I started thinking that my village grandmother was more intelligent
than my Harvard professors and my UNESCO colleagues.
Action
[Music]
The system is not broken. It's doing what it was designed to do.
[Music]
Garlic?
[Music]
Give a hug to your partner.
[Music]
Namastê Oi! [Namastê Hi!]
Re-imagining education with Manish Jain
[Zuzu] Namastê Oi
[Manish] Namastê Oi [Namastê Hi!], Zuzu!
[Zuzu] Such a pleasure to have you here!
[Manish] Yeah
[Zuzu] In this kitchen, at Zym Café.
Do you like it?
[Manish] Yeah, I've been enjoying cooking so much here.
It's really a beautiful place.
[Zuzu] Did you imagine in your life that one day you are coming to Brazil to be in a kitchen,
teaching people how to change their lives cooking?
[Manish] No, I never imagined that.
Great fun.
Great to share food, learn about different Brazilian recipes.
Particularly all these nuts, baru-nut farofa, and fruits to use.
So, I have been enjoying doing some fusion.
[Zuzu] Well, how did it start?
One day, you are in the world, living your life, but than suddenly comes something and
makes a turning point.
What was that?
[Manish] Turning point in my life, I think, rather, many turning points.
But the big turning point came when I started connecting the dots of different experiences
and trying to see what was going on and how this larger system is working.
I really felt that, you know, that I had tried for many years to fix it, to prove it.
Try to make it a better system.
But then I started to understand -after being in several different places of power in the
world- that the system actually can't be fixed.
The turning point was really strong.
I had a very deep sense of disillusionment and despair, like: what's going on in the world?
The people we thought are going to fix it, don't really want to fix it.
And the system is actually moving on its own in the wrong direction and …even the people
who are winning in that system are not happy with it, really.
So we really need a whole different way of seeing and doing things.
[Zuzu] Manish studied at the best universities in the United States.
He has worked in organizations, financial institutions, UN agencies such as UNICEF.
And one day he decided that none of this was enough and decided to go back to his village,
to his grandmother's village in India.
And I want to know from him now, how was that.
What happened when you decided to come back to Índia, to your village, to learn with
your grandmother?
[Manish] So I started thinking that my village grandmother was more intelligent than my Harvard
professors and my UNESCO colleagues.
That she had a different way of being connected to the land, of being connected to build community,
of being connected to spirits.
Just a different way of seeing the things and so...
The logic of the global system I just could not see; it was all about money, money, money.
And my grandmother had a very different perspective on life.
She knew really -I think- the secret of happiness.
So, because of that I was looking for what is the meaning of my life.
What's the way out and way forward and also how do we get out of this larger mess that
we are in?
So, I believe my grandmother planted some seeds which were very important for me to
understand to engage and to co-create with.
[Zuzu] A lot of people have a lot of difficulties to decide changing their life.
They talk a lot, they feel a lot on bad things they are doing.
But they don't take the decision to change.
They are afraid of changing things.
What you want to say to these people that are always afraid and never take the decision
to really move and to go for something very new?
[Manish] Yeah.
I would say jump, just jump, walk out; the fear is only in our minds.
And when we start actually coming out of it and connecting with other people and trusting
in life, all kinds of amazing things start to happen.
This has been my own experience.
I could never imagine I would end up in Brazil in the kitchen cooking.
So many different adventures: meeting indigenous leaders in Brazil, visiting amazing leaders
in favelas here.
So, when you start to trust in life and you trust that you know how to listen to your
heart calling, I mean…, I always say this life we have is so precious.
It really pains me, saddens me, when I see people just wasting their lives not happy
with what they're doing.
Take a risk.
Life will create all kinds of interesting things.
Some might be, you know, all kinds of gifts will come.
Some will be beautiful, some will be really challenging, but your life will be much more
exciting and amazing and worthwhile. You'll find it meaningful.
