Last year in Mussoorie I met an American woman who mentioned Rishi Valley School. Intrigued by her brief description – children proceed at their own pace using a series of cards – I decided to visit it this year.

Rishi Valley Education Centre, ( www.rishivalley.org ) is a huge complex of land and home of several programs. It includes Rishi Valley School, a residential school for children from 4th – 12th classes (grades) dedicated to manifesting Krishnamurti’s teachings on life and education, Rishi Valley Institute for Educational Resources (RIVER), Conservation of land and water programs, Rishi Valley Dairy, an Herbal Garden, and Rishi Valley Institute of Bird Studies and Natural History. My focus was RIVER which includes Rural Education.

Carmel and I arrived late Monday night. Tuesday morning after breakfast we attended a talk and Q & A by a teacher at the senior school assembly. Billed as “Buddhism,” the teacher spoke about life, giving to others, and understanding our own relationship to giving. The students sat quietly and listened – wow. We chatted with a parent whose child attends Rishi Valley School; she, along with other parents we spoke to, had only good things to say.

At the office we met Rajan, the man organizing our day-long visit. He arranged for us to see one of RIVER’s satellite schools with Anil. He called Dr. Radhika Harzberger, the director of the entire Rishi Valley Centre, who graciously met us, described the set-up and priorities, and encouraged us to see as much as possible in such a short time. It was an added surprise to learn she had lived in Toronto before coming to Rishi Valley twenty-five years ago.

On the way to the school in a nearby village, Anil spoke about his own experience, first as a student, then as a teacher. He explained the concepts and system extremely well, and was literally the perfect guide.

Arriving at our destination we saw a small solidly-built schoolhouse, a garden, playground equipment, the house for the caretaker/cook, a place for meetings, and lots of space for children to play. A solar dish sat predominantly in the yard; it is used as the energy source for cooking the children’s rice at lunch. Anil spoke to us about how the school runs, so we were prepared when we entered the one-room school building.

This is what we saw and heard:
• Five working areas with children sitting on the ground around low tables (six counting the pebble-letter area)
• Children working on various activities – reading, writing, working with rubberized, textured letters, helping each other
• One girl walking around with a cardboard crown on her head; she was the chief peer helper for the day
• Low level of voices – peer helping going on
• One table with three older children working independently; they are the 5th class students preparing to attend the government school
• Many material all around the room, shelving to hold them, lots of posters, drawings, other visual aids on the walls – a kind of orderly overflowing
• Handmade decorative mobiles hanging from the ceiling
• A teaching sitting at a table with the children
• An assistant – a teacher in training – walking around helping
• One small student placing pebbles on the ground to form letters

As we stood there absorbing this, Anil showed us the system of cards. Each card is labelled with an animal icon, denoting how much teacher attention is needed. The coloured border indicates level. The children begin with the activity on the first card of the “ladder” of a given level, and when they complete it, they move on to the next card. After about five or six activities/cards, they reach a “milestone,” and then they start the next step of the ladder. Each step includes a variety of activities, some requiring a lot of teacher help, others need little or none, and some need peer assistance. At a point in each step is a card where the teacher checks to ensure that the student has learned the goals for that step. With each new card they go to a different table, based on how much assistance they will need. Timing plays a role, with an approximate time frame for each step. Children needing more time get it, and those who finish early do some enrichment activities. So they really do proceed at their own pace and have as many activities as they need!

When asked the “what do you do with children who don’t behave” question, both Anil and the classroom teacher said that it isn’t a problem. Sometimes new kids have trouble adjusting, and they are allowed to go outside to play. If they really don’t like it, they can go to the government school. Most do adjust and participate with enthusiasm.

After completing 5th class, the children attend the local government school. Because they have learned to work and think independently they are often at the top of their class. Anil is a superb example of this type of learning.

