SHANTI BHAVAN
(Haven of Peace)
by Amanda McDonald
As a teenager, one of my dreams was to visit Africa and do some form of volunteer work to help bring education to those less fortunate, in the hopes of opening a door to new possibilities.
Earlier in the year I began thinking about how I wanted to spend my Long Service Leave…… but I wanted to do something meaningful. I almost applied to an organisation in Ghana when I remembered about the school called “Shanti Bhavan” that was the focus of the Netflix documentary “Daughters of Destiny.”
Shanti Bhavan is a not-for profit organisation started by Dr. Abraham George 25 years ago, who had the vision of educating children from the poorest of families and who are socially outcasted, giving them new opportunities to break the cycle of poverty. The school takes in children at the age of 3 years, housing, feeding, clothing and educating them until the completion of their College degree.
There was no second thought or hesitation, this was where I wanted to be.
So, after a rigorous application process, many early hour interviews and late-night training sessions (teaching us about: cultural differences, life at Shanti Bhavan, the poverty and hardship that the children have come from, and what Shanti Bhavan aims to do) I boarded a plane and headed for Bangaluru.
I arrived at Bangaluru airport very early on a Saturday morning (12am) and was met by my driver. After a long 21/2 hour drive, at 1.30 am I arrived at Shanti Bhavan. For the next six weeks, this was where I was to spend my Long Service Leave, volunteering in a rural school situated in Tamil Nadu in Southern India.
My experience at Shanti Bhavan was both amazing and challenging!
In the morning when I woke, the sun was shining, and I got ready for my first day. Even though it was a Saturday, the students still had half a day of classes (this is common in India.) I met the other volunteers who came from Canada, UK, USA and Italy. Later there would be two other volunteers who would join us from the USA and Israel.
Walking out of the volunteer Guesthouse I was met with a beautiful Indian summer, tall palm trees, lush gardens and the sound of peacocks and other birds. This was truly a haven!
I made my way to the dining hall for breakfast and found myself being stared at. This happened throughout the day and I later found out that it was my fair skin along with my ‘blue’ eyes that made me look ‘ghost’ like. This made some of the younger children frightened of me. I also had this experience a week later while on a Saturday afternoon volunteer trip to a local city called Hosur.
I spent my first weekend at the school getting to know the other volunteers and students, becoming familiar with the grounds: locating classrooms, the various dorms, dining hall, P/T (Physical Time/Playtime) fields, basketball court, Teacher quarters and Guesthouse, getting my head around the timetable and preparing for my first week.
One thing that really stood out to me was how small the children were. The Grade 2 children looked like Kindergarten children and the Kindergarten children look like toddlers. They were tiny!
A custom at Shanti Bhavan was that each volunteer had to introduce themselves during assembly. After I did this the students became more familiar with me and warmly and openly accepted me as part of their family.
As volunteers, our role was to bring a Western style of educational experiences and teaching practices to the students (incorporating a hands-on approach and method of: I do, we do, you do). We had to be flexible, adaptive, be able to work with no resources and most importantly work alongside the Indian education system which was the complete opposite to the approach we were using. (And even more opposite to Steiner Education!) The Indian education syllabus is based on rote-learning (even in the younger years) and relies very much on tests, grades and exams.
The competition in India is fierce! India has a population of 1.4 billion people (Australia has 26 million) and the only way into College (University) is based on two key exams. One in Year 10 and the other in Year 12. Everything from Kindergarten (our Prep year) counts and works towards these two exams. If you don’t make the scores, you don’t make it into College.
The day at Shanti Bhavan is very long, demanding and military like. A typical day at Shanti Bhavan looks like this:
6.30-7.30am: High school students attend classes. Physical Time for Class 6/7
or community service. Younger students wake up and get ready for the day.
7.30-8.00am Breakfast
8.30am School Begins: Period 0 (Test period)
9.00am Period 1
9.40am Period 2
10.20am Morning Tea (Porridge)
10.30am Assembly: Year 4 student presents the Virtue for the day, Years 9 and 11 students present World News.
