Few schools encourage a system where children can just walk out if they don’t like a class, play with live peacocks and turtles instead and learn without a specific syllabus. Mirambika Free Progress School was such an institution, based on the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that ‘nothing can be taught’. Today, its future remains bleak.
Run by the Sri Aurobindo Education Society, the school’s trouble began on April 14 this year, when it was shifted overnight from its sprawling campus into the nearby Ashram premises, which is technically an unauthorised place to run a school. The Mirambika building has been cleared to make way for an engineering college. The parents also fear that the school may be shut completely by the management.
Ashram authorities, on the other hand, are quashing rumours of the school shutting down, saying that there’s nothing illegal in shifting students from the original campus. The society claims that the building was originally intended to build a technical institution. They argue that the parents’ demand for taking up the entire 10 acres of land for a school, which only has 146 students, is ‘completely unreasonable’.