What

School & Farm

Loka explores ways of learning that empower children to change the world.

In 2015 Loka’s school opened its doors for full-time education in a village along the Punpun river, North-India.

A Happy, Healthy, Beautiful, Just and Sustainable world starts with the right education.

Its 2,4 hectare grounds include thoughtfully designed classrooms, a natural farm, flower gardens, trees, a handcrafted play system and sports fields. The space provides an excellent atmosphere and infrastructure to learn, create, innovate, play and reflect. Loka’s natural farm is managed together with local farmers and meant to connect the learning journey of students with the soil, rather than creating a disconnect with the main occupation practiced in the region. Students are involved in the farm through experiments and projects that build on and add to existing farming knowledge and practices in their village.

At the moment of writing 90 students aged 4-14 from nursery class until grade 8 study at Loka. Every year a grade is added. In years to come the school will increase up to 108 students and provide Complete Education until grade 8 and subsequently a 4-year Craftmanship Course. After completing their education at Loka, students are equipped to create their own livelihoods, empowered to uplift their surroundings and enriched with a sense of purpose.

Conversation on Education

We spent three pleasant and productive days at Loka, sharing ideas about education, conferencing about our own work, and doing classroom activities with the students that focused on creative thinking and ‘slow looking.’ ~Liz Dawes Duraisingh, Carrie James, and Shari Tishman, Harvard Graduate School of Education

In 2017 Loka & Friends initiated an ongoing Conversation on Education that expresses itself in various ways.

Lets Sing a New Song! ~Late Kabir Jaithirtha during a Conversation on Education in December 2017

Generally the meetings are 1)small scale, 2)explore in-depth (new) ways of learning by 3) people who share a deep interest in education. In October 2017 a Conversation on Education was hosted by Tsering Gellek at the Sarnath International Nyingma Institute near Varanasi. In December 2017 a second Conversation was held at the Krishnamurti Study Centre in Bangalore, led by late Kabir Jaithirtha (Shibhumi). In February 2019 an Education Conference of Out of Eden Learn and Project Zero (Harvard) was hosted by Loka in Bihar. What characterises the Conversations is their spontaneous character and fresh outcomes. The Conversation on Education is used as an inspiration to shape Loka’s School and write-ups are made and shared through Loka’s newsletter, blog and social media.

Activities

Deep Listening

Students practicing deep listening. After sitting quietly and listening carefully they shared their observations and identified 32 different sounds. The sound of a bee passing their face. A tractor ploughing the fields. A grunting buffalo. Heartbeat. #deeplistening #atloka

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Slow Looking

Apr 19, 2019

Students observed a mango tree. Madhu sketched how leaves create shadows on each other. How light enters the tree. Her classmate Dinesh noticed that the flowers have different colours: white, pink and black dots. A bird nest made of different types of grasses and lentil pods was built on the branches. He wondered how birds make their nests nice and round without having hands, only beaks?

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Rakshabandhan

Aug 4, 2020

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