Gurukula Lawsuit Special - The Facts or Public schools instead

[Guest guest]

> 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.

 

To encourage the young to get an education to become bona fide teachers is

really a good idea.

 

Of course everyone is not by nature fit to become a teacher but if the

nature is there then that seems to be something really required. In fact if

the kids have got an education to become a teacher they probably will not

have any problems to get a job anywhere. In the country where I come from

there is plenty of job oportunities within that field so they would not have

to worry that they loose anything by that.

 

> 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

 

Agreed on.

 

Y.s.

Svarupa das

[Guest guest]

> 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.

 

 

You made some good points, Kanti mataji. I, for one, fully agree with your

view. A devotee from Malaysia once told me how, when he was a child, his

mother used to read Mahabharata to him and his brother everyday and how she

preached to them about the law of karma and the benefits of abstaining from

illicit sex. Her good preaching left such a deep mark in his psyche that he

was never influenced by all the materialistic things which were going on

around him in public school (and this included illicit sex as he pointed

out). Nonetheless, he remained a strict vegetarian thorughout his school

days and became a full time devotee out of his own accord at a very young

age. So good parental example and precept can go a long way in inspiring

kids to be Krishna conscious even if they attend a public school. In fact,

there are millions of indian kids who attend public school, not gurukula,

but still grow up to be spiritually inclined, well behaved and sattvic human

beings.Prabhupada attended a christian school and he survived it. So it is

definitely possible to not go to gurukula and still be a devotee or at least

a decent human being.

 

Merely attending a gurukula does not necessarily guarantee freedom from

material consciousness. Why? Because some kids are not in gurukula because

they are great devotees rather because they are forced to by their parents.

These boys retain a good dose of material desires and consciousness due to

their samskaras, mental imprints and conditiong from past lifetimes. You

cannot turn a kid into a pure devotee simply by forcing him or her into a

gurukula. Some kids may be quite spiritually inclined by their very nature.

For others it may actually be better or more appropriate to attend a public

school. This has to be decided individually. You cannot rubber stamp and you

cannot churn out pure devotees from gurukulas if they are not pure to begin

with.

 

In other words, let the parents and the kids decide for themselves who

should attend public school and who should go to gurukula. "One convinced

against his will is of the same opinion still". If a child is forced to

attend a gurukula he or she may end up hating their school days and will be

frustrated. They may also frustrate their co-students and teachers by

creating havoc in the gurukula. We have seen plenty of that even in Mayapur,

in the holy dhama.

 

I know of some kids who used to sneak over to Nabadvipa to see Hindi movies

every now and then. And those were Indians. What to speak of the westerners.

Some of them listened to heavy metal hard rock tapes or read karmi books or

wrote love letters to girls or even had a secret rendezvous as soon as the

opportunity arose (not to speak of all the sexual abuse which was going on

at one point).

 

So if there is a good gurukula available and the child is spiritually

inclined by nature and *wants* to go to gurukula. Great. Wonderful. But if

he is not terribly interested in spiritual life and does not really want to

be in gurukula, then why force him? Let him go to public school.

 

And, last point: Nowadays society is such that you cannot do anything if you

have no money. One of the main reasons why we have never managed to

consistently produce high standard schools in all of our communities is

because we perpetually suffer from lack of money combined with lack of

manpower. No money to build schools, no money to train and pay teachers, no

money to maintain the schools. Not enough students, not enough teachers, not

enough money. These are very basic problems.

 

But force is in numbers. Unless and until ISKCON temples grow into large

communities and produce a class of men who have income to finance and

maintain schools there will always be kids who have to go to public school.

And in some cases this may turn out to be the lesser of two evils,

Let me spell it out: if the local gurukula is such a mess that whoever

graduates from it is suffering from a big inferiority complex because he did

not even learn how to read or write properly and is envious of the karmi

kids because they all learned a trade and have a decent income whereas

gurukula graduates are usually paupers and are doomed to live in perpetual

financial anxiety, then gurkula may be just as harmful as public school may

be in another way.

 

Maybe I am exaggerating. I dont know, but I have personally talked to

several such gurukula graduates in India and no amount of preaching and

comforting words were enough to free them from their feelings of insecurity

and unhappiness.

 

My conclusion: If gurukula teaches only spiritual philosophy and renuciation

but leaves students who do not have brahminical inclination without material

skills and consequently in great anxiety, frustration and without a source

of income, some of the teachers and leaders may end up creating a big karmic

debt. The curse of their ex students who are now loitering in the street

because they do not know how to maintain themselves may, in a future birth,

force them into an abusive gurukula so they can finally learn to empatize

with a student who wants to attend public school rather than gurukula. Hope

I am not offending anyone. That is not at all my intention.

 

 

ys Anantarupa Das

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 8/17/2000 7:20:18 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

Anantarupa.HKS (AT) pamho (DOT) net writes:

 

> Maybe I am exaggerating. I dont know, but I have personally talked to

> several such gurukula graduates in India and no amount of preaching and

> comforting words were enough to free them from their feelings of insecurity

> and unhappiness.

