Sense literates (the so called illiterates) seem to be the people who are involved in natural knowing without disconnecting from nature. In order to understand the wisdom knowledge of such communities we have established an initiative at village Kurunji, 70 km from Pune. Our attempt is to understand and document the process, content and sensibilities of knowing and being.
Modern educational process has homogenized knowledge and mechanized learning alienating humans from the living knowledge of life. The focus of all our these activities is to initiate experiential exploration about the damages of schooling, to re awaken the natural cognitive system, senses, to re awaken the childlike qualities.
At Kurunji we work with children to connect their real life experiences to their learning at school. As their life becomes the content of their learning children can connect to the education at school more easily.
The content of the today's education is 'words'. So we naturally learn the 'word' instead of the 'world'. This rewires the cognitive process thereby eliminating the physiological functions needed for making sense of the world. The retreat is for re claiming the ability to ‘experience’ the real world and natural cognitive process
At village Khechare 30 kms away from Pune city we have created a space for children and adults to BE. Children need physical and psychological spaces conducive for awakening of qualities established by life itself...a space where children are free to BE, where parents learn to learn again and learn from children how to be, where children are respected and acknowledged that they are born with capacity to make sense of the world. What we try to do is to create conditions for learning to happen, a ‘Space’ where knowing happens by being, where ‘Knower’ is the primary subject of enquiry and ‘awakening the knower’ is the objective of learning.
Modern parenting has become over parenting which stifles the children, makes them emotionally and intellectually dependent, killing creativity and sensitivity. Over concern about schooling and education is making parents to become teachers, forgetting that the child's first lesson in life has to be how to be a good mother or a father, how to love, care etc. But now children are learning to be teachers as instructions, as do's and dont's are what children experience at home. This workshop is for recreating sensibility in parents as Sensitivity enables us to learn from the child its existential need to be free, to trust and to care.
From word to the world, teaching space to learning space Children learn THE experience. So the teaching environment teaches children to teach rather than to learn. Words rewire children’s cognitive system and make reading, thinking and reasoning as the cognitive process rather than observation, experience and understanding. schools need to be re organized as places to experience the real world, enable children to play and to make toys on their own as this is the nature's way of making children understand experience.
The most crucial time is from zero to 5 years where drastic changes are happening to the child. In modern situation in this period parents damage children by children are illtreated by treating children them with over care, misleading them to explore toys instead of the real world, talk to them in silly language etc. Children are fragile and helpless at this stage but one must give them the sense that they are not so by engaging with them with deep respect and sensitivity. The work shop explores these aspects .
Art is a mental construct of modernity, the most dubious and mis leading trap of modernity. Reimagining art is needed for Exploring the possibility of art to see the world (drawing, colouring etc), making the world (toys, clay work, sculpture etc) and imitating the world (dance, mime, theatre)
Once one understands thoroughly what is learning one understands what is a child and vice versa. The samvaad series is an attempt to bring together people to explore deeply the whole learning ecology- why, what and how. why children play? why children make toys? why the miniaturized and simplified version we present to children kill their real abilities and intelligence
Knowledge is the foundation of any culture and once people stop creating knowledge and rely on someone else's knowledge their culture is as good as dead. Creation of knowledge has to be the focus of higher education.
Conference on aesthetics- to initiate deeper rethinking as to how to 'teach' aesthetic sensibility to design and architectural students as the whole world is getting homogenized.(http://thanima.co.in/)
The visual spaces created by trained architects have a homogenized look due to learning western aesthetic sensibilities. The aesthetic education- formation- needs re looking. Effort is being put into this aspect by working with few institutions..
The foundation is interested in collaborating with interested institutions to initiate fresh experience based learning situations, initiate fresh research, create collaborative learning communities, creation of learning environments and conditions
Modern educated people have largely turned birthing into a disease. We are attempting to reestablish the primacy of women’s wisdom and control in this natural process
The foundation is planning to publish books that would initiate the literates to experience the world directly and to point out the damages of the written word.