Surely a school is a place where one learns about the totality, the wholeness of life.

Academic excellence is absolutely necessary, but a school includes much more than that. It is a place where both the teacher and the taught explore not only the outer world, the world of knowledge, but also their own thinking, their behaviour. - J. Krishnamurti The School Children are not passive receivers of stimuli and information. Study has revealed the extent of their participation in forming theories and models of the world around them. It is with this understanding that The Valley School, one of several Krishnamurti Foundation India (KFI) schools, operates. Located 20 kilometres south on Kanakapura road, Valley is spread over a hundred and twenty acres of land most of which is undeveloped, full of trees, lakes and unblemished landscape. As an alternative school, the Valley dismisses traditional models of learning adopted by mainstream schools, there is no authoritative teacher and no rules per-say. The Valley believes in a silent holistic nurturing of children which, they hope, will lead to the education of the complete human being. There is a silent tolerance in the Valley. For the dogs when they climb the stage during a presentation by a group from anywhere! For the monkeys when they take the clothes, throw them on the ground and jump with glee on them. In chasing away the wild elephants with shooting in the air; in letting the cats have some milk after they have meowed at the door for a long time; in calling CUPA when a mad dog came in, and looking after him, giving him water, till the people came; in children happily going for rabies injections after a wild dog they care for, died. In simply chasing away the village cows when they rampage the gardens! Even if children live here, without being exposed to any great philosophy in living by us-the so-called adults, they are receiving something. In the vast spaces of the place, they get a place to just s p a c e o u t. Not caged within the walls of a structure, they have a huge space where they can move without restrictions. Judging by the contentment on their faces, they seem to love it! Teaching the KFI way Teaching in a KFI school raises questions such as: What is the quality of mind that can put aside assumptions, opinions and ideas about oneself, and truly look at things afresh? Is it at all possible for us to try and see what it means, in life and in classrooms, to be tentative and exploratory, rather than hard and emphatic? As teachers come to classrooms day after day with a burden of knowledge tucked under their arms or carried in their heads. If they stick to precious identities and ideas, would not the atmosphere of the classroom be defined largely by such authoritative presencehowever subtle it may be?

To approach the children with any model of teaching in mind would be to keep alive a structure in between. Finally, teachers have to face the children as human beings. For if teachers enter the class with a certain idea of this is how I ought to be, then the pattern of what should be repeats itself and everyone is caught in the achievement game once again. Academicians define teaching and then try to live up to it all the time! Excellence exists, in fragments. I am convinced that if we look closely enough we can define points of excellence for every individual in almost every area. - J. Krishnamurti For those who find this farfetched I can only say that defining common points of excellence for very different individuals, pushing them to attain it and in the end leaving them with no sense of accomplishment, seems not only unreasonable but also unkind. As I read Krishnamurti's words again I am convinced that striving for excellence is an endeavour by itself, an aspiration that exists or needs to be inculcated, regardless of the area.

All in all Academic and intellectual strengths cannot be without strong personal qualities and vice versa. If mainstream schools have erred in favour of academic excellence at the expense of the personal side of the child, then maybe alternative schooling stands guilty of tipping the balance in favour of the child's inner world at the expense of scholastic achievement.A new look at how to define excellence, and finding a common ground for the curriculum, appear to be the challenges facing alternative schools today.