Unlearning and learning

Arun Elassery
The author is on a journey where he is unlearning and undoing the damage that the formal education brought upon him. Here he shares excerpts from books that have helped him in this journey. Books, on education, by relatively unknown Indians. Books that may set the reading thinking about education.

What would you like to do today?

Arun Elassery

Anand Niketan Democratic School is a unique experiment in education. This is a school without classrooms. Children decide what they want to learn and how. The teachers are there only as facilitators.

Where school is free

Arun Elassery
The story of Poorna Learning Centre with its simplicity and magic is sure to inspire many readers to hopefully start their own little school. Nearly 50 per cent of Poorna’s children come from underprivileged backgrounds, and the most visible aspect of this school is the openness and the freedom that the children display.

Visibly different

Arun Elassery

A school that follows alternative principles despite being large, Shishuvan is a pefect example to show that alternative means of learning do not have to be hindered because of huge numbers.

The holistic circle of living and learning

Arun Elassery
The Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education in Pondicherry cannot be called a school in the sense that we understand the term. Here one can find seven generations teaching at any one time and all of them have lived and learnt here , which is what makes this place unique.

Different strokes

Arun Elassery
The Indus World Schools are spread across the country but a special mention must be made about the one at Indore , where an initiative by a former IIT scholar changed the whole approach to running a large organisation and teaching as well. Read all about it here.

It’s not where you go, but how you get there

Arun Elassery

Alternatiview this time looks at Manzil, an after school learning space that helps children of various age improve their skills at art, music, math and English among other things.

A space for questioning

Arun Elassery

Aman Sethu, a school in Pune, has taken the best out of the various learning philosophies to carve its own learning journey.

Digantar – changing the face of rural education

Arun Elassery
In our series on alternative schools, we profile Digantar on the outskirts of Jaipur that is run by Rohit Dhankar and Reena Das. Digantar runs three schools catering to nearly 600 children from the rural areas. The children learn at their own pace, they learn from each other and they are not distributed according to classes. This complete change in direction has changed the lives of many rural children too.

A sense of oneness

Arun Elassery
The Valley School, Bangalore, has been around for 35 years, and that itself speaks for its sense of oneness that prevails in the school.