Re:Gurukula Lawsuit Special - The Facts or Public schools instead

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 8/16/2000 11:50:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

JivaGo (AT) FDT (DOT) Net writes:

 

> If by gurukula one means a boarding school in a distant place, I agree that

> it

> should only be for the exceptional. If it also meant that everyone else

> should

> go to public school and tack on some Krsna Consciousness in their spare

time,

>

> I don't agree. Sometimes we make due with what we have, but again, let's

not

> secularize and unduly modify our ideals.

>

 

Actually my kids started school in gurukula day school in France that I also

served in, but ended up going to public schools in Florida. In the beginning

perhaps they were the only ones with no meat in their lunch boxes but by the

time they graduated they had quite a large group around them who were

vegetarians and even prasadatarians (even if they didn't always know it). I

don't think they are particularly attracted to the gross material existence

that predominates in the American public and part of that is because they

have been exposed to it, found it shallow and unsatisfactory and made a

different choice for themselves.

 

Who can say what is ideal? As we know, the gurukulas that many young people

in Iskcon experienced was often less than ideal. I am grateful that my

children did not experience anything like that. When it was no longer

possible for me to keep my family in France, I prefered to trust my kids to

someone who actually had to answer to a higher authority, like a school

board, rather than the status quo in Iskcon at the time. It is really up to

parents to inject Krsna into the lives of their kids not teachers, public or

vedic. If one takes that responsibility seriously, there is always an

opportunity to do that.

 

Of course it would be better to have Vaisnava community schools, but that is

a struggle, even in Alachua where the community is one of the largest. Maybe

we should allow, without recrimination some of the young people to get an

education in public schools so that they can come back and teach the even

younger kids as trained teachers. Anything less is really sentimental at this

point.

 

The reality remains, unless we are in a position mentally and financially, as

a society to support the most advanced and mature devotees as teachers, not

the least experienced or least useful members of our society, our kids will

be stuck with the inadequate and even harmful education we are carelessly

providing. In that case public school with a lot of parental input is better.

yhs, Kanti dasi