HEERA ALAYA

Albert Einstein said: “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” I met one such individual of value, a world-class educator and leader, on the campus of Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL), nestled in Phey village, Leh. A vanguard of sensibility and intellect, engineer and education reformer Sonam Wangchuk, with like-minded creatives, built SECMOL in 1998 to elevate the status of children rejected by the prevailing education system.  Decades of investments later, Sonam Wangchuk’s expertise is signalling a momentous transition in education.

Heera Alaya: Why is teaching important to you? And when did you first consider teaching as a profession?

Sonam Wangchuk: Teaching is a blessing in every possible way. You think teaching helps the person who is learning; it does. But teaching makes you learn much more than the one being taught; teaching is how I learnt.

My father wanted me to pursue civil engineering; however, my passion and dream were mechanical engineering. My father said: “If you want to study mechanical, do it at your own expense.” So, I had to leave home to pursue my interest. I got into teaching by accident—I used teaching to support my education.

While teaching, I understood how the teaching process could be a plus for both the learner and the teacher. I learnt about the depths and the subtleties of everything I taught, things I would never have learnt from a professor through a lecture. Our brain gives us the impression that we have learned, but it has gaping holes in the structure of the concepts that form in our heads. Knowledge comes out only when you have to explain something to someone. When you find out that you don’t have a clear idea of the subject, you figure out how to explain things, making it a great learning process.

Since the course I taught became quite popular—it was teeming with many students (more than I could usually handle)—I devised a system where the students who were quicker to grasp a subject (and each subject has some good students, while the same might not be so good in another subject) would help the ones who were not so bright in that subject. Through this peer teaching and peer learning system, mentoring, I saw that the weaker students became good, and the good ones became stars. I think every school should incorporate this valuable system.

So it’s a win-win situation.

Yes. Teaching is valuable to any growing child or learning mind. Learning something at any age and sharing it with others is an excellent service, yet it’s more of a service to yourself. What business could fall into the category where you give and become rich? I would advise others to teach somebody.

Teaching is similar to trees—they provide nutrition and shade to others while expanding and growing stronger.

Yes. As you teach, so you grow.

How and when did the concept of Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh [SECMOL] originate?

SECMOL was not our primary aim. Our main work before this school was to reform village and government schools. I was coaching 10th-grade students during my engineering program, and about 95% failed every year; only 5% used to pass. Initially, I helped students to support my education, and soon, I realised that education is needed rather than another engineer. So, with other like-minded friends, I started teaching more students free of cost.

Then it registered that if you only mend something broken, you would be doing it for another 50 years, and the system would keep producing more of the same. This mending can get many people thanking you, and you may feel very charitable, but that’s not the way to solve an issue. We decided to sort it out at the source—so no brokenness would come out in the first place. Nobody will be grateful, but that would be the best way to solve the problem. So we stopped the coaching approach and went to every village to improve the schools. Our aim for SECMOL was to eliminate the need for mending.

Did your concept face any resistance in schools?

[Faced resistance] Not because of the concept, but you have to strive to get results, and many people were used to not working hard. In government schools that produced 95% of the failures, the teachers wouldn’t come to school for days, and when they arrived, they were not on time. We had to change all those behaviours. The trend was to blame everything on the teachers, which is not a good solution.

Our approach to this problem was through love and respect. We would not blame the schools for poor results, but we would give the villages everything they deserved and demand quality in return.

How did you change the education landscape—from society’s fear-imposing design to defining success on your terms?

We worked with government schools and made the teaching-learning process based on grasping the essence of concepts rather than fear and mechanical memorising. The school results changed significantly—the pass rate went from 5% to 75%. But for those who still failed, we set up SECMOL.

I don’t believe in starting private parallel schools—that happens when the quality of education isn’t good. You might not need these private schools when you bring the quality up. But for children who were rejected by the system, in their conventional outlook, there was a need for a special school—at SECMOL, the criteria for admission is failure rather than performance.

If I had my way, I would like everybody—the poorest to the richest, the least powerful to the most powerful person in the country—to go to the same government-run schools of respectable standards. That way, the most powerful will make the standards so high that even the least powerful will enjoy the results.

At SECMOL, we make learning a joyful, natural process with all animals and species. Only humans cage children in a room for eight hours a day and 18 years of life and lecture them to death; this way of teaching is not natural.

To what do you credit your unique mindset?