I think that's the biggest thing is if we are doing all these things and we are not
finding it meaningful, then, what's the point?
So better to take a risk.
[Zuzu] One of your main questions are related to education, to re-imagine education.
You are really doing this, have (included) your daughter, you have a new kind of school
(model) that you are creating.
Can you talk a little bit about this learningprocess. What it means?
And what you are learning with this unlearning process?
[Manish] Yeah...
So, I think one of the most important things right now for people who are working in education
interested in social change, interested in spirituality even, -sustainability is the
idea of unlearning.
So, many of our mental models, our frames, references, assumptions, our beliefs have
been conditioned in a certain frame of mind and I think right now we need a lot of effort
to kind of decondition ourselves, to free our minds to open up new possibilities.
It's like … -maybe it's like if you have a river that has been dammed, you know?
One needs to put some holes in the dam to let the flow start again for new things to emerge.
So..., I think what I'm learning a lot is again about these fears we have.
So many fears which are blocking us from our deepest calling, from our deepest mission
in this planet.
What we've come to do.
And so when we start to let go of some of those fears, start to let go of some of the
desire to control everything, plan everything, start to let go of this thing of money, money,
money all the time.
Different things will start flowing and different possibilities we can see; how we can have
a much more abundant life.
And really a lot of it is….
there's a saying you know: life is what happens when you start stop planning.
So, let's trust in life and we can see that like I've seen with my own child, my daughter.
My wife and I got married (and) we decided she should not go to school.
That's after having gone to Harvard.
And I said it's a waste of time to waste all those years in school.
And I've seen so many amazing people and projects and my daughter is really beautifully grown
without school, you know.
The projects we're creating now more and more people are realizing -you know- the education
system is in a crisis, really deep crisis.
I see so many young people suffering either from being called failures or those who are
called successes.
So much stress and to be the best, -depression.
So it's really a time that we can open up to really exploring new ways and giving freedom
to children.
Letting them do practical things in their lives, experiencing the world more, connecting
with all kinds of diverse people.
So it's a very, you know, it's a very simple formula.
I say about my daughter: I only want her to be around passionate people, people who love life.
That's the best education.
Just let her be meeting people who love life, love what they're doing and she'll catch that
spirit that life.
It is not this manding, boring, routine kind of thing.
But there's so many people who are really passionate.
And when you get that energy things start to flow.
[Zuzu] But in the beginning, how to start to learn how to write and to read?
How it works? For example, if it's at home, how is that?
Just a part, because I'm curious about it.
[Manish] So, first thing; this is one of the things I had to unlearn.
Learning is not linear, you don't have to do reading and writing first before you can
learn other things.
Some people might like to learn to read and wright in the beginning, -my daughter wasn't
interested in it.
So, we encouraged her do all the things she liked: she was interested in animals, she
was interested in art, she was interested in makeup, she was interested in music.
We said you start doing all of those things.
And out of those interests an interest will come: oh I want to read this, I want to know
what this says; it was very natural the process.
And so my daughter actually was not interested.
Really, she was doing so many things and she was able to do them like…., she could run
a computer make a film without really reading very well, she had figured out how to do it all.
But then when she was like 12 years my mother started getting really worried: she's not
reading this and that.
So then I made a deal with my daughter.
Like okay, every day 15 minutes a day.
That's all you need.
15 minutes of concentration a day and then within three months she was reading very well.
So, we're spending all this time.
All this time, on reading and writing.
But it's a very simple thing and when the children are excited about it because they
can see: now I'm gonna use it for this, I want to...
I want to read this book about art because I'm really interested in it, I want to read
this cookbook because I'm really interested in getting a new recipe.
The motivation comes from within.
So, the whole game that we're trying to play up until now school has been working with
external motivation: reward and punishment.
You do this, -you get this reward.
You don't do this, -you get beaten and punished or humiliated.
So, we're saying no.
The whole game of learning is actually about internal, intrinsic motivation.
