26 Feb 2023

Dear Parents,

Everyone enjoys chai, samosa and a good debate. Reminds me of the times which was pre-LC when few of us, parents met at each other’s houses and in gardens. It was not even called LC then. We used to debate for hours together. Anyhow, here’s a summary and few clarifications. This might seem a bit of a repetition, nevertheless let us get this on paper for those who were not able to attend.

Core philosophies:

1. Self-Directed: The child will be free to exercise his/her right to participate in any kind of activity/learning that is conducted in LC. However, they will be required to participate in a few mandatory community activities that are decided as a group.
2. Democracy: The place will be run in a democratic way, where every child will have equal rights and responsibility in managing the place. Barring any decision in relation to finances and safety every other decision is taken through the judiciary.
3. Fearlessness: We strive to create an environment that is a safe space for every child to express their thoughts, needs and feelings. This is primary for us. There can’t be anything that is done for them or through them by any force or by inducing any pressure/fear.
4. We take pride in being secular and want to be minimalist in operations. Living in a resource constraint environment, we hope might give them an opportunity to use things creatively.
5. Environmentally conscious: We believe it is the need of our time to adopt a low carbon and plastic-free way of living. We may not be able to achieve that all the time, but we strive to and have to make exceptionally good attempts at trying to achieve that. 

What could be the adversities of this philosophy? So here they are:

1. The child might very well not sign up for any sessions we conduct here and we will not force him/her to join the session if they decide to quit midway. But we do have certain processes where, before the child quits she/he has to have a conversation with the mentor about the reasons the child may or may not have. The mere excuse of boredom is valid enough to quit the session. And having a conversation about it with the mentor induces some self realisation.
2. The child may not participate in any sessions for quite a while. Now we have not found any one like that yet, but if that were to happen in future then we would still only have a conversation with the child but not use any coercion.
3. The child deciding to not appear for 10th/12th std and not taking the traditional path.
4. The child may not seem respectful to elders/others in the family. In our experiences, when a child gets freedom to speak their mind they do so truthfully and genuinely. The style of communication largely is influenced by how they are spoken to and the context they have been raised. And what influences they pick and choose from their environment. 
5. We encourage questioning and challenging authority and we ask them to do that with humility. This may result in the child having different value and belief systems and which may differ from their parents.

Few of the questions that were raised in the discussions during the LSH:

What is the proof that this system will work?

We don’t have any data. Period. We are the first centre in Mumbai and there a few tens of places like this in India across many cities. We engage with them and learn from each other. There are a few places outside India which have existed over 70 years and have some data. 

What are the processes to implement our ideas?

We have processes and policies. Some of them are written in documents and have children’s signatures on them. Rules, customised consequences, trips, safety, goal setting, reflections and self evaluation are some of them.

These ideas can be implemented only by institutions.

How will then new ideas or thoughts be implemented? We have to begin somewhere. Institutions to implement ideas can be done by states or by large donors. 

How to bring culture of excellence in LC?

This is a question that corporates, governments and institutions world over are grappling with. All of us know that it doesn’t come overnight. Let’s also understand what we mean by excellence and who is the beneficiary of that excellence, thereby who’s need should it be? We have a weekly goals review and project discussion individually where the persistent question the mentor asks the child is, “Is this the best you can do?” We talk about self evaluation and improvement all the time.

Can the lesson plans be shared with parents?

Let us understand the need for it. Is it to make sure that the facilitators have delivered a certain quantum of information? Because that doesn’t guarantee the learning at the receiving end. The session are correlated with children. Sometimes it can go completely tangential when few questions are asked. Sometimes certain concepts are repeated since they would have forgotten. Sometimes the facilitators themselves go tangential and are excited to share something interesting in the general purview of the topic. We have a fair bit of a plan where we are leading in the topic but its always is altered. Plus all the updates are shared in our weekly newsletter.

Some maths, science, literature, drama, art … (and so on) is important.

All these things are mostly covered either in sessions or clubs. Reading club closed down due to lack of attendees. Since everyone moved to football. Now who are we to make a judgement that football is not better than reading? When we did Harry Potter books in reading club, there were a few kids who had never read more than 100 pages finish all the 7 books for the sake of joining the club. Only time will tell what sticks.

