Experiments in Alternative Eduction: The Learning Community (TLC)

Years ago, lying in a hammock at a research centre in the Andaman Islands, I remember dreaming of a school that would use place-based education to its fullest potential. In place-based education, children learn through immersion in the specific culture and context of their community. It was not an accident that the thought came to me on that lazy afternoon. Island biogeography is very special and leads to unique cultures, endemic species and unusual ecological systems. It was easy to see how a school could use the sense of place to ground children’s learning in everything from science to history and from language to mathematics. That thought lay dormant for a long time till I came to another island – an island called Auroville.

Auroville is unique because of the extreme diversity that it supports within a very small area. It’s the perfect place for place-based education and one school, if you can call it a school, is making this happen. Started in 2009, The Learning Community (TLC), uses the whole flow of life in Auroville as the context for learning. It dips into the experiences of the entire community and tries to build in children an integral sense of self.

Creating a deep connect with nature is one of the most important aspects of learning at TLC. The children visit a forest every week and spend time immersing themselves in nature. It’s not that there’s an ecology curriculum to follow – merely being in nature and observing the cycle of life gives deep insights. And in any case, it would be hard to design a class around a lizard laying eggs, something that some of the children observed recently in Pitchandikulam Forest.

Johnny’s place in Fertile adds some more dimensions to their forest visit. There’s carpentry, basket weaving and metal forging. And there are ‘forts, dens and bush houses’, those special places for children.

The wilderness of the forests is balanced with the steady rhythm of the farms. The children have composted in Buddha Garden and raised chickens in Auro-Orchard. The relationship with Annapurna Farm is special. The cereals for the Friday open lunch come straight from the farm and the husk is used in the compost toilets. The children have even helped Annapurna conduct yogurt tasting for different strains of probiotics. Learning where our food comes from is critical and, if the thin attendance at the recent Farm Festival is anything to go by, we need a lot more of this awareness.

Once every term, children participate in Service Week, when they immerse themselves in the world of work. During Service Week, units such as Auroville Paper, PTDC, Shraddhanjali, Miniature and Naturellement become busy centres of learning. Mechanics is quite popular, with many children choosing to work with motorcycle maintenance.

Arts and aesthetics is an integral part of Auroville, and TLC has extensive connection with art centres such as White Peacock Clay Studio and Play of Painting. The children also visit Last School every week for art classes.

It’s interesting to see that although TLC strongly believes in learning beyond the classroom, it does not reject classroom learning entirely. The older children attend English Language, English Literature and Biology classes in Last School. TLC has also started formal Math classes for some students.

TLC students spend several hours a week, sometimes up to ten hours, playing a variety of sports. Swimming has become quite popular. Every student must swim a minimum of two hours a week and many of them participate in competitive swimming.

A little bit of entrepreneurship is thrown into the mix as well. The students operate and manage Dewdrop Café, which sells lemonade and cakes. Open on Thursdays and Fridays from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm, the café is managed by the children. Currently, there are discussions underway on business planning and strategies for expansion! The children do everything – cooking, serving and cleaning up. Speaking of cleaning up, TLC is one of the few places in Auroville where you won’t see ammas or other paid workers. Children and their parents take the responsibility for every kind of work.

Learning is not restricted to the physical boundaries of Auroville. Last year, a group of TLC children joined students from other Auroville schools to spend a month at the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamshala. There are field trips to Hampi and Panchgani. And at Varanashi Farms, the children combine wilderness experience with swimming practice. TLC considers Marudam Farm School in Tiruvannamalai as its sister school. Interestingly, when Marudam started it was called Tiruvannamalai Learning Centre, or TLC. Every year, students from Auroville’s TLC immerse themselves in arts and crafts in the Craft Week at Marudam.

When TLC started eight years ago, the children and the parent-facilitators moved from location to location in Auroville. There was no focal point or a place to come back to. Now, TLC has Basecamp, a plot of land with a yard and three small buildings. The buildings are used for working on individual projects and for conducting some group classes. The children still move around Auroville for hands-on learning in the community, but they can come back to Basecamp. Also, building and managing their own community is itself an intensive learning experience for the children.

But there’s a nagging feeling at the back of my mind. Is Basecamp the first innocuous step towards setting up a more formal school? As TLC grows and gains mass, will it be able to counter the increasing force of gravity that seems to affect most institutes of alternative education? Starting with great promise, these institutes often become victims of their own success. With increasingly enrolment often there comes increasing parental pressure for formal, classroom learning. Soon, the attention shifts to tests and demonstrable outcomes.

I can only hope that the wonderful people of The Learning Community will have the courage to stay true to the original promise of the experiment.

In his 1971 educational classic, Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich described the idea of Learning Webs. These are informal learning networks that connect learners with available learning resources. Illich specifically referred to open directories of educational resources and professional educators. There were attempts in the early days to set up such a network in the community but they failed because neither the students nor educators were ready. Now it looks like such a learning network is beginning to emerge again in Auroville, ‘the place of an unending education’.

From piano to pottery, Auroville Youth Activities (AVYA) is providing a platform for educators to offer their knowledge and skills. The AVYA Website currently lists 38 activities. More activities are being offered, but are in various stages of evaluation and use. The website itself is very comprehensive and has a simple design. Every activity has a description and practical information for potential participants.

Bollywood Kolliwood dance

About a third of AVYA’s activities are performance or fine arts. These include dance, music, painting and pottery. The range of activities is quite impressive, with dances such as Bharat Natyam, Odissi, Jazz, Bollywood and Tango being offered to children. Apart from these, AVYA offers several interesting sports activities. Some are popular team sports, such as basketball and football, while others are more about inner balance, such as yoga, gymnastics and archery. Horse riding is offered in three different approaches. A range of martial arts training is offered, and includes aikido, ninjutsu, capoeira, kick-boxing and mixed martial arts.

Hatha Yoga

Although it started out as a platform for sports, AVYA clearly has moved beyond fixed categories of activities. This is perhaps a good idea, simply because some of the most interesting activities are hard to categorise. Is rhythmic gymnastics a performing art or a sport? What about Eluciole Circus? And hatha yoga is impossible to put inside a box.

Auroville Youth Activities seem to be quite popular – the programmes currently host more than 500 places for children. The ages of these children range up to 18 years. Most of the activities are designed for primary school and older children, with six activities suitable for children below six years of age. One of the most attractive aspects of AVYA is the opportunity for children to socialise across ages and different schools.

Piano classes

The activities run through the week, including some on Saturdays and Sundays. Most of the activities are run between 4 pm and 8 pm. “Doesn’t this make the day really long for school children?” I ask the members of the AVYA core team. They agree and say that AVYA is in discussion with Auroville schools to see if some of the activities can be run as a part of the school day to make the timetable more flexible and child-centred. Changing the school timetable will, of course, be a challenge. A school has many moving parts and every school runs with a certain rhythm to keep the parts from falling apart.

Ninjutsu

The concentration of activities in the evening also leads to some challenges in managing venues. While a few of the activities, such as piano, are individual activities, most are large group activities. Often these activities need special flooring or equipment. Some venues are open to sharing among diverse activities, and others are quite specific about the kinds of activities they can accommodate. Often, the challenge seems to be the noise generated by a bunch of children having a very good time.

AVYA is managed by a group of seven Aurovilians who are dreaming of a future in which learning is not confined within narrow institutional walls. There will be challenges, but AVYA is moving forward, primarily with the energy of the children and families who appreciate the diversity of activities available.

For more information visit youthactivities@auroville.org.in