 

I don't think you are exagerating. There are more than a few gurukulis who

feel this way. You are right, we need the money and the stability of a large

community to maintain decent and effective schools. Everyone can be a

preacher, but not everyone will be maintained by their preaching so let's let

them get trained in something that can sustain them and eventually sustain

their families and a community. If someone is happy, you can't stop them

from preaching if they are not, there is nothing to preach about. yhs, Kanti

dasi

[Guest guest]

At 1:45 -0700 8/17/2000, Srirama (das) ACBSP wrote:

> We should hope one might wish to consider Srila Prabhupada's opinion, as

>he was not in favor of secular education (to put it mildly). His vision

>included the development of Krishna consciousness from an early age and

>continuing especially through the educational experience. Of course, there

>are those who feel Srila Prabhupada was totally in error on this point

 

There is also a second group of people who feel like one of Srila

Prabhupada's great strengths was his willingness to adjust his plans

when he saw that something was not working. The scenarios described

by both Svarupa and Kanti prabhus point to the fact that sometimes

even non-abusive gurukulas can be detrimental to children's Krsna

Consciousness (e.g. if they graduate without skills comparable to

their non-devotee-school educated peers and are unable to support a

family).

 

I agree with Kanti that teaching children about Krsna is ultimately

up to the parents. There are also other models besides "only

gurukula" and "only parents". If anyone on this conference is from

Mumbai, I would love to hear more about the model used at the

Chowpatty temple, which I only observed briefly during a recent

visit. Some of those children receive their spiritual education

every day in the temple both before going to school and each

afternoon. In between, they attend the local non-devotee run school.

This may be more intense than is feasible for many of us, but it

shows that we are only limited by our own lack of creativity when it

comes to developing ways in which our children can acquire both

material skills and a good spiritual education.

 

 

> "Secularization" means an intentional (and usually systematic) removal of

>all religious elements. One might suppose that, in a benign form, it would

>refer to a neutral environment where religion is neither taught nor denied.

>But, in fact, it usually manifests as a system of belief which aims at

>eliminating religion as a rational philosophical alternative.

 

My children have gone through both US private (primarily Montessori)

and public schools for the past 13 years and I have never had this

experience. Granted, I took great pains finding a (private) school

and (public) school districts that were as tolerant and open to

diversity as possible, however, my experience also shows that this is

possible to achieve. At my son's current school (a public U.S.

middle school), they stress inclusion, rather than exclusion and last

year were visited by representatives by several different churches

and temples. They also had field trips to both a local mosque and

synagogue. The kids were fascinated and had very positive views of

the religions covered and of their representatives. Same thing when

my daugther went there 5 years ago (in fact, my husband gave a class

to her and her classmates about Vaisnavism and what it had been like

to live as an ISKCON brahmacari). She also had a Moslem classmate

whose daily spiritual practice included praying aloud right there in

the classroom at certain hours. Apparently the other children had

lots of questions for him the first week of the school year but I

never heard of him receiving any negative feedback or being teased.

I've also seen other Swedish parents celebrating and teaching about

Sta Lucia in their US classrooms each year for the past 13 years

without ever experiencing any resistance.

 

I don't mean to promote US schools as any ideal. Far from it. There

are many things I would like to change about them. However, it is

entirely possible to find a decent school district, in which your

children receive a very good material education and in which students

are taught to respect both religion and religious people, without

promoting any particular religious views. Although I have never found

a public school in which most of the students are vegetarians, I have

encountered several, in which it is seen as an acceptable

alternative, and where every cafeteria menu and school event has

veggie options, which are selected by many of the kids. Given that a

good private school education around here costs around

US$15,000/year, I think that's a pretty good deal.

 

> Srila Prabhupada didn't think that highly of our level of Krishna

>consciousness and our cultural accomplishments. He most definitely hoped for

>better from the second generation. In exchange for his gifts to us, we owe

>it to him to try and preserve his vision as much as we are able, while

>avoiding the mistakes of the past.

 

That's a nice ideal. But what do we do with the children who keep

being born into this movement until we have properly trained teachers

and the material resources to do a good job? Do we put them in

inferior schools, which may have negative consequences for both

their spiritual and material lives just because of our understanding

of what Prabhupada wanted 30 years ago - when he had not even seen

the negative results of doing this? I just don't believe that he was

that rigid.

 

Ys,

Madhusudani dasi

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 8/17/2000 10:21:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

Madhusudani.Radha.JPS (AT) pamho (DOT) net writes:

 

> Do we put them in

> inferior schools, which may have negative consequences for both

> their spiritual and material lives just because of our understanding

> of what Prabhupada wanted 30 years ago - when he had not even seen

> the negative results of doing this? I just don't believe that he was

> that rigid.

>

 

Yes, I agree. A vedic school would of couse be ideal, but Srila Prabhupada

adjusted so many things as they proved either beyond our abilities or simply

not working the way he planned. I cannot believe that he would have insisted

on gurukulas when he found out what was actually happening to the children.

The school of the guru does not imply emotional or physical abuse and that is

what happened. Srila Prabhupada would have made an adjustment rather than see

his "grandchildren" abused. I think he had some kind of faith that we would

be able to care for the children as he would have, and we did not. It must be

a great disappointment to him that we failed these kids so.

 

That does not mean it can never be, but we must be so well established as a

society that there can be local gurukulas that the parents can be privy to

everything, otherwise there is too much room for abuse. Until that time,

public schools can work, private schools can work, charter schools can work,

but parents must be there. Our kids will not stay and be a part of Iskcon if

they have had abusive childhoods. It is that simple. yhs, Kanti dasi