Honestly, the way I see things is the natural way. I don’t know how people think learning could happen in classrooms through lecturing; that’s unnatural. For example, long back, when I used to hear that a particular school was progressive, that they adopted the play way method of learning, I started thinking that maybe they are a good school, but wait a minute, play-based is not something unique we, humans, have invented—you see it in every animal. We think we humans are so evolved.

Take cats and dogs; their kittens and puppies are not learning in our way; they learn the play way. The mother cat plays with the kitten for a purpose—to prepare the kitten for life. Kittens learn to catch mice, but start with their mother’s tail as the target, pouncing on it. And by pouching on the tail, they are ready to pounce on a mouse. Cats never make their kittens sit in a corner and memorise: “When you see the mouse, take a position, pounce, and grab. When you see the mouse take a position, pounce, and grab.” No, they would all die the way we humans do.

[Laughter]

The play way comes naturally. Play is not a joke; it is the most serious programming nature has packed in the young ones, and that’s what they see through their learning process. Little puppies, little kittens, and little donkeys all have play that gives them all they want in their lives. Humans are also packed with all the play instincts of curiosity. Can you see how little children are bubbling and overflowing with curiosity?

Curiosity is the number one ingredient for a good learning mindset.

If you are curious, you don’t need a teacher. A little help would be very good. But what do we do? We first kill the curiosity. We ensure nothing is left and dictate to the child: “Stand up, sit down, turn around, sit quietly.” We destroy the most sophisticated program that nature has gifted, and then we complain that children don’t learn.

[Laughter]

Therefore, what I say is most natural.

I concur.

Every person should be somewhat intellectually awakened, capable of handling their things and occasionally helping others. Therefore, what is missing in our school system is the hands part. Stunted hands can’t do anything independently; they can’t last a day or two if they are left in the wilderness. What good is that? Only the most progressive schools talk about hands-on learning a bit, which is a pity because every school should be about both the head and the hands.

The third part is the heart. Even the best schools don’t lay any stress beyond the head. For a happy and vibrant society, you must have compassionate people who are not about themselves but about helping others. On the contrary, our schools train us to be competitive, kill competition, and survive alone above everyone else.

Human beings have this faculty of feeling for others—sensitivity and empathy. But our schools help us shed compassion and trample upon others, which is sad. Therefore, I often say that you may have a very bright head, but it can be dangerous—it can be arrogant and helpless when it comes to surviving. And then you might have very skilled hands; even that can be dangerous—the people causing the most significant problems on earth, whether terrorists or gangs have very skilled hands and very bright heads.

Only when you develop a kind, compassionate heart in a child that the head and the hand are put to good use and never to destruction. And therefore, we should develop empathy and kindness in children so that they are good for all living beings, not just humans.

How do you create learning material relevant to the children of Ladakh?

Our first challenge was to get rid of textbooks that had nothing relevant to the lives of children and then to make textbooks that reflected the lives of the people they could identify with and had examples of villages like their own.

The next was accessing local material–using mud from the earth, taking children out to see, touch, and engage with things rather than always bringing replicas to the classroom. And rather than being taught by only the history teacher, introduce people from outside. For instance, get people who are 80 years old to share vivid recollections of how the roads opened around 60 years ago. Resources in our society and our environment must come into the classroom to make it alive. And our classrooms must go out, rather than sticking to one room.

How does the system you have created for children enhance the quality of thinking?

We make the children think, feel, and make decisions themselves.  For example, this school operates like a small country with a small government that changes every two months, and the children have responsibilities, which makes them think rather than hear or read examples. This participation makes the children feel that their responsibilities affect others. So each time the children do something important—whether managing the newspaper or dinner—they learn to take charge of themselves and others, making a system run, which prepares them for real life.

I got a clear sense of ownership when I spent time with the children. Their earnest engagement speaks of the trust and freedom invested in them.

What languages do the children learn in and why?

Since the students have had rough schooling, we want them to feel comfortable in their mother tongue and, thus, try to use Ladakhi as the first communication medium. Then, we teach English through conversations in a relaxed classroom setting. You might have seen this when you participated with them.

I did. Thank you for the experience. Having the children shyly express their desire to communicate in English is heartwarming. I switched from Hindi to English, encouraging them to dive in unabashedly, reassuring them that it was entirely okay to make mistakes, to have people laugh at your expense. I then gave them examples of my embarrassment—of male actors in south India playing lead roles, laughing at my attempts to speak Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam.

