Learning happens...Shit happens!

Yes, I have been a teacher. Yes, I have been worried out of my wits about learning and jumped for joy when I thought it had happened. Yes, I made elaborate lesson plans that had to be thrown out of the window, prepared objectives that never ended or were just too hard to reach, thought of strategies that often helped me more than the kid, created teaching materials akin to works of art and evaluated others more than I did myself!

All along, I had this awry notion that children were incapable of "learning" on their own and that they needed to be "taught". Everything that I did  as a teacher and parent, stemmed from that one notion or idea. While I thought I was being child-centric,  I was actually being self-centred. Because the whole process and joy of learning started with me and rested on my ability to "teach" them skills that were necessary for life...but, whose life was it?

Did I really know each of them (my students/ kids) so well that I could decide what they needed to learn and how? 
Did I truly give them control over their environment and learning? Or did I give them pseudo-control?
Did I have the time to sit with them and understand the core of their being and what drove their spirit?
Did I care enough to just sit and be with them and their feelings as they arose from their inner depths, without attributing any of those to "issues"or "behaviours" or "emotional problems" or even just "difficulties"?
Did I deeply "know" their strengths and their passions or gloss over those, to slot them (as "skills to be learned") into convenient holes in what I called and someone (who had no clue about them as people) framed as "the curriculum"?
Did I want to kindle their love and zest for life and learning, or "help" them  and frame them for life so they could ride the waves, without knowing what it was to get wet and messy and learn how to swim?

Sadly, and even with the best of intentions, I perhaps didn't do most of  the above while I was a young teacher of kids with special needs and then a parent who relied heavily on her teaching background to bring up her child. Perhaps that's why I was burnt out and wanted to quit my job - because I wasn't following my heart; I was following my mind. Perhaps that's why I have now come to tread this path of unschooling with my son, who happens to be my greatest teacher of life and living. Is it perhaps a way for me to make peace with what once was? Is it the way it was meant to unfold and help me discover myself a little more? I don't know.

But I have come to ponder on some questions that I never bothered to ask before.
Why is there so much ado about learning?
Why do we want to simulate reality and prepare their lives or prepare them for life, instead of waiting and watching the magic unfold?
Why have we forgotten how to be children and stop and wonder about the little miracles that life uncovers for us every day, every moment?
Why do we want to "manufacture" and "produce" learning?
Why do we want to make learning a "package deal" instead of unwrapping the package like a child opening a gift, with love and joy and sweet anticipation?
Why do we fret and fume over something that seems to happen naturally, just like "shit happens"?!

Yes, that is how I have come to understand learning - the learning that happens with my son, and perhaps most kids in the world, if only we give them a free hand to choose what they want to learn, how they want to learn and for how long they want to learn. Do we give children a choice in these matters? Do we encourage them to follow the path they want to tread, even if it is not the one we as their parents are walking on? Do we trust implicitly in their ability to think and learn everything that they need and want to know?  I wish we did. For then, they would learn to fly like the birds learn to fly and swim like the fish learn to swim.....on their own, and not because someone taught them to do that.

Man is by nature a learning animal. Birds fly, fish swim; man thinks and learns.”

- John Holt from How Children Learn

Because learning just happens, like shit happens! It happens when it has to and how it has to. It is not something that can be controlled and coerced to happen or taught from the outside.  It is inherent; it is natural. Because that is how it was meant to be. That is what I have come to believe.

So, one is not bound by time and space for learning to happen. It happens in its own time, in its own space and at its own pace. It happens in the bathroom, on the road, while eating, or arguing, as one opens one's eyes to see the day, or in the wispy dreams that one dreams at night. It happens in the most unexpected places, jumping out to surprise you like a Jack-in-the-box! It happens quietly and surely, like the breath that flows in and out. It happens even when you don't see it happen - in the silent spaces that flow between doing and not doing. It happens when one is "doing nothing". It just happens, like life.

