In the psychological and moral quagmire that I am bulldozed in to, it is not possible to think of a school as a benign paradise. With blade-like tongue our "partners" make it impossible to have any sort of delusion about what this work entails. They want to climb the Tiger's Nest, but do not want to walk, they want things that cannot be given at costs that cannot be sustained, they want luxury in everything but charity in education.
One must realise it sooner, but he does so only at midway in life. To know that "all work that is wrought under the sun is grievous". The only river that flows through this desert is one of caprice. Let us bathe in it. And cover ourselves with the slime and mucus of this refuse of an idea. Let us beat this institution and those who are foolish enough to work in it. Let us colour it with the red of rage and the brown of muck.
Let us tie their hands and rope their feet.
Now they must dance.
I like Bharatnatyam, I like Flamenco.
Do it.
You don’t dance very well, do you?
What? Your hands and feet?
What about them?
Tied?
So what?
I am entitled to a good dance.
Shame on you.
Welcome to selva oscura.
School, to me, must be a beautiful abstraction. Say, for example, like the paintings of Amadeo Preziosi. Look at this one:
It shows 19th century Constantinople. Its beauty, its reality (from his perspective). But it is shown through a representation of colours and forms that are significantly removed from the "real". Perhaps, I prefer this representation to what we might call "real".
School, above everything else, must present beauty of the world to kids. And this beauty will cost an arm and a leg, it will cost tears and shocks of awakening, it will lead to a dark forest, in the morning sun of life or in the midday noon. And that forest will be dark, so dark that the midday becomes midnight. A night with heavy air and damp smell. What can make one cross through this dark forest? What will come to our aid? Perhaps, the light of our own heart and hope for seeing beautiful things in the forest and the world.
-Mohit Patel
