Dear Mr. Patch Adams, My name is Sunil Noronha. I live in Bangalore, India.

I heard, and looked up, about you after watching Patch Adams - the movie. I absolutely admire your commitment to what you do for all these years now, and further more. Im writing to you because I find myself called to constructive activism myself but in a different field education. After working for a while as a writer, Ive given in to pursuing this, the first step being studying towards it. My dream is to set up a learning centre to tackle parallel mainstream, traditional education for its inherent flaws in approach to what should and should not be an effective education. They only boxize thinking and only build towards funding an economy thats based on capitalistic thinking . They are glorified factories that make robots from strong, able, intelligent men and women by slowly mangling their minds in the name of making something of them. They also safeguard the strange unidirectional values of society that restricts its natural progress when it comes their way. All in all, not good for any foreseeable future that we actually dont want to turn into an eyesore. The system is built to work against goals it actually sets for itself. I want to set up an open model, financial and infrastructural, that allows parents, in groups, to set up and control their own learning centre that allows children to be the master of their own learning experiences with minimal, and necessary, intervention only the kind that actually encourages and opens up their minds and thinking. The idea is to really educate them in a way that actually matters to them, and in one with which they actually identify with, heart and soul. If we dont let the inner fountain flow as it grows unabated, we shouldnt be telling it how to flow and sprout. To sum it up, parents of a specific group of children fund their own learning centre as opposed to using a similar or less amount of money to, in terms of the kind of the business transaction that they would otherwise adopt when paying the school fees of a mainstream school, rent the schools services. All help, which has to be (thought about a lot about and) constructed first, will be provided with guidelines and personnel training (as necessary) that would be required to facilitate wholesome learning, all which will be discussed and worked out in detail and discussion over time as this dream plays out to realisation. This, in ideal view, wont be a compromise because its difficult to do (and something has to be done!) but will be a full, complete, wholesome step that will work towards liberating minds and turning on thinking minds that engage with the world, and pursue dreams and careers with values that make them see theirs as a part of the perfect whole not as extensions of capitalist mindsets or greedy individualistic outlooks, or as neutral non-interventional systems that will otherwise cause the rug to be pulled under the worlds feet so bad that we dont want to admit how messed up an affair the mainstream educational system really is. I want to make education a bastion of the young, bubbling lil ones, not a cultural control-hold of the older generation whom society holds to ransom. There may be a price to pay, in context of the cheaper mass system, of a higher monetary price, but if you compromise youre already closing so many doors the future can possibly to ever hold for the young, bright generation of tomorrow. I have been researching all this a while and more and its added onto the list of my life dreams. I see that the model of the Gesundheit! Institute is built on similar principles and structures. I take much inspiration from the commitment you have given to your cause and how youve pursued it. In awe of what you do, Sunil Noronha