What we do with our children is to make bonsai out of them and not to let them grow to their potential as we think bonsai is their potential.

The basis of vital and meaningful education is a relation-ship where individuals can constantly respond to themselves, to others and to their environment.

The responsibilities of school students included regular watering, weeding and harvesting of their own organic farms, and compost pit maintenance.

There are many ways of conceiving and understanding the needs of the whole child in balance with the needs of the community and society at large.

An ethnography of an alternative school/commune, Kanavu in Wayanadu district of Kerala. It explores the diverse learning spaces and methodologies that have been incorporated into its system, where learning happens for children who participate. Kanavu is today facing several challenges as they have begun a new phase of handing the management over to the older students (now adults) who have graduated.

With its firm belief in ‘Learning by Doing’, Vigyan Ashram at Pabal, Maharashtra has, over past 3 decades, transformed the lives of hundreds of rural youth who the mainstream education system might have rejected as ‘failures’. A modern version of the Gurukula system, “Vigyan” means ‘Search of Truth’ and “Ashram” symbolises ‘simple living and high thinking”.

Sadhana School is located in a village near Pune, Maharashtra. A space where children are free to BE, teachers learn to learn again, learn from children how to be, children are respected and acknowledged that they are born with capacity to make sense of the world through free play. What we try to do is to create conditions for learning to happen. ‘Space’ where knowing happens by being, where ‘Knower’ is the primary subject of enquiry and ‘awakening the knower’ is the objective of learning

Aarohi School is based in Bangalore. Aarohi Life Education team is a mix of parents and facilitators who want to dream and drive the concept of open, organic and child driven learning for Life. As Aarohi evolves, we are constantly learning, trying, erring, fighting, caring, enjoying, and growing.

Dola Dasgupta is an unschooling mother of two children and a co-founder of Swashikshan–Indian Association of Homeschoolers. Swashikshan is a non-profit initiative of homeschooling children, parents, guardians and friends. The members of this association include homeschoolers residing in India, irrespective of nationality & homeschoolers of Indian origin, irrespective of location.