Learning happens as we live each day, unhurried and complete... when we are truly alive in this moment....just as we nourish our bodies and yet don't wait endlessly for something (like shit :)) to happen. It just happens.

So then, why do we feel this gorging need to "teach" or "do" things with kids and a nerve-wrecking worry if children will learn and how they will learn? I think it is because we have compartmentalized learning and packed it into neat, air-tight boxes, stacked in a particular order. We have as many theories and philosophies as there are people, one contradicting or critiquing the other. We have definitions and labels and norms and standards. Learning has become too complicated. We have killed its inherent innocence and simplicity. We have caged the free bird that it actually is, and then sit and wonder or worry about how and whether it will ever fly. We have dammed learning and evacuated free will and thinking. We have lost touch with ourselves and forgotten that it is in our very nature, to think and learn.

We don't need "teachers" today. We need more adults to become children, as "co-creators" and "co-learners". We need to find the child within each of us that is still alive and calling out for attention from some forgotten corner. We need to hold hands with our children and look into the gorgeous heavens with a fresh wonder and joy every single day....without that voice inside our head asking if it is a session on geography or nature study or poetry...We need to wake up everyday with love in our hearts and an unflinching trust in ourselves and our children - that we are human; that we are here alive on this planet, to learn from and with each other, in every waking moment, what we need to and want to learn....not because we have to reach for a star or be literate or pay our bills, but because we are here to discover what drives our spirit and hearts, to open the doors to a world of infinite possibilities.

"Next to the right to life itself, the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to control our own minds and thoughts. That means, the right to decide for ourselves how we will explore the world around us, think about our own and other persons' experiences, and find and make the meaning of our own lives. Whoever takes that right away from us, as the educators do, attacks the very center of our being and does us a most profound and lasting injury. He tells us, in effect, that we cannot be trusted even to think, that for all our lives we must depend on others to tell us the meaning of our world and our lives, and that any meaning we may make for ourselves, out of our own experience, has no value." ~ John Holt

What is Inclusion?

What is it to be truly inclusive?
What is it to feel excluded?

These are questions that I started to think about lightly when I was working at Vidya Sagar - "an organisation that works with children and young adults with cerebral palsy and other neurological disabilities, their families and the communities they live in".

I say lightly now, because the word and concept of inclusion has taken on a whole new avatar for me since then. At that time, we were working on a mission statement together, where everyone shared their thoughts on what they thought inclusion was and what Vidya Sagar stood for. It was an amazing session of self-introspection of the whole community, both individually and collectively. One could not look at inclusion as a collective belief and vision, without looking at one's own self too. That is what I realised then, when we were working to create more inclusive spaces for people with special needs.

This concept of inclusion took its next beating when a very dear friend and colleague of mine came up to talk to me one day about something that had happened there. She was very hurt and in turmoil. She was angry. She felt excluded. She spewed out anger at some of the people who she felt had wronged her, while she spoke to me. I listened. I held that space for her. I felt her pain. That was all I could do then. Perhaps I had done enough. I don't know. But it was that raw, vulnerable moment that expanded my definition of inclusion. I wondered if that space was truly inclusive, as she was feeling so excluded. I understood the pain of what it feels like to be excluded, at Vidya Sagar.....from the issues that haunted us and the people we worked with, and from this outburst from my dear friend. That, I think sowed the seed for my journey towards understanding inclusion.

I started thinking about inclusion more and more deeply from then on.
I have wondered often if we could ever be truly and wholly inclusive as a community and species.

Then came my journey into homeschooling and unschooling. Once again the pain of exclusion haunted me, when people said things about my son. I felt that I was alone in this journey and that the whole world and the system was against me. I felt excluded once again. But this time, something was different. Something had given inside of me. Was it a wall I had unconsciously built around me? To protect myself from the rest of the world? I don't know. Perhaps it was.

