A new way of learning

Auroville Today: How did STEM Land come into being, and why?

Sanjeev: For many years I have been interested in alternative methods of education. Before joining Auroville, I volunteered with the NGO, Asha for Education, which aims to catalyze socio-economic change in India through the education of underprivileged children, and through this I visited many alternative education schools in India, where I learned it can take many different forms. 

When I came to Auroville, I began by working with children in Udavi and Isai Ambalam schools, teaching science and maths. It was a conventional syllabus, but as these schools are Auroville schools the teachers are given a lot of flexibility in how to implement it. 

In the first year, I also offered an electronics course. We wanted to do some programming so I needed a computer. Udavi has a fine computer lab but, like most schools in India, it was used for children to learn to use a computer, rather than using the computer to create projects to demonstrate abstract concepts they are expected to learn. So I thought it would be interesting for children to learn mathematics through programming, rather than just doing sums.

Around the same time, I met an Auroville youth with a background in electronics who was looking for a job, and I realized youth unemployment in this area was another challenge. So I thought it would be interesting to bring together a different way of educating children with skill development in youth. This is why I conceived the Aura Auro project to train certain youth – young adults who have graduated in electrical engineering – and bring them into schools to mentor and support children in their education.

The idea was that Aura Auro would be a technology unit where the youth would learn, grow and work part of the day on projects for Aura Semiconductor Pvt. Ltd., and spend the rest of the day supporting children in their education in Auroville.

Actually, when I first proposed this idea to the company, they thought I was nuts! But finally they agreed to support the project for one year because of my long association with them before I came to Auroville. So I began training the youth to code software for the company’s hardware, and every day they also helped in the education of children at Udavi and Isai Ambalam schools.

How did the youth develop as educators?

What happened was very interesting. I brought the youth into the classroom but I could not take the classroom out of the youth, because they began by doing exactly what conventional teachers would do, standing at the front and making the children listen to them. I let this go on for six months. Then I pointed out this was not working and asked the youth to examine why they were doing this. We had all done the RTL (Radical Transformational Leadership) workshop and so we worked through a breakdown to breakthrough exercise. Through this they noticed how they had been socialized, meaning that when they went into the classroom and all the children were looking at them for input, this is how they responded because, “This is how we learned”. 

As we worked through the exercise, we wondered how things could be different. We wanted to observe the children and support them in educating themselves, not for them to be dependent upon us. So that is the idea with which we started STEM Land. Different educational resources and games would be provided, but the children would have the responsibility of organising the classroom space, and each child would determine what he/she/they wanted to focus upon and how he/she/they wanted to learn. 

Was it difficult for the children to take responsibility like this?

It was very difficult for the children, who were in the 7th – 9th grade (12-15 years old), because they had never had to make choices before. We explained it was important that they learned to make choices from who they are at their best rather than out of fear, because in life there are many choices and possibilities, but most people choose on the basis of how they have been socialized, or fear of being left out, or on the basis of what their friends are doing.

We also told them we are not going to take classes because Sri Aurobindo says nothing can be taught. For the first week, the children were thrilled with their new found ‘freedom’, then they got really concerned. “If you don’t teach us, how can we learn this stuff on our own?”

I told the children mathematics books, strategy games, materials, electronics and access to computers where they could learn programming would be provided, and they could learn on their own and ask for help whenever they wanted. Then the children started getting into small groups of three or four, selecting the topics they wanted to work on, and we would support them wherever necessary.

It took a few weeks for the educational environment to settle, but once the children started creating something, they were very excited about it. We also started peer learning and putting the younger and older children together, and the resulting interactions were very rich. Suddenly we saw that the children were much more engaged than before.

Did the children’s maths improve?

There was definitely progress, an average improvement of over nine per cent in the whole class. Interestingly, a lot of the improvement was in the children at the bottom of the class, because now they could find something they could do, and they were willing to put in enough time to make themselves good at it.

But this experiment is not just about teaching maths in a new way.

No. Once we started STEM Land, Aura Auro transitioned from a functional organization to a social organisation because we were shifting the culture of how children learn, and also the way they interact with each other in school. We suddenly had a larger purpose.

The youth were also improving. In the classroom they became more patient, they listened to the children more, and they looked to break socialisms, like encouraging the girls to stand for what they valued rather than complying with the wishes of others.

However, I sensed what we were doing with the youth was not enough. They needed to become role models in their local village, to begin setting the agenda, and that meant we needed to focus not only on their social skills but also upon their personal growth. So, in addition to RTL workshops, we also started doing Vipassana. This is when I felt we began to become a spiritual organization, not just a social one.

So we started doing Vipassana retreats together, as well as Monica Sharma’s leadership workshops. This is when I felt we began to become a spiritual organization, not just a social one.

Did you also focus upon personal growth with the younger children? 

When we started STEM Land we came up with some qualities that we wanted to encourage in the children and in ourselves – like responsibility, equality and the courage to carry things through.

In Isai Ambalam School the children are doing real-life projects, like running a stationery shop and repairing a pond. The children came up with these projects themselves because they wanted to do something about them. In the process they learned not only technical and social skills, but also the willingness to personally stand for things they care about.

In a recent survey, a few of the children who were past students specifically brought up the leadership workshops, and how they continue to play a role in their lives and allow them to transcend socialized fear.

So we see that what we were doing had not only short-term effects on improving the attitude of children towards mathematics, but also longer-term impacts in their attitude towards how they understand themselves and how they learn. These altered traits move them from being one ‘among the crowd’ to ‘standing out from the crowd.’

