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Two Worlds
One of education’s key roles must be to develop in youngsters a sense of wonder for nature and the interconnectedness of life.
We have located our school, Centre for Learning, in a rural setting, almost 50 kilometres from Bengaluru. While beautiful in the manner of dry deciduous forested land in rocky terrain, our campus is a challenge to manage. We face problems of water availability and fire management, among others. However, we felt that such a setting is a vital part of education, for those lucky enough to have the resources to acquire it.
What are the aims of such a decision? It is not a response to the nostalgia we urban folk feel for “being close to nature” and “getting away from it all.” Rather, we feel this campus is important for reasons to do with a profound disconnect we experience with the living world, and its ripple effects. The philosopher J Krishnamurti talked about the turmoil facing us politically, religiously, economically—and environmentally. Even though in his lifetime we were only dimly aware about the nature of the ecological crisis that faces us, his observations have an uncannily prescient feel about them, as does his sense of the interconnected nature of the crises.
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