There was some email on children's education exchanged (in a Dakghar subgroup) recently between Ingrid, Leonard, Veena, Rita, and Abha. Here is something I'd like to add. 

    When I look back on my life, as far back as I can remember, I find that I have been miseducated. My education, so-called, has done me more harm than good. Modern School, IITK, IIMC, Washington University (not including my research and design work there), even my parents and daadi, all from the noblest of intentions, have served me ill. 

    A common model of education assumes that a person is like an empty vessel that needs to be filled up with useful ishtuff. In this connection I recall an old Indian story of a man (let's call him Gyanprakash) who went to a Rishi (say Brihaspati) and said that he would like to learn at his feet. Brihaspati told Gyanprakash that he was doing fine on his own, and that he needn't bother with education, and sent him away. But Gyanprakash came back again and again to plead with Brihaspati. He was really eager to be his student. When he showed up for the n-th time he found the Rishi engaged in a curious venture. The Rishi would fill up his kamandal at a stream, walk many feet to a pitcher, and pour the water from the kamandal into the pitcher. This would have been a useful thing to do had not the pitcher had such a big hole in the bottom. 

    With growing incredulity, Gyanprakash witnessed the exertions of Brihaspati, till he could no longer contain himself. "With all respects, Sir," he said, "Is this not a pointless exercise?" 

    Hearing that Brihaspati sat down before Gyanprakash and said, "I am glad you noticed. (What took you so long, man? I'm exhausted!) What I'd like you to remember is this: Just as that pitcher is incapable of holding water, some people are incapable of knowledge." 

    I think that that is true of everyone. We all have holes in the bottom. We are all incapable of holding knowledge obtained in this way. The model is wrong. We are not pitchers that need to be filled. 

    Here is what I think the right model is. We should look at a child and say that this is Brahman. Where that word in employed as in Vedanta. That this is an animal capable of extraordinary depths of thought and feeling. That this is a force that we should not presume to shape or control or fill or divert. The best we can do is work with it. The best we can do is to hand it the tools it demands, when it demands. The best we can do is to is to tell this force "I believe in you. You are immense and without constraint. You hold the Universe in your hand." 

    Psychologists (of which we seem to have a whole gaggle-baggle in Dakghar) will attest to the reality of this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. That when we impart to a child a sense of her frailty and inadequacy and incompleteness, then frailty and inadequacy is what that child will experience. If we give her instead a wide-open space, all the respect she needs, and a sense that there are no boundaries, then she can attain her potential in full measure. 

    As a parent I find that this is a very difficult thing to do. I think I have tied Buramani to a hundred different posts without meaning to do so. I think I have violated the integrity of her intellect, and wounded her faith in her own ability in many different ways. I have no time. I have no patience. I have enough to learn myself. I think I know how this should all work in theory, but my practice is tainted with my own limitations that I repeatedly fail to overcome, despite Abha's rectifying influence. My problem is that I need to undo myself my own many years of a false and damaging education. 

    Education, so called, makes a person conscious, and incorrectly so, of her inadequacy. It supplies answers to questions that the animal has not herself asked. To these questions, education supplies answers that the animal has not herself generated. We know that it is the questioning is important. The search for answers is important. The answers themselves are an automatic byproduct of the process, and in that sense trivial, secondary, and worthless. Karmanyevadikaraste, ma phaleshu kadachan.

    Andre Bolkonsky, in a conversation with Pierre Bezuhov, remarks that what people need, they learn of themselves. Pierre, then a new convert to Freemasonry, argues vehemently for political reform, for the education of the serfs, while Andre pooh-poohs the whole notion of book-learning for the peasant. Tolstoy does not himself resolve the issue, as report the argument --- a method quite characteristic of his early writing. This really gets the reader's brains cooking --- which is a big slice of the many round pleasures of Tolstoy. 

    He seems able to ignite questions in his readers, which appear to the reader to be her own. Doing so by way of parable, or seemingly dispassionate reportage. And it is some method like this that is perhaps best suited to seeding children with questions --- if indeed they need seeding. 

    That's what I need to do with Buramani. Read her some Tolstoy at bedtime. What a good idea! I have already read to her "What Men Live By" and "How Much Land Does A Man Need" many times over. ("What about a woman?" she'd always ask.) I think I need to start now on a long story. She is reading "Jane Eyre" in her first-grade reading group, and "Great Expectations" on her own, and enjoying them both thoroughly. We get to hear everyday at dinner about all the people she meets in her books. "Mister Rochester, baba, he wants to marry her, not because he loves her, but because he wants land and money. Did you know?" 

    That makes me think that perhaps she is ready for "War and Peace". The trouble with "War and Peace" is that it opens with Anna Mihalovna's soiree. That high-flown political conversation about war with Austria, and Russian destiny, may not sit well with Bui. If we could get through that I think Tolstoy will hold her in thrall --- perhaps at least till Part Eleven when he turns a little didactic. Perhaps all the way through to the end, if I do some editing on the fly. I could start with the "Cossacks". Or maybe "Anna Karenina" might be a better choice. 

    Abha and I have long planned a school for little children based on some principles such as these. And Kodaikanal seems like just the right place for this sort of a school. Rain or no rain in July.