Are you preparing your children to become an asset or liability?

I work as a Waldorf teacher at Paripoornam Waldorf Gurukulam – An alternative school in Nature located near Kadur, Chikmagaluru district, Karnataka.

I started to witness that there is so much gap among these children in terms of academics(head), life skills(hands) and emotional wellbeing(heart). After close observation I decided to bring balance in these children life. Does the balance indicate activities proportionate to head, hands and heart? I slept with the question and woke up with this insight:

Children whose heart is filled with joy and who are excellent in life skills are already an asset to themself, to their parents, and in future to nature, and to other fellow human beings. Whereas children who are not but excelled only academically are going to be a liability throughout their life. There is much deeper insight into it, please hold your thoughts.

Let’s understand in details what life skills we are talking about? I have listed here briefly the skills in our daily life. Please read one by one. It’s important that you at least know by their name:

• Cleaning the home.
• Cooking: Excellent in coooking health giving food before they turn 18. Simple cooking for children under 12. Helpings parents like cutting vegetables etc in preparation of food by small children.
• Gardening.
• Woodworking.
• Crafts which are about the sense of beauty.
• Crafts which are about functionality.
• Knitting (before18 they should be knowing how to make a sweater for themself and for their loved once). Most of the things they are using on daily life like a purse, pouch, head band, winter cap etc is already made by them.
• Baking.
• Mud home construction (A thorough knowledge of how to build using mud before they turn 18. It will be wonderful if they could build their home before they turn 24 to start a new family).
• Climbing trees.
• Harvesting.
• Seed Bank Management and Seasonal awareness of what to sow and intuitively know what is good for their health.
• Food preservation.
• Brave enough to face fever with fasting and cure it themself.
• Making clay articles.
• Making hygiene products like Bio Enzyme.
• Taking care of their personal hygiene by themselves without the needs of chemicals.
• Homemade Kajal.
• Rangoli / Kolam (one line, two lines, three lines).
• Taking care of the live stocks.
• Milking the cows.
• Composting.
• Oral communication skills to convey what they feel inside, especially in their mother tong first.
• Existential Maths (which are needed in daily life)
• To tell story or participate in backward review of the day
• Enough literature skills (in mother tong) to keep a journal
• Be brave to ask questions
• Ask critical questions and don’t follow anything blindly (perhaps the most important one).
• Capability to get answers/insight from spiritual world by themself.

All the above life skill which I listed awakens the children to experience the academic concepts like science, maths, language and more. For example, they learn counting the knots in knitting, learn to add and multiple out of necessity. They learn botany with experience in garden. Their introduction to chemistry starts in kitchen and so on.

Another important point you should notice is that they are using both of their hands (and their whole being in many cases) for most of these activities so there is a proportionate activation of neurons in both hemisphere (Left Brain and Right Brain). The other life skills like Rangoli, decorating the home during festival, crafts awaken then to the sense of beauty and their heart is filled with Joy creating them. Academics should be one small subset of their life. The school should come up with creative way to cover most of these concepts through these life skills.

What happens to those who skip all of the above and focus solely on academic excellence? See they might have studied from their textbook that milk comes from the cow, but this abstract approach is certainly damaging the children growth.

• They know about cows but have never milked one.
• They may read about farming seasons but cannot feel the land or sense the rain.
• They use only one hand to write, which leads to uneven brain development.
• Their thinking becomes abstract, disconnected, and often ego-driven.
• They may become “compliant zombies” — easy to manipulate, unable to resist unjust systems.

They may climb the economic ladder — but to what end? To feed into an unsustainable, unjust, extractive system that glorifies wealth but destroys Earth? The modern economy is a Ponzi scheme. And children moulded to serve it without question are not empowered — they are enslaved, disconnected from themselves and from Nature.

What will be my approach for children of Paripoornam?

I am thinking for taking a step back from being a grade teacher and observe all children and see the gaps and fill all those gaps holistically. A new role to help children and teachers. Academics are important but I can meditate and device to deliver it experientially. I think every school should have dedicated person to do this job. What do you think?

Children who learnt from the real life knows life as a whole where as children in mainstream learn to live through books for mang years and when they actually enter the real world the world is very different to their surprise because what’s thought in books are becoming put of dated very quickly these days.

So, What Do You Think?

Isn’t it time we asked: What is education really for? Is it only academics? or is it encompasses everything to create a joyful, empowered, content and productive human who live in harmony with nature?
To feed the economy or to heal the Earth?
To produce employable humans or to awaken joyful, capable, free souls?

The whole world is creating unsustainable humans who are exploiting the earth inside out, maybe it’s time we work inside out of our children to create sustainable humans tomorrow to save earth.

Did you like this article?

Would you like to receive updates of my journey into self sustainability, holistic education, permaculture,  natural farming, mud homes, travel and adventure? then join my announcement channel : Vinay Hoysala

Wish to discuss further on this article? Then join the Manthan WhatsApp group