My name is Saras Naga Reddy. I am named after the Hindu goddess
of education, so I sometimes blame, mostly thank my parents for fating
me to be involved in education. I started teaching 35 years ago in
Apartheid South Africa. I quickly realized that in spite of poverty and
limited resources, a meaningful education, has the power to give hope
and upliftment to a community.
So, what does a meaningful education look like, you may ask. For me
it means offering students three intertwined domains: qualification,
socialization and subjectification. First, and most obviously, our children need to have the
literacy and numeracy skills, and the content knowledge to be successful in their career choices.
But our children are way more than just their careers: They are more than money-
making, economy-sustaining entities. Our children also need the social skills to fit into the
society in which they live. We want them to hold scared the values, traditions and ways of life of
their communities. This is what nourishes their spirit, what holds them strong, what gives them
roots, even when they physically move away from family and home.
Most importantly though, we want them to have the creative and critical thinking that will
allow them to transform the world. We want them to know how to live a life of complexity and
contradiction: Even as we teach them to fit in, we want them to have the skills to challenge and
change that very world that we want them to fit into. This is vital if we want a global world of
justice and equity.
AND we want them to have the kind of spirit and soul that would love that world, that
would be kind and compassionate, even as they acknowledge the world’s cruelties and
inequities. This is what it means to be a unique human being – to heed the call of the universe,
to take up their human obligations in creative and intuitive ways, to give meaning to their lives.
This is indeed a big ask – much more than high test scores, or certification. And it takes
us all – every single one of us, every day- to work with commitment, with consistency and with
integrity. Our children deserve nothing less.
It is in this spirit that we invite you to become involved in our work. Our professional
training makes us somewhat experts only in the domain of qualification – we do indeed need
your wisdom and guidance for the more important