Do we have short term expectations, (long term ones are definitely toxic)

Maybe this is something we do partly through weekly goals review. This is also something that can be worked on at individual family front. 

The parents need to be added to google classroom where homework is shared.

Again let’s understand the need of this request. The need seems to be to notify the parents about the performance of the child and help them to “maybe” take corrective actions. How comfortable this will make a child, knowing that constantly someone is judging me? Will this not induce pressure/fear in their minds?

How will the kids merge into traditional education system?

We have friends from other centres in Bangalore and Pune where children have joined traditional schools. We haven’t heard any bad experiences there. However there is a possibility that our children may not join the main stream.

If the child doesn’t learn now, then she/he will never learn in future.

We don’t have data to prove this, but our core belief is that it needs to happen first with the child agreeing to learn. Because it simply can’t work the other way around. Even if you get the child to sit in a session against his/her wishes, there is no guarantee that they are learning. 

So far, why no school teacher have been called in LC to conduct the sessions?

There has been no explicit or implicit action taken to avoid school teachers from coming to LC. We had a college professor who came for a while to teach math. Currently Vipul teaches, who is/was a school math teacher. Poorva and Rajitha teach at colleges. But there will be reservations about regimented teaching, since children decide whether or not they will sit in those sessions.

What if the child quits when the going gets tough?

We have a process where the child has to speak to the mentor and understands the reasons for quitting. Here, the mentor is clearly in a listening mode and addressing any issues the child may have and helping the child reflect. 

There is no collective responsibility in LC.

Are we today as adults collectively responsible to our family, society and our environment? Will we pay taxes if not coerced? If schools were an agent to induce collective responsibility then that is not what we see in and around ourselves. To judge that a bunch of children from the age of 5 to 13 years have to become collectively responsible after 4 years into a system is too much to expect. But that is not answering the question. The answer is yes, its true as of now we lack collective responsibility in some key areas. All of us are at different age of maturity and come from different families where priorities are varied. But we are trying!

What processes do we have in LC?

These are the following things were we have a set pattern of functioning:

1. Goal setting, weekly, 6 monthly
2. Sessions
3. Talk to Mentor
4. Consequences and Judiciary
5. Policies for trips, seva
6. Self evaluation and assessment
7. Reviews

What are the mandatory things in LC?

Being responsible for:

1. Sevas
2. Friday food
3. Setting up projector/AV systems on fridays
4. Circle Time on thursdays
5. Consequences
6. Following LC rules

This is my opinion: (Rajitha’s)

Sorry to write it down here. WA didn’t look like a good option.

The world today is very different from what was when we all were growing up. The sort after careers in those times were engineering or medicine. Today 50% of engineering seats in Maharashtra are going vacant. AICTE has ordered 400 engineering colleges to shut down. Who would have predicted this? Plus there will be disruptors in every decade. I once went for a talk by Kumar Ketkar and Nandan Nilekani. Ketkar mentioned how in the early 90’s they went on strikes against bringing computers in workplaces and how it would have led to people losing jobs. And look where it is now. While Nilekani talking about how technology can be used to empower the general masses. 

Currently the biggest disruptor is AI. According to Oxford University, it will replace 47% of jobs in the US in the coming 20 years. What AI is not fit for doing today, it will tomorrow. Who knows what kind of jobs will be there? Our children will face different challenges than us, like climate crisis, polarisation of society and several others. Are we approaching the doom’s day? Definitely not, I am an optimist. Didn’t we survive with our struggles? We ought to realise that this is their fight and they will do what best they can. We can’t protect them always and curate a better life for them. We need to empower them to make their life choices and we can’t do that if we control them. They will fail and make wrong choices. LC and your homes have to be a safe spaces for doing that, without judgments and enforcing our prejudices. They have the luxury of time. What's the hurry?

Facilitators are more than willing to show their vulnerable sides and share their frustrations and disappointments. But it can’t be construed as us having lack of faith in our philosophy, it’s because we are also un/learning and fighting our conditioning while discovering. And we have no shame sharing it and will continue to do so.

More later (don't know if there's anything more to it!) Until next week :)