Missing ancient roots from Schools

How to fix the disconnection of our children from our ancient roots? It is not just about reading Ramayana or Mahabharata, I am sure it will be an eye opener for you

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So in the second week we talk about connecting with the wisdom from our ancient shastras and I know you must be excited to learn about ‘How to fix the disconnection of our children from our ancient roots?’

and I promise, I will show you the gap and I will give you a very practical strategy too

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The disconnection from our ancient roots

First I will establish the gap and after that I will talk about solution and mind it, the first part, i.e. understanding this gap, might be a little boring for some people.

But it is important to understand this gap clearly before moving on to the second part, the solutions.

And yes, it exists in adults too, however the gap among children is much larger.

The situation at School

So most people think, oh that may be a challenge only in the schools from Tier 1, or at max all top schools from Tier I & II cities, but beyond that the situation must not be that bad.

As I have worked with many schools, I can tell you first hand, a large number of children from even Tier IV cities or from hard core rural strata also cannot tell you the names of the 4 brothers in Ramayana.

And if it would have been only about this, I would have not opted to write this whole article. there could have been other ways to solve that

But the problem is far deeper and we need to spread awareness.

In India, by law, you cannot teach religion at School and the laws are much stricter for Hindus being the majority.

and the problem is that the Hindu Dharma is not a parallel to any Abrahamic religion, so a lot of evidence based science that was the part of Hindu Shastras was also thrown away because of this rule.

Yoga Sutras, Natya Shastras, Artha shastras, Shilpa shastras, Nyaya Shastra, Sankhya Shastras, all are missing from our main stream education.

Now you may say, “how does that matter? we are learning yoga anyways and whoever wants, their children can learn dance or other things too after school”

The first problem here is that you are accepting that it is not the main stream education anymore

and second it is now only limited to either the riches or the people from a specific geography where that shastra is still available due of cultural density.

and that makes this sort of shastra gyan more peripheral. Lets understand it with a few examples

1. The Yoga Meditation Paradox

So, when I decided to opt for Yogasanas myself, I also decided to learn about what shastras say about Ashtanga Yoga

Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, Samadhi

Now these are not 8 parallels, these are in sequence

You fix yourself morally, discipline yourself, then you come to Asanas and after that Pranayam, so you see Dhyana is a much later stage after first you make a withdrawal of the senses from external stimuli and after accepting to get ready to follow Dhyana.

Samadhi being the last and final thing.

But this new yoga imported from west is almost a fashion where you are doing meditation (Dhyana) without doing breathing yoga (Pranayam)

and are doing breathing yoga (Pranayam) without doing yoga(asana),

Its like, do whatever you like, its your body, its your choice

In this new culture of choice, we are making a mockery of our ancient shastras.

They will tell you, I do not teach Dhyana, I teach Zen (which was in reality just a pronunciation difference of two countries)

but even though it becomes the new fad.

So you see, we need to restore the originality else we loose the essence.

Same way we are lost on Natya Shastra from main stream schools and now you see bollywood fusion with Bharatnatyam.

I am not against the fusions but then we are loosing the originality

and our children feel that these western versions are superior (which are so peripheral by its very nature)

Who will stop it?

2. The Learning Strategies

I wrote a whole article on what Learning strategies have been told in our shastras and I recall, how our readers appreciated this article.

But today, these strategies are totally missing from our mainstream education and students are suffering on information management. Can’t you at least teach these strategies to our next generation?

3. The Metaphors of Ancient stories (called mythology)

I recall a story where it is told that Shanidev has a handicap in his leg and so walk slowly and when you see that in reality, the planet Saturn actually moves slowly

That means our Jyotish Shastra was also very powerful and probably these stories were the way to remember things in an easy manner.

But over time colonial powers, reduced the value of these stories and removed it from the main stream education and now we have lost this Gyan from our mainstream education

If you are able to see the gap, here are a few ways to solve it.

The ways to solve it

I see 3 specific strategies through which creative adults will be able to remove this disconnection from

Make it Fun Game and give them experience

Gamification is an amazing mechanism to create curiosity, reduce resistance, and build connection.

I would very strongly recommend you to play this Rebus Puzzle to get the twist

I have shared this thing with you to augment your thinking muscle, to let you see, what can be done with a little bit of creativity.

At Mokshaverse, we also built Escape Rooms where a child is trying to solve hard core puzzles and in parallel learning the story of Dhruva.

We built Board Games, Card Games, and much more, but then we realised, we want to make it more like an experience enterprise.

We wanted to build a sort of experience to put children into the Sanatan Land, where they can learn Reading Comprehension with Hanumanji or maybe Geography or Anthropology with Shivaji, that is what we are trying to build.

A sort of curriculum that starts with kindergarten.

And you can also do that with your creativity and your innovation.

Share an idea of yours that you can think right now in the comments.

Give it as Project and Challenge them

The second strategy can be to create challenges.

This can be a very good way to teach them futuristic skills.

Lets say, you give them a project that help them explore the architectures of our ancient temples.

Now not only they will learn about temples, they will learn

• Information Management

• Working in Teams

• Research

• Data Analytics

You see, it really depends on your calibre what you can really teach?

Can you tell me at least one project that comes to your mind and can be given to young children.

Give them stuff to flaunt

Imagine, you are speaking at an event and you can flaunt that amazing Samskrit Shloka with the audience, how good you feel?

Many people in this world are governed by the sense of being able to create influence, so in case you can help them learn let’s say the fundamentals from ‘Surya Siddhant’ (side note - even you will be blown away by the knowledge available in that) and when they start talking about it on platforms, in house meets, in parties, people will be in awe, how can such a young child can talk such amazing things.

So if they can flaunt, you can flaunt them

Its good brand marketing too.

If some of your child becomes a performer of Odisi at some big stage, if your student gets the opportunity to speak at a confgerence, if the video by one of your students is appreciated by one of the Indic Wisdom Influencer, things will change drastically for your school.

But for that you will need people who can tell you about such wisdom which is still hidden, which is not apparent.

Why not start inviting the authors? Speakers?

If you want to learn more, read this guide

If you want help on any of the above things, write back to me and I can get you everything.

I just want one thing from you, start acting and start doing something at your school. Host a differentiated event, today.