The current system, wherein you have a tea-making chapter, will read: Boil the water, put tea leaves, and add sugar and milk. The children will repeat the same—boil the water, put tea leaves, add sugar and milk—30 to 40 times and might write it well in their paper, but they would have never prepared tea.

On the other hand, someone who makes the best of tea without memorising and writing would be considered a failure; that’s a problem. Maybe a person who makes excellent tea should learn to write, but he should not be discarded because they cannot put it down on a piece of paper in English. And this is an example that epitomises most things. People can read about many things but have no experience doing all those things.

Education should be about preparing for life, not learning chapter by chapter.

Learning should be about the wisdom of handling various aspects of life; those things do not come in textbooks. At SECMOL, we teach children how to lead, plan, and execute. Therefore, students run the school. And most schools should implement this system.

Having staff members attend to children’s every need is very expensive and, therefore, not accessible to everybody. However, if you let the students handle problems, find solutions, etc., they get the opportunity to be hands-on. Children will make mistakes, but that is part of life.

SECMOL is self-reliant—we don’t take government or non-governmental grants to run the day-to-day operations. So, education is free thanks to students investing in themselves, growing food, and managing with solar energy. And because of this involvement, we don’t have to charge fees from the students, except for their food.

We charge for the food because they should value the experience of SECMOL.

The beautiful thing, in this case, is that only when you do something do you learn things, and when you do things, you become automatically self-sustaining, so the best of the two meets. In the university, we say that the students will be running things—not just to sustain themselves like in this school—but they will be running enterprises that manufacture things, manage tourism, etc. The income for the university to sustain itself will be the outcome of student efforts rather than the enormous fees colleges now charge, which many can’t afford.

How do fear and shame stunt learning and growth?

When our minds are filled with fear and shame, we are occupied with insecurity and overwhelmed by negative emotions, leaving little room to focus on learning. On the other hand, when you are entirely at ease, your mental resources are available to grasp the new concepts.

You can see this with English language learning in India. So much shame and stigma are attached to English that when you want to say: “How are you?” your cheeks turn red, and instead, you say: “Are you how?” You are shaking and trembling.

[Laughter]

But when the same person meets a Gujarati, he smilingly greets: “Kema cho?” or in Nepali, “Kasto che?” They don’t make a mistake; they don’t turn red, and therefore they learn best. In Ladakh and anywhere in the colonised world, English is given such a high status that it’s similar to honour or shame.

We have entirely unschooled mothers, and after six months of working with other workers from Nepal on some road project or something similar, they speak fluent Nepali. Whereas their daughters and sons, who have been in these so-called English medium schools for 16 years, still tremble to say a few words of English. In nature’s eyes, it’s just another language. Our warped mind tells us it is easy to speak Nepali, but one must fear speaking English.

I want to share an incident that speaks to what you have just shared. Eager to experience the Dal and Nagin lakes [Srinagar], I arranged a shikara [a flat-bottomed canoe] ride at 4:00 am. On the way back, the young man paddling the shikara requested a brief stop, indicating he had to speak with a family member. So submerged was I reminiscing about swimming in these lakes as a child that it didn’t occur to me that another person had stepped into the shikara. A few minutes into the ride, a voice greeted me: “Excuse me, Madam, are you having a good time?” Hearing his polished English, I wondered if someone from Buckingham Palace had accidentally stepped into the shikara! It turns out this man with crinkles accumulated over 75 to 80 years was the young man’s grandfather. The old man’s striking blue eyes lit up as he responded cheerfully to my curiosity about his English fluency: “Madam, I am illiterate. But there was a time when life was good, and I paddled many a Britisher. I picked up words as I went along, and that is how I learnt to speak English.” So, what you say about learning naturally, without shame, is correct.

So the old man picked up English like one would Nepali or Gujarati, not as the English language. Whereas, our college and university graduates put English on a high pedestal, struggling to grasp and master the English language.

SECMOL celebrates traditional building methods while incorporating new technology. Can you elaborate?

Unfortunately, in Ladakh and other parts of India, there is a trend of branding things as old-fashioned and backward. But at SECMOL, we value what our ancestors developed and continue to learn from what they mastered. At SECMOL, all the buildings are built of earth, which is not fashionable.

Twenty-five years ago, when we started SECMOL, people were enthusiastic about concrete and cement as modern materials, and we asked: “What is wrong with our earth buildings?” Some forts and palaces are standing for nearly a thousand years, even when left to the elements. When you research further, you find out that concrete and cement have a life of just 60 years, and still, we think they are stronger than materials that have lasted for hundreds of years.