So, when you find things are exciting the learning process happens.
You don't need a teacher even telling you to do this, do that, because it's so contagious
and so powerful that kids are learning it (by themselves).
Same thing with us as an adult.
It's the same thing.
When we get excited, -I need this, -I want to get this.
You try talking to your friends and you learn.
There's so many things like that in life you can learn.
[Zuzu] After to create this kind of open school, open city of learning you also became a co-founder
of one university, -Swaraj University.
And you are dealing with this question of diploma that you treat as a disease.
[Manish] Yes.
[Zuzu] Can you talk a little bit about this disease in our society?
[Manish] And what is the cure...?
So, I think that the diploma has done two things: one, it has created this artificial
kind of hierarchical society.
So we think that the people who have diplomas are very knowledgeable and the people who
don't have diplomas are very stupid.
And my grandmother who never went to school, didn't have a diploma.
I realized this piece of paper doesn't measure who you are as a human being.
Or what you know, or what you experienced.
And so, so much talent in Brazil and India, -all over the world, is being lost because
we're like: oh, you need this diploma, you need this diploma.
But people are quite creative, they're very committed, they're very serious about learning
and doing things.
But they may not have degrees.
But that's huge amount of talented people we have in our countries.
And so we want to unleash that talent because all the time they're saying: oh, you don't
have a degree you can't do something.
But we're like: no, it doesn't matter.
You can do; start, start and then we see.
What we wanted to do was, say, the way to cure this.
We started talking to companies and NGO's and we found out, wow, the CEOs are not even
happy with the guys coming from the university.
Because those guys coming they do talking, they don't know how to do things practically.
They can only do PowerPoint presentations and Excel sheets.
But when you tell them, you know, go and talk to the customer, do this or do that, they're
afraid.
Or they don't feel like they can do it.
So then you have to kind of support them in learning.
So, we could do the same thing with people who don't have degrees.
They need a little bit of support maybe to orient them.
So, now we have more than 900 companies and NGO's which have agreed that they will hire
people without any degrees or diploma.
To give them a chance, to prove themselves.
So, they give them three months or six months.
They can start working, they can learn and they can show that they can do the work probably
better than most people who are doing big jobs.
Because they really want to do that work.
A lot of people end up in jobs.
I see them in their offices, they're on the computer playing some game or planning their
next holiday.
They don't even want to work, they're not even interested.
It's just for them a job.
But the people we're trying to get are those who connect it with their life mission, their
life purpose the work.
So they bring a lot more energy, enthusiasm.
[Zuzu] Well you are traveling all over the world, talk about your ideas and spread a
vision about this.
What do you really think inside of you, what's your dream about this, about this "no diploma",
what could be the ideal situation?
[Manish] My dream is…., we are really in a deep crisis on the planet and what I realized
is that the people -the experts, -the scientists, -the decision-makers, -the academics, -the
UNESCO, -UN people, -the big finance people; none of them know how to find a way out of
this mess where we are in.
They're talking about what's the problem, what's the problem, but nobody really knows.
And what we're facing is a really deep crisis in the limits of human rationality.
And that crisis can only be resolved when we bring in different kinds of intelligences,
different kinds of creativities, different kinds of imaginations, different kinds of relationships.
And so we're doing that. There has to be a redefinition.
We used to think of the intellectual as a guy who's reading the book and he writes a
paper, an article like this.
It's all very heady, heady, heady.
But what I'm visioning is that the new intellectuals, the idea of intelligence and intellectualism
will be something where we all start drawing from the wisdom of our bodies.
It will be embodied.
It will also draw from the rich power of each place.
And we call that emplaced, coming from the places, the nature, the communities, that
we're in all alive and they have so much wisdom in creativity to contribute.
So, we should draw from that.
It should be inspirited, we draw from spirit, that energy of spirit, intuition.
So, we need a whole different kind of thinking and feeling process if we want to solve the
problems on the planet.
