Waldorf News

Waldorf in India: The Tridha Rudolf Steiner School in Mumbai & Kashmir-A Meeting of Three Cultures by Aban Bana

Alternative Education in Mumbai
The Tridha Rudolf Steiner School

Many parents and teachers today are not satisfied with the education in mainstream schools. It tends to be one-sided, emphasizing mainly the process of thinking and learning by rote, which involves mere habituation and unintelligent memory. Creativity and innovation take a back seat, because the main goal is to pass the class with good results. Children as young as two must learn how to read, write and count and, now increasingly, how to use the computer. The competition and the pressure in the classroom seems to be increasing day by day, and there is a great need to find alternatives to this kind of conventional education.

Rudolf Steiner Education (Waldorf Education) is one alternative, which has proved to be a success. In Steiner/Waldorf schools, children start at the age of three in the kindergarten, where they are allowed to be children, where they learn by playing, doing and imitating. In Class One, at age six plus, they first learn the three R’s, and this is done in an artistic and creative manner.

The emphasis is not just on the head and the thinking, but the education takes into consideration the three ways in which the child relates to the world — through thinking, through the life of feeling and through physical activity – and tries to achieve a balance in these faculties through the subjects that are taught in class. The child is taught in its entirety, one could say in a holistic manner. No doubt, it is very important to school the thinking and enable the children to study the various academic subjects, which are in the syllabus.

But equally important is the heart of the child, the life of feeling, which too has to be nurtured through subjects of art and nature. This enables the heart of the growing child to open up to its surroundings and to become more aware of the aesthetic qualities of life. Thus it is possible for the children to be more caring and compassionate towards the world we live in, and to have reverence for all life, qualities that are very important in our times.

Last but not least, the children in Steiner Schools are also taught to use their hands in a constructive and productive manner, creating articles and objects from different materials. It has been said that when children are taught to use their hands in this manner, they become morally sound. Such activity of the limbs has a direct effect on the moral strength of the children, and of course on adults too. So in Waldorf Education, one does not simply talk about the need to educate the head, heart and hands of the growing child, but, by having the appropriate subjects in the time-table, one actually involves the threefold nature of the child in its entirely, and develops it in a balanced manner.

One unique aspect of Waldorf Education, which makes it different from other alternative schools, is the Curriculum. This is based upon a real understanding of the stages of child development, as arrived at by Dr. Rudolf Steiner through his research. The subjects in the curriculum, which are introduced in each class, meet the needs of the children at that particular age. This ensures a healthy development of the children. As there are no exams at the end of each school year, the children learn for the sheer joy of learning, and not just to pass exams and get good marks.

Dr. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of Anthroposophy, was approached by his friend Emil Molt, a factory owner, to give the impulse for a school with a spiritual background. This school would be for the children of his factory workers. Rudolf Steiner responded and the first Waldorf School, named after Molt’s factory, was founded in September 1919 in the German city of Stuttgart. Today, there are over 900 Rudolf Steiner/Waldorf schools worldwide, including five in India, two in Nepal, one in Pakistan and one coming up in Bangladesh.

Tridha Rudolf Steiner School in Mumbai was started in the year 2000 by a group of parents who wanted a human approach to school education for their young children. They wanted a school where their children could study and play without stress and without fear, a school where there was an emphasis on moral values and high thinking, a school where slow or disabled children would not be ridiculed or feel left out.

It so happened that in December 1996 there was an exhibition on Waldorf Education in Mumbai, sponsored by the UNESCO. Some of the members of this parent group made their way to the exhibition and liked what they saw. In January 1997, this group met with a view to starting a Rudolf Steiner School in Mumbai. They attended workshops, organized study groups to read Steiner’s books and prepared themselves thoroughly. In June 2000, the Tridha Rudolf Steiner School opened its doors to 20 children in kindergarten and class one in a small bungalow in Kalina, Santa Cruz west, Mumbai. Today, six years later, there are over 200 children in three kindergartens and seven classes, and the numbers are growing steadily.

The philosophy of Waldorf education and its image of the human being are based on Anthroposophy, a modern spiritual science and a view of life, which is very similar to Indian wisdom of yore. Indeed, Waldorf schools have many similarities to the Gurukuls of ancient India. Dr. Steiner was a seer, a modern-day Rishi, who was equally at home in the eastern and western modes of thinking. In the early stage of his career, he was president of the Theosophical Society. Later on he became independent and established the Anthroposophical Society, which has given vital impulses not only to child education, but also to other subjects like agriculture, medicine, curative education and social therapy, social sciences, architecture and a new art of movement called Eurythmy. The world centre of the Anthroposophical Society is located in the Goetheanum, a building designed by Dr. Steiner in Dornach, Switzerland, in 1923.

The Tridha Rudolf Steiner School is run by the Education Renewal Trust, which has six members. It also runs the two-year Waldorf Teachers’ Training programme in the school premises. This programme has enabled the school to train many of its teaching staff members. The Trust has bought a plot of land in Andheri East, and is all set to build a school building, which will house the entire school, including kindergarten, classes one to ten and the teachers’ training classes.