You also learn that materials like concrete cause more pollution and emissions than the automobile industry. The building industry does half the damage to the world. Because some people in New Delhi or New York say concrete is fashionable, why should we be swept away? So, we started resurrecting old traditions. If our structures have shortcomings, we can make up for them; that’s what science and modernity should do rather than throw the baby with the bathwater.

We took all the ancient building techniques and edited them with the modern science of solar heating. For example, our ancestors didn’t use glass, without which you could not trap heat from the sun. We have glass in the 21st century, which will be our contribution. Likewise, if it’s gardening, we try to learn from our ancestral practices. What is good should be preserved, and what is better should be introduced, weighing advantages and disadvantages.

It’s similar to what you did in the cold storage room (on the SECMOL campus) used to preserve vegetables and fruits.

Yes. People customarily used to dig a pit. Why throw away an ancient technique and get refrigerators that guzzle gas and electricity? We have converted the pit into an underground room.

What is simplest and most effective is the symbol of sophistication and development.

What are the distinctive geographical challenges in Ladakh?

I don’t see them as challenges. I don’t want to think of us as remote or challenged. Remote from where? Remote is New Delhi; remote is New York. We are close to ourselves.

You are right; it can be challenging for me but not for you.

[Laughs] These are natural conditions, so why view them as challenges? Ladakh is a cold place, so we adapt.

Places with hot climates, like New Delhi or Mumbai, would be very challenging for me but not for the locals. All you have to do is use your faculties to play with the resources around you to make them suitable for your needs. If our ancestors built beautiful houses from the earth—yes, indoors, the temperature would be around five degrees — that’s not comfortable for human beings, so we use the science learnt in schools to bring that five degrees up to 15 degrees.

Somebody from New York will say: “No, 22 degrees is the international standard for comfort.” I don’t believe in that; I believe raising the temperature from five to 15 degrees is creativity, but after that, you don’t want to be spoilt to keep it at 22 degrees in minus 30 degrees. You must lower your desires from 22 to 15 degrees, where the two meet without destroying the earth. You can make it a 22-degree international standard, but the amount of effort and resources to reach the last seven degrees will cause much harm to birds, animals, and human beings. Human beings must also adapt—come down halfway, raise the conditions midway, meet at a sustainable 15-degree standard, and live happily ever after.

What are you working on at the moment? And how are you diversifying?

I have a weakness of wanting to do almost everything—I want to find solutions to water problems and green the deserts; I want to find entrepreneurial ideas for farmers to do better and reform education.

The other part is that we have addressed schooling through SECMOL, but Ladakh still doesn’t have a university. And even if Ladakh gets a university, it will be the same: the young people will be made to sit in a classroom and repeatedly lectured, to finally be handed a piece of paper—a degree.

I am currently working on a university—with different schools—school of business, education, agriculture, tourism, and architecture — where all my weaknesses or strengths can precipitate. Here, we will work on finding solutions for water, agriculture, desertification, greening, and so on, and engage not just with the area of Ladakh but with the mountains of the world.

Studying mountain people’s problems and finding solutions together with young people is like a dream.

If you have a raw answer to a problem, it can be taken up as a study, and if it shows definite possibilities, it can be implemented. I look forward to a time when all such solutions of mine and many people, who may have some reasonable answers, could be analysed for their value and then taken forward.

Young people in their twenties can be productive and imaginative, engaging in finding solutions to all the problems around them. For example, the ice stupa [Conical artificial glaciers constructed to address water shortage in cold desert regions.] was a solution for water, and many people appreciate it. But it should not be left for an engineer to discover such a thing; young people should be exposed to such ideas so they can find hundreds more local creative solutions to problems.

You innovated ice stupas to tackle the water crisis in the Ladakh region. How can we appreciate and effectively protect our water resources?

Elements like water, air, and salt are undervalued because they are abundant. Gold is unnecessarily valued so high. You don’t need gold, but if you need salt, you will give all the gold for a handful of salt.

Similarly, we don’t value air because it’s kindly abundant in our environment. Our schooling and education system should educate us to appreciate these resources. If I had my way, I would make each individual grateful for essential resources that help us survive, especially air and water, as breathing in big cities is so difficult.