If we want to solve those we cannot do have our ethics run by Excel spreadsheets.
It has to be something much more deeper.
So the idea of what we're trying to do is unleash.
The intelligence is there!
It is in communities, it is in favelas, it is in, you know, the place in the forests,
it is in the people, like fisher people.
It's all over there that intelligence which I'm talking about.
But we need to reactivate that intelligence and so that's the larger mission.
Without that intelligence were finished, as humanity.
So, we need to really open up those different modes which Gandhi talked about: "we need
to have an education that activates our head, our hearts, our hands and our sense of home".
So that is what we want to create.
[Zuzu] Well, we could talk a lot of time here but you don't have this time, yeah?
And also, people can look at the videos and everything that you have, like sources in
the internet.
But I'd like that you just highlight you're visit to Brazil, with some pictures that you
are going to take home.
[Manish] Huh, so, the first picture I'm taking home is maracatu dancing.
And I was so inspired by how much power is there despite the whole history of, you know,
slavery and all of the pain that came with it.
But it's so alive the tradition so that is one image I will take away.
Second image is: I met several different indigenous leaders from different tribes around Brazil,
and very, very powerful.
And so I take that image of those meetings and the connection I have.
And the third image was the visits to favelas.
And seeing the "gambiarra" spirit within the favelas is alive and there's so much richness there.
So, we told them that you're not poor you're actually are the richest people here.
So, if you use your richness you can create all kinds of new projects and strengthen your
communities and change the system.
So that visit to the favelas was also... in Maré, in Rio, and visit of two favelas in
São Paulo.
So, this really touched me, the love that I felt all over Brazil, actually.
I think the biggest thing, I think, is a really deep sense of love and connection.
And really strong sense of India / Brazil bond we have a lot of things to do together.
[Zuzu] What the grandmothers could do to the planet?
[Manish] The grandmothers can do so many things.
First, to remind us that violence is not the way.
That there's much more beautiful solutions we can create when we care for each other,
when we're compassionate, when we show hospitality.
I think from my grandmother the first thing I learned was this tremendous culture of hospitality,
-care for the other.
In India I learned from another, when you take a sweet, you don't put it in your own mouths.
You feed the other first to show your care.
That you see, that you feel you are together, you know?
So, I think that's one things, definitely.
And the second thing is this gambiarra spirit.
That we don't need to create a big master plan.
We don't need a huge budget to bring change.
We have so many resources and the best way if you want to learn: I've been thinking what's
the best way you can learn?
Go to a kitchen watch your grandmothers cooking.
They'll start to rewire your mind, so you know that you can see different kinds.
Like I met this beautiful grandmother here, Regina Tchelly.
She showed so many things to do with vegetable peels.
It reminded me of my grandmother, who also had shared this similar thing.
So, you start to thinking: oh, I don't have anything I just have these dirty peels and
they make beautiful things.
So that's a really different rewiring our way of seeing things.
And of our way of doing things can change dramatically from the grandmothers.
[Zuzu] Great.
Namaste Oi.
I hope to see you here again or in India.
And if you also get inspired by this interview start to re-imagine your own life and see
what's possible.
So many things can be possible when you re-imagine your own life.
[Manish] We have a large movement of people we call
them walkouts.
All kinds of people in India are walking out of their jobs, their corporate jobs.
They're sick of it.
They don't want to do IT.
They don't want to spend their whole life sitting in front of a computer.
They are walking out.
We have people walking out of their universities, they don't want to waste their time just sitting
and writing papers.
They want to start working on real things in the world.
And we have families who are taking their children walking out of schools and starting
to really support their children.
To really flower into full human beings.
So, we invite everyone to join this movement of walkouts.
How do you say that in Portuguese, in Brasileiro…?
[Zuzu] The translation is more or less: kick the post of the tent and go ahead.
[Zuzu] Namastê Oi! [Manish] Namastê Oi!
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