Regarding the youth, has this experiment resulted in fewer of them emigrating to the cities for work and to find outlets for their creativity? 

It is not necessary to stop the local youth going to the city for employment. Those who want a different life should go. But we provide an option for those who want to stay and who understand the value of contributing to their community and being around a special place like Auroville. Over the years, we have worked with about 50 youth and most of them are still in the area, whether working with me or not. One has become an entrepreneur.

It is for each person to discover what they deeply care about. Being truly creative is putting what you truly care about into action; it’s not just about innovating. Here we presume that every human being is capable of greatness: this is the basis of all the work that we do. We may or may not utilize this capacity. In the end it’s about choosing how we live our life, about taking responsibility for our lives. In fact, every policy we have here is based upon responsibility. For example, we don’t count the hours people work, or ask them to justify when they need to take time off; we expect them to be responsible. We also spend a lot of time in learning new things, and reflecting on what we have done, why, and how it has impacted us and others.

What about the relationship with the company that helped fund your activities for the first year and provided employment for the youth? 

The relationship with Aura Semiconductor has continued, even though they had no expectations: initially they supported us out of goodwill. Even with the technical aspects, they trust us now to do things they can’t do themselves. But my purpose was not to bring the company into Auroville to create employment. It was to take something of Auroville back to the company, to show them there is a different, much richer way to live, yet still get quality work done.

I think they begin to understand that. 

Our research project, Aura Auro Design that became STEM land, a sub-unit of SAIEIR, has also evolved. The commercial sister organization is called C3STREAM Land Designs, a commercial unit under Swagatham Trust of the Auroville Foundation, with the goal of providing rural youth with an opportunity to learn, grow, work and teach. C3 stands for “conscious for self, conscious for others and conscious for the environment (both natural and cultural)”. It’s a learning organization that is creating a new model for businesses – not working on profits or losses, but rather on trust and long-term relationships, based on transparent budgets.

We’ve also renamed the STEM Land learning centres ‘C3SL Centres’ when we publish our educational research, to distinguish it from traditional STEM education.

What about the future? Do you have any sense of the direction this educational project could take?

I don’t think the values will change a whole lot, but the activities and the scope of our work will change. We have already extended our training programme into other schools. We also conducted free courses in programming for youth and anyone else interested. 

One new activity is the one year residential Shifu programme we started in February this year. ‘Shifu’ is Japanese for ‘master’, and the programme gives participants the opportunity to become highly skilled in either programming, VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integration chip design) or business analysis, and to use these competencies to change society and culture, while developing inner capacities like self-awareness, responsibility and the courage to create. In other words, it’s a holistic learning experience based upon Monica Sharma’s Conscious Full-Spectrum Response model, which is about sourcing our inner capacities to manifest real change in society.

Unfortunately India’s present technology education does not do this. It is so stuck in theory that at the end of four years of computer science a student can’t programme, and an engineer hasn’t built anything. So our course would be very different.

Now something else has come up in India, a new qualification called a Bachelor of Vocation (B.Voc). The course is different from traditional academic programmes as it deals more with application-based studies rather than focusing only on theoretical knowledge. This would allow us to create our own curriculum, which could be an extension of the Shifu programme, and have it certified by Pondicherry University. It would be a new option for youth to pursue after 12th Standard, and I think it is one that many would prefer, because of its very practical element.  This also has the potential of bridging two worlds – the hands-on activity-based world, and the one where you learn about yourself, because in the end that’s what it’s really all about.

What about your personal journey? 

I have come to realise that the purpose of my life is my personal growth, and to create an environment that is conducive for others to grow. But it took time for me to realize this. 

My first intention, when I went to the US to study for a Ph.D, was to pursue a career in academia. But in the U.S. I became involved with Asha and, through it, initially alternative educational initiatives and, over time, activism. Growing up in the Indian middle class we are very good at not seeing certain aspects of society. We know there are poor people but we are numbed to it, or we just don’t see it. But when I was in the U.S. I interacted with many social activists, and on each visit back home I would travel and interact with people I did not know existed before. I became an angry young man. I felt India is burning, and I had to come back and do something about it.

I also volunteered in a tribal village for nine months, and I saw that when children who have dropped out of school work with their hands, they develop the confidence to go back into mainstream education, or pick up something they could do as a vocation. That was a great learning for me.

But activism burns you out if you are not doing something creative, and it can make you very judgmental. So the second important experience for me was doing Vipassana, for I could observe and let my anger go. I had a knowing of what I needed to do, but it wasn’t out of anger or judgment.

I think the third special experience was the Radical Transformational Leadership workshops I did with Monica Sharma, because they made me uncomfortable about being comfortable. In the first one we were asked, what is your greatest fear? And I realised my greatest fear was not being in control: I was a control freak!

I learned that the next thing only happens when I transcend where I am now. 

What Auroville has helped me do is synthesise my life. Now I don’t feel I have to reject any part of my being: everything I have done before has come together, whether it’s programming, electronics, Vipassana meditation or visiting alternative education experiments in India. And I keep looking forward to the next piece which will be integrated for something new to emerge.

Recently, I’ve become very interested in ethics in relationship to technology. Many people think technology is neutral, but, for example, AI is already dominating our lives, and the way it works can simply reinforce existing patterns of behavior and thought. In this sense, if existing data is used to train the models, it can easily be biased. If we are not aware of this and don’t seriously address it, we will continue to get manipulated. So now that I’m aware of what it can do, I want to do something different with it. I would like to make technology a force for good.