30 May 2015

Samshikshana:
A Collaborative Medium for
Education
Are you seeking an alternative to conventional schooling
that supports and informs you in determining your own learning
path?

Do you believe that learning environments should be collaborative, as

opposed to competitive?

Do you think that the primary stakeholders in childhood education

are the children themselves and their families, and, therefore, that it
is they who ought to be the principal architects of their own paths to
education?

Would you agree that the best learning environment is a culture that offers a
variety of learning opportunities, exposure to many branches of knowledge,
nourishes curiosity and nurtures one's own innate striving for attainment in
chosen endeavors?

Have you felt that a community of caring individuals and families,

engaged in purposeful, passionate pursuits makes for the best
teacher or, in the words of an African proverb, that it takes a village
to raise a child?

If your answers are mostly in the affirmative, perhaps you would be interested to know
more about and participate in our fledgling project to build such a learning community and
resource center in south Chennai, with an aim to provide comprehensive support to learning
individuals, and in particular, children. For more details of this project, please write
to samshikshana@googlegroups.com or call +91 8220221367.

Samshikshana: A proposal for an urban

learning community and resource center
Families that are inclined to the natural learning philosophy may agree that the present
environmental and other crises seem to call for a radical revision of the ordinary definitions of
success, prosperity and development, and perhaps even of happiness. Such a wholesale
revolution in our society's perspectives on life may warrant a similar transformation in the way
we educate children. We may need to favor non-competitive, collaborative, organic learning
environments that emphasize personal growth and right living, and phase out
conventional learning institutions for children, that exhibit too little of these qualities.
Therefore, there may be a niche today for social organizations that empower families not
only in natural education, but also in career choices for parents that are supportive of the
homeschooling lifestyle.

To fill that niche in our part of the city, it is proposed to begin a cooperative community
centered at a learning resource center in south Chennai, primarily for the benefit of
homeschooling families and others who are seeking to chart their own course in education.
However, the learning center and community are also, potentially, for any interested family
that respects the philosophy of natural learning. The proposed institution could be best
described as a physical learning space that attracts and supports a community of children
and guardians learning and working together, and pooling their interests,
strengths, sensibilities, ideas, knowledge, skills, learning material and other resources to
mutual benefit.

The primary objective of the proposed institution is to harness the power of community to
extend the resources and opportunities available to learning individuals and families to fulfill
their educational goals. Community members would gather periodically to map out, among
other things, collaborative activities and agendas that will support each other's stated
learning aspirations over the subsequent time period. The proposed learning community will
adopt a flat hierarchy, or in other words, the learning space itself will impose no hierarchy
between its members. Importantly, it will offer to its members a shared, safe space where
different learning styles are respected, where the children can learn and play together, where
anyone could choose to work in solitude when they please, or work or study together if they
so choose, and where a variety of activities like games, discussions, presentations, lessons
and workshops could be conducted on a continuing basis. It could also, over time, create and
provide a shared repository of books, learning kits and other materials for all its members.
Furthermore, it could offer interested members the opportunity to organize small activity
groups or clubs, opportunity to discuss and debate matters of interest, to learn about each
other's roots and traditions, to practice vital social skills such as friendly communication and
conflict resolution, and much more. The community will become what its participants make of
it and provide them, in return, with a medium of personal expression and growth.

A Few Defining Characteristics

There are important characteristics of the proposed learning space that may differentiate
it from many other alternate learning institutions as well as from being a simple gathering
venue. A few of these features are described below.

- The chief defining characteristic of this proposal is that it will organize collaboration among
independent families and interested individuals primarily for the purpose of their learning or
education.

- The learning community endorses the idea that families are very important stakeholders in
their children's learning. However, the principal stakeholder and owner of any learning
process is the learner himself.

- The learning community strives to be accepting and respectful of different learning styles
and approaches to education among its members, inasmuch as they do not appear to violate
its fundamental principle of respect for the child. An overriding consideration in
implementation is that the learning space should appeal to learners from all paths as a safe,
accepting environment, where they will be supported and assisted- through material
resources and through the community's collaboration- to fulfill their personal learning
agendas. However, by implication, it devolves on members to be equally respectful of the
paths and aspirations of others, in the conviction that each family and child know best for
themselves.

- The learning community's agenda will be decided by consensus between its members in
periodic communal gatherings. Members, through discussions and consensus in such
communal gatherings, will largely determine the rules and schedule according to which the
community associates over a subsequent, suitable time frame.

- The scheme will recommend, though not mandate, optional periodic documentation and
recordkeeping by members of their own activities and progress, so as to create a memory of
how time and resources were utilized by the community. This could aid self-assessment, and
produce a formal report of individual learning paths and progress, which could be useful to
the learning process of community members in a number of ways.

Most importantly, Samshikshana aims to grow into a comprehensive alternate solution to

the educational needs of children.

Motivation

The driving inspiration for this proposal is to create a viable model of a learning institution
that manifests in our urban setting the old African adage that "it takes a village to raise a
child". Urban living, despite its hectic pace and diverse opportunities for all ages, is
nevertheless an isolating experience for many. This may be because, as natural schooling
advocate John Taylor Gatto observes, our urban interactions, oftener than not, create not
the organic interrelationships that he terms communities, but a poor, artificial substitute,
which he calls networks. According to Gatto, in networks, unlike in communities, people
associate with certain objectives but their relationships typically do not mature into deeper
friendships involving more than mere purposeful transactions. Communities, on the other
hand, would foster more heartfelt bonds and mutual caring and concern, and their members
would take from and contribute to each other in more meaningful ways to create more
fulfilling transactions. He postulates that our children need villages, or in other words,
communities, to learn, evolve and flourish as whole beings- to become educated.

Alternate-schooling parents in Chennai seem largely in agreement with the belief that
children need and have a right to learn and grow naturally, and that the parents' role as their
guardians is but to protect that right and support their growth. In our network-like urban
environment, learning children may stand to benefit greatly when we families join hands and
form a real world community to nourish their growth. Such a community would offer a more
meaningful and humane social structure and resource pool as an alternative to conventional
schooling, and it may add value to the urban schooling experience. By being wholly voluntary
and cooperative, as opposed to mandatory or competitive, the proposed learning space and
community aim to create a flexible and friendly environment in which younger and older minds
can learn from each other, pursue individual or collaborative activities and express their
creative potential.

In summary, the proposed learning institution offers itself as a collaborative medium for
education and a physical resource center located in south Chennai that serves to provide
material assistance to families and individuals seeking to own responsibility for and to
construct their own learning paths. By aspiring to enhance its value to self-learners and
alternate-schooling families of different learning ideologies, we hope to create a focal
institution for this community in our region as well as a potential resource center and learning
cooperative for all students.

If you would like to participate in conversations about the project, we

would be grateful to have you with us in the Google Group
Samshikshana. Do write to us at samshikshana@googlegroups.com with
a brief introduction of yourself and your reasons for your interest in
this vision.