Towards an Organic Learning Community (ARTICLE)
The Shikshantar team building a meeting space beneath the trees.
Shilpa Jain and Manish Jain
In 1998, a few friends got tired of hearing that they were “too idealistic”. Every time they raised critical questions about the dominant thinking on education and development, they were either asked for the magical all-encompassing Solution (to be given in thirty seconds or less) or pushed aside with comments like, “That’s all true, but how will we financially survive without the System?” They came from different contexts—UNESCO, a very large NGO in India and a major private school in Pakistan. Yet, each felt the global system of factory-schooling they were being asked to promote was causing far more harm than good, both to individuals and to local communities. This model of