I suddenly realised that no one was excluding me but myself! I had somehow cooked up this high-in-the-air image about us and our unique journey, that was in itself excluding....because I looked at us as being different, special and unique. Suddenly it all fell into place. I figured that it was all in my mind, not outside. That was the last straw....and the whole illusion of exclusion came crumbling down!

So then, inclusion was in the mind and in the heart. I realized that after a lot of pain and grief. I had felt excluded because that was what I was thinking inside....I thought exclusion and breathed exclusion and so it manifested in my life as that. But now, when I opened my mind and heart to infinite possibilities ....that cannot be predetermined or imagined even, but rather, accepted with faith and a surrender of one's will...I felt a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. This warmth seemed to radiate outwards and touch others too who came into our lives. Was it the law of attraction at work? Was this a feeling of inclusion? I wondered.

There have been some instances when we went to a gathering and then wondered why we had gone there, because we felt left out and excluded or fearful of treading on another's beliefs and values. There were some where we felt an expanse of space to breathe easy. I have thought a lot about both and what the difference could have been. I am still struggling to understand the dichotomy. 

Why does one feel excluded sometimes and included at other times? Am I really as inclusive as I think I am? Does inclusion mean treating another equally? Are we ever equal? Or does it mean understanding and accepting the diversity and uniqueness in each individual and blending it all to form one complete whole? Is it about preserving the individual and yet celebrating a community?

Every time I thought I was being inclusive, something happened which made me look within and realize that I was actually not being inclusive. I do like wholesome healthy food, preferably home-cooked, but that does not mean I will impose my ideas of "healthy food" on anyone else, even my husband and son. We all eat what we like and want to. We have made peace with our food. Yet, I find it hard to cook a meal when my sister and family come down to stay with us as they like their meals bland and with no salt. I find it limiting when my in-laws come as they eat no onion and masala and eat only South Indian food. So how can I be inclusive with food, given my limitations? It would mean that I have to stretch myself and do more than I can physically. Am I ready to do that? Am I happy to do that? Sometimes I am not.

Recently, I invited a friend over to come and stay with us. I was really looking forward to her coming. But when I thought about it, I realized that they loved their meat, and I could not tolerate the smell and sight of it in my house. I felt bad to tell her my problem, but did so anyway. She understood and agreed to go out and eat if needed. But I still hurt inside as I felt I was not being as inclusive as I wanted to.

What I realize and feel now is that we all have an inherent need to be inclusive as that is the nature of the true self. That is the divine in all of us - the need to embrace everything with equanimity and love. This whole life is a labour of that love and a journey to fulfill that need. 

I feel that it is this very nature that finds expression as guilt, hurt, ignorance and anger, that leads to exclusion. Our beliefs, values, and conditioning that we hold on to so dearly, are what colour and decide our every move in life, and act as barriers to this natural state, that is waiting and trying so hard to express itself and be inclusive. So then, is inclusion a spiritual process, if it is so wired to our beliefs, values and attitudes that shape and define us? I do feel it is. 

And now I do feel that inclusion is not a state, but a process, much like the spiritual process.....it is a path to self-awakening and self-awareness, and perhaps only when we let go of all these little beliefs and identities that we hold on to, can we truly be inclusive. 

The unschooling path I feel gives us an opportunity to be so....because we are constantly questioning these beliefs that make up our core; we are constantly in touch with our true selves, and trying hard to be aware of what we see, think, hear, feel and do.

So can we hold hands and laugh, cry, argue,sing, and scream with and at one another, without destroying each other in the process? 

Can we celebrate diversity if we pretend to bring in the harvest before we have toiled and tilled the ground together? 

Can we support and endure each others' weaknesses by learning ways to forgive and rediscover a shared purpose?  

Are we willing to learn to get along, while recognizing our differences, our needs, our unique paths and our gifts? 

Can we shed the burden of our identities that we all carry and hold on to?
Can we then learn to be a little more inclusive and heal ourselves and our community?

I think we can if we commit ourselves to looking within.