11.10am. Period 3
11.50am Period 4
12.30 pm Period 5 (Lunch for Kinder-Class 5) *No play time
1.10pm Lunch (for Classes 6-12) *No play time
1.45pm Period 6
2.25pm Period 7
3.05pm Period 8 (Classes 6-12, Dorm time for Kinder- Class 3)
3.45-4.00pm Snack
4.00-5.00pm Physical time/Play time (Kinder – Class 12) Class 6&7 community service
5.00-6.00pm Bath time
6.00-7.00pm Back to the classroom: preparation for next day’s classes including homework
7.00-8.00pm Dinner (Kinder -Class 5) Classroom prep time for Classes 6 -12.
8.30-9.20pm News & Current Affairs session Class 6-12
(Story time and bed @ 8.15 Kinder-Class 5)
9.20-10pm. Social time/Music Jam by the piano
10.00pm Homework in dorms and bedtime anytime after 10pm.
Coming from CSSK the two worlds could not be anything but opposite. The beauty of Steiner Education is the play-based approach for Early Childhood-ensuring a slow unhurried pace until the age of 7. Once the children enter the Class Teacher period, rigour is introduced and there is a balance between the academic, practical and artistic elements. As each year progresses the curriculums demands and expectations increase and the content is in alignment with the child’s developmental needs. From Class 5 onwards the curriculum expands, and a sophisticated classical education, covering the major epochs, sciences and maths is taught to the students. The students are taught how to think critically, analytically and move to more independent type tasks that challenge and extend them.
At Shanti Bhavan, because of the focus on academic subjects, rote learning, high academic pressure, and very little music and art, I found myself bringing more of the unique Steiner qualities to the students, such as: Morning Circle, storytelling and illustrations to develop creative writing and geometry. I also played the recorder at the beginning of each class and also in the dorms during story-time. My heart melted when the Class 6 boys and High School students asked me to play “Twinkle Twinkle” on the recorder as they never experienced music like this before. All the children loved the recorder and story-time was very popular, with many of the children asking at dinner for me to come and play them some songs.
As English is a second language for all the students at Shanti Bhavan, (and as their was no phonics approach to literacy,) I also taught Sounds~Write to a small group of Class 2 and 3 students. However, instead of the students coming out of regular classes for Sounds~Write they were given an extra class at the end of the day.
So here I was trying to teach a Sounds~Write lesson to tiny Class 2&3’s at 3.05-3.45pm. They loved the tactile approach; moving all the sticky notes to build words and playing bingo games to learn their sounds, but they definitely had the wriggles and had trouble concentrating-but who could blame them when they had been in class since 8.30am with no break or play time during the day!
What challenged me the most was knowing how one-sided the education style was at Shanti Bhavan and that there was no Well-being program or artistic approach in light of the hardships, abuse and trauma in which these children came from.
And somehow, in that strict rigour and world of high expectations it kept the students in good stead. They had self-discipline, resilience and knew the importance of doing your very best at all times. What surprised me more, was upon reflecting how in Steiner Education we talk about ‘Healthy Life Forces’ and yet I could still see this in the children of Shanti Bhavan. The students were bright-eyed, smiling, stood tall and were confident and healthy. They knew they were safe and cared for.
The nurturing that was lacking in the education, they received from their ‘Aunties.’ The women who took care of them outside of the classroom in their dorms. These ‘Aunties’ lived at Shanti Bhavan and were just like their own mothers.
During a tour of the local village, I witnessed first-hand the extreme poverty in which these children came from. This made me realise just how much Shanti Bhavan does for the community. It not only educates, feeds and clothes the children of the school, but it also cooks extra food daily to feed the village, employs people from the village to work on the school farm, and helps build houses for those who live under a mere tarp or have a few sheets of corrugated iron as a shelter. These people have no running water, no kitchen or bathroom, no sewerage, there is rubbish all around them, and human and dog faeces are mixed among the open sewerage and dirt. The children of Shanti Bhavan come from these places, places so remote from the children of CSSK.
After my village tour and weekend visits to Bangalaru and Mysore, I had to accept that for many people in the world; any education is better than no education.
……….And for those of us who have the privilege of choosing a Steiner Education, it is something we all need to be truly grateful for.