Teachers are free to add activities as they see appropriate; the teacher we met had added several. The one I remember is a card system to track the completion of some daily activities, like bathing, cleaning, and greeting parents with respect. Each activity is represented by a little icon and heads a column; the rows are the days of the month. Each day they check if they’ve completed the task, or make an “x” if they haven’t. New students usually write all check marks, regardless of whether it’s true or not, but after a while they tell the truth. The teacher said he rarely has to intervene, as the children look at each other’s cards and give friends a hard time if there are too many x’s.

There was also a chart for monitoring the weather and its effects. This helps the children learn how the environment affects their lives, as agriculture is their main livelihood. It also provides a very concrete introduction to environmental studies, a major focus of the program.

For all the satellite schools (currently there are twelve) the children come from the village where the school is located; they are all poor, and most have illiterate parents. The fathers often work long hours as “coolies” (day labourers), so mothers do the bulk of the child-raising. It has taken Rishi Valley staff time to get the full support of the parents and villages, and it has now evolved so that the villages donate the land for the school, and take pride in its upkeep and beautification. Mothers attend meetings where they can raise questions and learn things like basic hygiene and local remedies for simple maladies. Some fathers participate, but many seem to need a few recreational drinks with friends after work rather than education.

Towards the end of our visit we were treated to a shadow-puppet show. A few children went behind a screen to operate the puppets, and the rest were part of the participatory audience – they recited their lines and songs enthusiastically.

Before lunch we met Rama, the woman who came to Rishi Valley with her husband, Padmanabha Rao, specifically to devise a system of education for local rural children. They were supposed to stay a year; twenty years later they are still there, happily. Along with a team of teachers, they are responsible for creating this ingenious system of primary education. Anil gave us some documents to read, and we arranged to meet Rama at 4:00, after we had gone through the material.

Lunch, like all the meals, was simple, delicious and healthy. We chatted with a mother whose son had graduated from Rishi Valley and was now enrolled at the University of Chicago; currently her daughter is at Rishi Valley.

Carmel and I read the RIVER material, and were moderately prepared for our second meeting with Rama. She answered our questions, filled us in on the history of the card system, and spoke about the many schools that are adopting this method. For example, Tamil Nadu, after a pilot project with Chennai Corporation (Municipality) Schools, has decided to implement it in all government primary schools. They are sending batches of people for training.

At 5:00 we headed towards another part of the campus to view Schools Without Walls (Mosaique Films), a film by Robert André, a French filmmaker who has spent a lot of time at Rishi Valley. On the way we saw some local indigenous cows, sickly and in danger of extinction; their health and restoration is one of Dr. Radhika’s projects. Other visual memories of this walk are an old well, sandalwood trees, fields of yellow-flowered plants that produce oil (not mustard apparently, but similar), the new international guest house in construction (thanks to some German visitors), and lots of serenity.

Anil met us and we all watched the DVD; Rama and Anil clearly enjoyed seeing it again. It’s a beautiful (literally, with a French filmmaker’s eye) documentary about Rishi Valley, with a focus on RIVER, the satellite schools, and a few of the children attending one of the schools. We discussed it briefly and I purchased it. We strolled back through the campus and reluctantly said our good-byes.

The Life of Rishi Valley pulsates. I think, when can I return for training? I envision creating materials for English-speaking North American students (culturally appropriate materials are a crucial part of the system). Can I persuade an education department in Toronto to send a mixed-culture group with me to Rishi Valley to work on this? Even though this system is created for the needs of Andhra Pradesh village children, it can be applied everywhere. For both non-traditional and regular learners this could be a godsend. We rush our children away from their childhood, regimenting them in a factory system of schooling, creating students who hate school, are moulded to conform, unrewarded for their creativity, punished for being who they are, and emotionally damaged. Imagine - children wanting to come to school! Imagine – children appreciated for who they are! Imagine – children eagerly learning! Imagine – teachers eagerly being facilitators for students’ learning! (Imagine all the people, living life in peace . . . )