First, we must learn the situation. With population growth, human interventions are eroding the water system in the mountains, leading to climate change. And second, we must grow empathy—to understand how our actions can change life for others. Once you have values, you will educate yourself on how difficult it is for people to get a bucket of water, and you will do all you can not to waste natural resources.

Often, people say: “What can I do? I am just one person.” The irony is that seven billion people say: “What can I do? I am just one person.” And I say: “Imagine if seven billion people thought a little could help?” It will be vast and impactful if people start taking action rather than feeling helpless. And while being mindful, influence ten others’.

People content with the status quo often attempt to dissuade individuals who do differently: “You think you are going to change the world? Don’t try to fight corruption. You can’t stop criminals.” This negative attitude demonstrates the lack of intrinsic power. Sure, a decisive action takes effort, but anything worthwhile requires effort. And the power of one is powerful.

Yes. And if many such ones started acting, the world would benefit. I have observed that human choose the path of least resistance rather than make an effort.

A trend almost as damaging as environmental damage is appointing celebrities as Environmental/Earth Day ambassadors. Compared to the image they project, celebrities live high environmental impact lifestyles—multi-week flights (often private), gas-guzzling cars, private swimming pools and insatiable consumption of everything from electricity to electronics (while simultaneously dumping). How can avaricious consumerism and reckless discarding go hand-in-hand with activism?

I definitely agree with you that people who champion something must first live by example, as that is what people look up to, not just a statement or talk.

Therefore, famous ambassadors must be passionate, live an honest life, and be brand ambassadors, who would be the most powerful. A more difficult attempt would be to choose people who are not so famous but who live genuine conscientious lives and make them ambassadors; make it part of the mission to change people’s way of seeing and looking at the world.

If they look at these so-called glittering celebrities alone and then think of Earth Day, they haven’t done much. If they also change how they celebrate celebrities—value somebody of lesser fame but who lives conscientiously, impacting people around them, thus celebrated—then they have achieved much more.

For example, it’s unfortunate that in India, cricket overshadows everything. People must mature to understand the joy of games; they must learn to celebrate other sports like Gulli-danda for the joy it brings. Sports should not be all about money and power. Of things like games, we should not make it into war. It’s almost like that—cricket becomes a para war.

And similarly, the irony is that people celebrate an actor who enacts the life of somebody who did something great. In doing so, they forget the individual who has achieved. When the person who does something great becomes less interesting than somebody who plays that part, it’s a sad state.

Films can be powerful in moulding how society thinks. Unfortunately, producers and storytellers mould themselves to the culture they see; it’s about selling tickets and economic benefits. Films are such a powerful tool; they should be taken with a sense of responsibility–films can burn or save a generation or a nation.

Why do you think our conscientiousness is failing so deeply? And why are we willing to settle for a superficial existence? 

Good question. It concerns our values and upbringing at home, school, and in society. Our children will grow if there is more depth in society’s way of valuing or not valuing things. So, our whole social thinking ecosystem has to mature.

Apart from schools, colleges, and universities, individuals and personalities influence society. If there were a Gandhi or a Tagore, there would have been universities of those times. Having opinion leaders influence others to maturity is essential, similar to what you are doing—interviewing people who think and do things differently. There need to be many fora of such people who connect the masses to other ways of thinking, other than all they see in general society and films.

Thank you for your encouraging words.

How would you describe your style of leadership?

I want to respect and trust others even though they might not do something exactly how I would. But beyond a point, to achieve a significant goal, many people must take little pieces of connection among themselves and continuously support these parts to grow.

What do you hope to achieve in the future?

I don’t have any big goals or big ambitions. I want to help young people learn in the best possible way and for learning to have a multiplying effect on them—for the youth to teach more people.

Do you have time to rest your mind?

No. I wake up every morning and find it very hard to go to bed again because some idea starts taking shape and spurring around. I always try to solve problems—think of how simple ideas can solve a big problem. I live in this world most of the time, only to come out and talk to you now.

How do you stay humble with success and accolades?

I don’t take life seriously.

From where do you draw inspiration?

At an early age, my mother was an inspiration for empathy and sensitivity to other people’s needs.

The compassion my mother developed in me for others made me start solving others’ problems. And when you do something that has an impact, it inspires you. If someone has empathy and sensitivity for others’ pains and challenges and takes the initiative, that initiative leads to experiences. That experience leads to confidence, which leads to even more compassion.

Learn more about Sonam Wangchukand SECMOL.