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“Listen.” “I am listening.” “What do you hear?” “Nothing.” “How can you hear nothing?  Listen again.” “I can hear a dog bark….  A car go past….  I can hear the rain on the window…. I can hear my neighbours breathing……..  I can hear my breathing……..I can hear my heart beating………I can hear the blood …

Write poetry - good, bad indifferent.  Write poetry - think of the spaces between words - think of meaning. A  Song:          Last Will and Testament I don’t want to Die a hard-wired, concrete, Plastic-tubed, metallic death. I don’t want to Be surrounded with mechanical sounds drowning Out the voic…

W e are in the rainforest of Southern India among the giant roots, the elephant dung, the unidentifiable song, the close heat and the leeches.  These attach themselves unobtrusively and gorge on our blood, transforming their sleek bodies to grotesque inflations of their former selves, clinging to …

This was written in 1990, 19 years after I first travelled to India. This proved to be the first of many visits since.  I consider my many trips to India to have been an enormous privilege where the intensity of learning has been balanced by an apparent constant lack of comprehension.  And where th…

He is sixteen years old and from Turkey; she is also sixteen and comes from St. Lucia. Shaded from the ferocious Rajasthan sun by the branches of a few trees, a group of young people and three adults from a school in England are visiting India to explore and observe what life is like in a different…

The dog, thin and tired, walks in to the room and lies down with a sigh of contentment.  Its lightly breathing black and white body does not appear to distract any of the group of fifteen children seated in a circle around it.  The dog is quite comfortable on the hard concrete surface and the child…

One is aware of the increasing violence: systemic, institutionalised and accepted as a matter of course.  All religions preach peace, but many form an integral part of this aggression as they are divided, factionalised and have, in the past, contributed to some of the most spectacularly violent pas…

Although the sound of the engine is obtrusive and cuts out much of what can be heard from the shore, the fact that we are in the middle of the Ganges moving steadily towards the city of Varanasi brings intense joy and wonder.  Ahead is the vast iron bridge supporting both the passage of road and ra…

‘Each type of living being is distinct and different.  But when we pierce the veil of difference, we see unity in all beings’    Svetsavatan Upanishad (400-200 BCE) I am not always too keen to use quotations.  It is impressive in terms of demonstrating how well read we are and where other people’s …

I entered teaching governed by fear: fear of making mistakes; fear of authority and fear of the children.  What if I lost control?  What if they answered me back or questioned what I was doing?  What if they did not like me?  Despite my reading all being about the work of J Krishnamurti, AS Neill t…

We are sitting in the meeting room of the temple.  The room is dominated by a large raised platform, cushioned and covered by a white sheet.  We are sat on chairs in the lower part of the room and look out past the platform, through the intricately latticed windows on to the Ganga, the sacred slow-…

I am using this blog as a forum to explore education; to put forward ideas that may not be fully formed in their expression; to create a conversation; and to form the basis for further, more complete writing. My intention is for these blogs to form a continuous process of inquiry.  Each blog will b…

The single greatest concern with lug nuts is that you have adequate engagement between the lug nuts and wheel studs. The picture on the left is what you shouldn' t have. Notice how the studs don't stick out past the lug nuts. These wheels studs are  too short. The engagement between the n…