A lot of fund-raising has been done in order to finance our new school house, but for Mumbai, being the expensive city that it is, the sum raised so far is not adequate to meet the needs for the construction of the entire building. We therefore appeal to you to give us a hand and to help our project by giving us a donation towards the construction of our new school building, which will house the Tridha Rudolf Steiner School. Your financial support will help not just the Tridha Rudolf Steiner School, but also the very cause of alternative education in Mumbai, which is a very significant development in the history of school education in our city. We look forward to your response. Thank you very much.

To learn more about the school and how to help them, visit them at tridha.com and contact Aban Bana at abanbana123@rediffmail.com.

Kashmir: A Meeting of Three Cultures

Kashmir is the northernmost state of India, a state of breathtaking beauty with the high Himalayan Mountains, gushing rivers and pristine lakes. The flora and fauna are of an alpine and temperate variety, very different from those found in the tropical plains of the country. Kashmir includes the regions of Ladakh in the east and Jammu in the south, which is why the state has been given the official name of Jammu and Kashmir, or J&K for short. The capital city is Srinagar, situated on the picturesque Dal and Nagin Lakes with the river Jhelum flowing through.

Jammu is home to the Hindu Dogra hill tribes who speak Dogri and Hindi, whereas in Kashmir the majority of the population is Sunni Muslims, who speak Kashmiri and Urdu. Further to the east lies the region of Ladakh, where one can meet an ancient form of Tibetan Buddhism, with Tibetan and Ladakhi as the local languages. Thus the state of J&K is indeed a meeting of three cultures based upon the religions of Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism, with some of the holiest shrines of all three religions to be found in this remarkable state.

The people of Kashmir are noble, good hearted and generous, true to their Aryan heritage (Arya in Sanskrit means noble). They are well spoken and intelligent, as also gifted with their hands, making the most exquisite artifacts, jewelry, woolen cloth and clothing. Agriculture, horticulture and sheep/cattle herding are important activities. Fruit orchards and kitchen gardens provide for their daily meals and the endless paddy fields give the staple rice which is eaten twice a day. Kashmiri tea is unique. It is called “Kahva” and is brewed with cinnamon, saffron, rose petals and cardamom.

The state government seems to do a lot for the population of J&K; there are schools and hospitals and well constructed roads with good public transport in most places. The infrastructure is generally better than in some other states of India. There are aesthetically created Moghul gardens in most towns and cities and people are sensitive to cleanliness and beauty. Both men and women wear traditional clothes and the women do not cover their faces.

To the west of J&K is Pakistan, to the north Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and to the east is Tibet/China, so it is clear to see that the state has a strategic position like no other in India. J&K has had a turbulent history and is considered to be disputed territory. Since 1989 there have been many insurgencies from the side of the militants. The ruling government has had to use a large army presence to maintain peace and order in the state. Militancy has decreased somewhat, but one cannot predict when it may flare up again.

In January 2007 I received a letter from a Kashmiri gentleman called Ghulam Mohamed Rather from Ganderbal district near Srinagar. He had been on a visit to Kolkata where he received the book “Vision and Action for Another World” edited by Ulrich Roesch. The first article in the book has been written by me, followed by articles by others, mainly Anthroposophists. Mr. Rather sent letters to all the authors in this book, but only received a reply from me. Thus we entered into correspondence and I discovered that his main interests were Bio Dynamic Agriculture and Waldorf Education.

Mr. Rather has a large circle of friends and relatives and soon he had spread this information about Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy many others. People like Ghulam Hassan Rather (his cousin) principal and chairman of H.K.M.C. School in Ganderbal and Abdul Rehman of Public School Wakura expressed their wish for an introductory course in Waldorf Education. We also received a request from Mushtaq Ahmed who is the head of the NGO “J&K Development Action Group” for information about the Three Fold Social Order which seems to find a resonance among his group.

With so much interest being shown, and so many people keen on receiving knowledge about Anthroposophy, my sister Dilnawaz and I decided to go to Kashmir in the middle of July to give the required courses. We were received with great warmth and we stayed in the home of our host Gh. Moh. Rather and his wife and three grown up children in a lovely cottage in the village of Yarmuqam, overlooking fields and hills and forests and also with Mr. Ahmed Azizand his family.

We spent the next days giving courses in Waldorf Education, Eurythmy and Anthroposophy at the two schools mentioned earlier and at the NGO J&K DAG. The participants were all Kashmiris who spoke good English and Urdu (we speak Hindi, which is similar to Urdu). There is tremendous potential here; the young adults who attended our courses, both men and women, are seeking new realms of thinking and knowledge and are very open to different ideas. The ensuing discussions we had were most inspiring. Really, we had not expected such a positive response!

It is very important to continue the dialogue thus begun, and to ensure that this enthusiasm is met with the right understanding and cooperation from the side of Anthroposophy. These remarkable people in Kashmir are glad to receive visitors who are also able to contribute and in return experience the excellent Kashmiri hospitality and way of life.

Please contact Aban Bana for more information: abanbana123@rediffmail.com