You are indeed fortunate to be studying in a school where learning is joyful, all activities are fun-filled & your teachers nurturing and caring. Since the school is one-year-old, I thought I would use the opportunity of telling you how the parent school – The Shri Ram School started.
It seems like only yesterday, but is in fact more than twenty-five years ago that my husband and I shifted back to Delhi from Chennai, with our three young children. They had been very happy with their schooling till then. The change in the schooling system and the approach and methodology used here in Delhi, came as a huge shock to my children. They were really very unhappy and dissatisfied. To try and make things better, I would approach their school almost on a daily basis, trying to reason with the teachers and the Principal, … but to no avail. With each passing day and with each setback, I found myself wishing for a place, where learning would be joyful and of a nurturing kind.
It was then that I decided to start a school, where children would want to come each morning – a school where learning is fun and children are free to express themselves; a school where the parents’ needs are also met and they are treated as partners in education. It also had to be a place along the lines of a day-boarding institution where parents felt secure and confident to leave their children, as most mothers were then joining the workforce. This was then the start of a dream …
Once born, the dream stayed with me and enthused me with a desire to make it real. My vision was of a school that was different; where differences would be celebrated, and each child’s unique special qualities and talents would be nurtured.
I was fortunate enough to find people who believed in this vision, and also shared the passion to realise what was being dismissed as an impossible dream … as a ‘new’ ‘experimental’ school that would never be able to stand on its feet. Together we pooled our inputs and ideas, and started adding life, colour, shape and form, to the picture we carried in our minds.
Let me now tell you about them, the three founding members, without whom we would not be here today …They are Mr. R.M. Rajagopal, Mr. Vijay Bhardwaj and Mr. Vivek Ramchandani.
I have worked with Mr. Rajagopal for over 35 years. We have shared not only similar thinking and outlook, but also similar goals, such as helping to raise funds for the underprivileged children in Chennai. He used to help me in organising charity fairs. A part of the SRF group which is the promoter of our school, Mr. Rajagopal was very much the right man, to help us set up such an institution. I clearly remember him suggesting that we should call it “The Shri Ram School”, as the name evoked a history of providing quality education, and the ‘The’ gave it a sense of uniqueness and importance.
Mr. Vijay Bharadwaj also with SRF, was the person who put all our thoughts and ideas into words, and made policies, budgets, did infrastructural planning & much more… in short, the groundwork that was necessary to put the school together. He handled the recruitment and did intensive interviews with the teachers and administrative staff. For the completely ‘new’ kind of school we wanted …we had to have the right kind of staff, who would be willing to experiment, and who shared the belief in our philosophy and thinking. Their capacity for nurturing was what was given more weightage than anything else. Amrinder Ma’am was one of them who joined us soon after the school started.
Mr. Vivek Ramchandani was the first Principal of The Shri Ram School. He is the one who suggested the idea of ‘child-centred’ education, day-boarding, developing our own curriculum, training our teachers to our way of thinking, something that was not commonly done in school education. As I have said, we were starting something completely different!!
We were allotted land in Vasant Vihar in South Delhi in March 1988. With no architectural plans ready, the construction of the building would have taken a while. As we were not keen on wasting any time in starting the school, I remember my husband, Mr. Arun Bharat Ram, suggesting, that we should make temporary huts using the nylon fabric that SRF was manufacturing. The colours were decided and orders placed, to be ready by June.
Then came the challenge of designing the logo. It had to be the symbol of the school, encapsulating all that it stood for and aspired to. It was at that time that the Ministry of Education and Culture had set up an exhibition called ‘Akshar’. I had gone to see it and was very impressed by it, as it was about the origin of oral and written ancient languages. I met the curator, Dr Joshi, an IIT professor teaching in Bombay, and requested him to design the logo. He was equally excited about doing it, and it was he who told us the wealth of meaning within the word ‘Shri’, which seemed to encompass our vision of the school.
And so it was that twenty years ago, in July 1988, we founded The Shri Ram School, and have not looked back ever since. With the belief in the vision of a child-friendly school – a space where learning is joyous and takes place in a nurturing, holistic, value-based and secure environment, we have grown from strength to strength. We started in 5 tents, with 64 eager children, 5 teachers, and a few bhaiyas and didis (who are still with us). In a couple of months, the numbers went up to a hundred children and more. Slowly the building in Vasant Vihar took shape. Then the Senior School (in DLF Phase – 3) came up in 1995. And finally, 9 years ago, a whole new school was started, now known as The Shri Ram School Aravali!
I think of the school not as being 20 years old, but as 20 years young! For we are still growing, & still learning – the teachers too, just as much as the students!
Last year The Shri Ram Millennium School started and you are all proud students of it.
I wish you all success and happiness in this journey of learning. With my best wishes.
(29th December 1945-12th December 2012)
