children in a way that they deem fit seems to be growing. Their main objective: to provide for a childhood of free growth and free learning.

The incidence of home learners a decade ago was few and far between. Not so today, if one were to go by the traffic on virtual communication and social networking sites. This fact is amply clear from three recent developments.

A full half hour programme was aired recently on national news. It centered round the home educators of Pune city and their children.

Watch it here: http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/india-matters/india-matters-coming-home-to-school/216468

The Nov 28, 2011 issue of Outlook carries a full length article on Home Schooling in India also listing institutes that support such open learning efforts.

Read about it here: http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?279013

Marking the movement’s official presence is a call from home schooling families to initiate a National Body of Homeschoolers under the banner of the Open Learning Foundation which presently is an online group. Its objective is to best represent the rights and interests of parents who wish to take the sole responsibility of teaching their own children.

Write to them here: openlearners@googlegroups.com

The year 2011 may well one day be remembered as a significant one in the history of Home Schooling in India. Parents with complete trust in their children and in their own abilities have made it happen. Parenting has come of age!

Organised by Third Theatre Movement, Kolkata.

Anshuman Das and Malini Mukherjee are offering a “Theatre for Bonding” workshop for the age group 18 and above on 26th, 27th and 28th of November from 11 am to 5 pm at Kolkata.

The workshop is targeted to build performance skills related to theatre. Apart from this, a strong focus would be to build intra and inter personal skills like communication, expression, collaboration etc which are an integral to any performing art.

Malini had been involved with Third Theatre Movement since her university days. She and Anshuman are the founder members of Saanko, a third theatre group in Santiniketan.

As theatre practitioners they have conducted workshops for several groups of theatre enthusiasts. As educators (their second passion) they have used theatre as an education tool for both teachers and students.
To register, please contact Anshuman (9433079847) or Malini (9432338436) by 20th Nov or mail at dasanshuman@yahoo.com or mukherjeemalini@yahoo.co.in.

Requested contribution is Rs 100/- per participant towards venue hire charge.

Written by Arvind Gupta and Illustrated by Reshma Barve is a simple comic book for children. It traces the use of the Sun’s energy by human societies in a historical perspective. All cultures since time immemorial have deified and prayed to the sun. India is blessed with abundant sunshine. Post Fukushima the world is searching for alternatives. This picture, non-technical book will delight children while at the same time sensitise them in thinking about energy alternatives.

The book is to be published shortly by Scholastic. In the meantime one can download the beta version (18 MB pdf) from http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/solar-energy-11.9.11.pdf

The website – www.holtgws.com – containing the work and books by John Holt has been completely revised. All the back issues of ‘Growing Without Schooling’ are now available as free downloads. The site has articles, videos, and recordings by and about John Holt. It also offers books, research and support for unschooling teenagers and children.

We are on to an  experiment in reimagining schools.

As you probably know I have been working on two issues related to schooling and children: study of the cognitive damage of modern schooling and the biological process of making sense of the world.

My 25 years of experimentation with children, adults, literate and non literate communities has lead me to a small school in the outskirts of Pune called Sadhana School run by an NGO called Sadhana Village working with rural communities nearby and mentally challenged people in that area. This school has agreed to allow me to implement my understanding of Biological processes to reorganize their school.

The new model once implemented can be sensitively incorporated in any other schooling system making sure that it is not turned into another methodology.

My first session got over and it was from 27^th June to 2^nd July. I am also documenting the process with the help of friends from FTI. In fact we used two video cameras and 5 digital cameras to document the process. The teachers were also documenting various activities of children. We will soon upload some videos.

The school is English medium. So we are trying out ways of getting children to learn English by understanding the way they learned Marathi.

Another interesting aspect is to explore how to use digital tools to enhance learning. For example the use of digital camera, voice recorder etc might help children to enhance their observation. So we are also requesting you to donate these if possible.

I am attaching with this mail a detailed outline of my philosophy and how I intend to carry forward this project.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon

Warm Regards,

KB Jinan

About Sadhana school and the Programme

The present schooling system and its curriculum have not changed fundamentally over the past 200 years. The current system owes much to the thinking and prejudices of its originator, notably, T.B. Macaulay (an English Governor General) who prepared its foundation note in 1835. This inheritance from a colonial leadership was merged at some level with the recommendations of American educationists, most notably the Committee of 10, set up by Harvard in the 1890s.

The objectives of the Macaulay system are specific to India and do not reflect the concerns of the education system from Macaulay’s own country.

As a result of these controlling influences, the curriculum for learning receded further and further away from real life – and from learning in and from real life – to learning in artificial environments called classrooms where children are now fed huge quantities of so-called knowledge from text books for a decade of their lives and more. The lessons from such text books have very little direct or meaningful connection with the living world outside school walls. The ultimate result leads to a cramming of facts and information and an almost complete debunking and downplaying of any experience outside the text book. Read the rest of this entry »

Yogic Swar Sadhana is a unique concept in Vocal Classical Music wherein during Swar Abhyas (the practice of  Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Nee) one is also concentrating on many Pranayam Kriyas leading to the stimulation of the relative Chakras in the body.

Sardar Brij Inder Singh Monga, a veteran professor of Indian Classical Music (Vocal) will facilitate the three day workshop to be held at SIDH Learning Resource Centre, Mussoorie from 10th to 12th June 2011. 

For details : Email pawansidh@gmail.com, pammidaid@gmail.com or call 9410779296

Just thought this newly released film “Race to Nowhere” on schooling, that’s being shown in community spaces throughout the U.S., would be of interest to this group:

http://www.slate.com/id/2292408/pagenum/all/#p2

Admission to the 2011 batch of Swaraj University – a two year learning programme for young adults is now open.  For details visit http://swarajuniversity.org/default.aspx Or Contact: swarajuni@gmail.com  Cell: 09414155919 Ph: 0294-2451303

Is a week long workshop organised by K B Jinan from the 16^th to the 22^nd of May 2011 at Nilambur, Kerala . More details on the workshop here.Or Contact: jinankb@gmail.com Cell: 09447121544 Ph: 0487 2386723