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Brockwood Park is a
co-educational boarding school in the south of England run by the
Krishnamurti Foundation Trust. Students may attend from the age of 14 years,
although there are also courses for mature students.
There is also a junior/primary
school called "Inwoods" which is
non-residential.
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It is the concern of these schools to bring
about a new generation of human beings who are free from self-centred
action.
#24 |
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New Government report on
Brockwood (2005)
In 2005 a government inspection was
carried out by the Office for Standards in Education about the school's
suitability for continued registration as an independent school. The results
were extremely positive and are now available for viewing. Please click this link
to visit the DfES website: Brockwood
Park School Ofsted Report 2005
Photographs of Brockwood Park,
England,
 
(click here for some larger, original photos)
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A mother's experience of
Brockwood
by Shoo Shoo
Then came the time when my own son was ready for school. There was not much
choice. All of the local children went to a new, well-equipped, modern little
school in a green, affluent suburb of London. But the year was not yet out when
all that went on there felt not quite right. Many talks with the teacher brought
me to the conclusion that somehow we were not really communicating. So my son
changed schools, and I began to read all of the books on education that I could
lay my hands on. We changed schools again and again. All that I read was in one
way or another partial, incomplete, idealistic, experimental.
But one afternoon, searching the shelves of a library, I picked up a book titled
"Beginnings of Learning". From the first paragraph, the world I had been looking
for opened itself to me, and when the lights were lowered and the library was
being shut, I took the book home. Quite soon, a faint memory surfaced of the
name Krishnamurti. At some point in the past, my dear, aged neighbour, an artist
friend, had left a small pamphlet on my desk, prompting me with, “I was lucky to
have come upon this in my life. Maybe it will be of interest to you. ”Well,the
name had made me put it away! Now, a few years later, it had come to me once
more and it was right, clear and sane. It was what I had been looking for. It
was only a book, yet the printed sentences gave me the unbelievable joy that
someone somewhere was really with me, that at long last I could have the courage
to trust my feelings and not feel absurd about all of the dismay that I felt
with schools.
So next was my journey to Brockwood, where I listened to the Talks, to Ojai,
where my son attended the K school there (the Oak Grove School) for two years,
and then back to England so that he could attend Brockwood Park School for two
years. By this time, my son had built up a strong resistance to schools. We
discovered that all was not the dream I had conjured up in my head. I had to
learn that schools, even these schools, were made up of people such as us, with
all their own individual struggles.
When, many years later, I had two more children, my elder son told me that I
should simply send them to the local school and leave them there until school
was finished and not repeat the same story as with him. Now living in Germany,
in a new situation and with new insecurities, I opted for the local, attractive,
affluent school that my neighbours’ children attended — there was such a gulf
between my inner wisdom and the forces of insecurity and social and family
pressure to fit in. After all, these people were so “successful” and
“confident”. Silently and timidly, I again tried out the average path. By the
third year, it was quite clear that those who pushed for conformity were failing
to live their lives rationally, and that it was wrong for us to follow their
advice. Once again I had to open my eyes and ears and listen to my heart rather
than to others.
At this point, my second son wanted to try Brockwood. He was fourteen and his
main teacher at his German school had just been found dead in the woods with a
suicide note. There were so many stories about this man’s silent despair and all
of these fourteen-year-olds sitting in my son ’s room talking about the hows and
whys of such an act. We began to see that there was so much more to life than
running a school efficiently, having exams and rushing towards some vague goal.
We saw that everyone was so helpless but pretended to be confident. We saw that
something essential was never touched upon. Not because no one felt it. Not
because no one needed it. But because this jungle of unknown fears, struggles
and insecurities was so dark and deep that no one, apart from some who had
studied psychology and those who showed severe emotional or behavioural
dispositions, were involved in such questions — that is, when people for one
reason or another did not fit into the system, but had to!
I phoned my older son in the U.S. and told him that his brother wanted to go to
Brockwood. There was a long silence. Then he said, “I want you to know that out
of all that you have done for me, my years at Brockwood were the most valuable
of my life.” So my second son, who had a real struggle at the state school,
finished his education at Brockwood, two years ahead of his contemporaries back
home. My daughter is now at Brockwood, as she wished to join her brother before
he left and also be in the place that she had so often visited and grown to
love. So it all started with the "Beginnings of Learning". As the saying goes,
“Wipe the slate clean,” learn to listen, learn to look, within and “outside".
Learn to learn about all those things that no one in the world can teach you
about.
Brockwood Park School has a splendid building and grounds, though it needs
donations to keep it in good repair. It is home to a number of people, old and
young, for whom the “beginnings of learning” are essential. Yet it was my notion
that all there “should” know how to “know”, or be all that I had imagined that
wisdom to be. But it is exactly that they are not like this that makes for the
learning that is so neglected elsewhere! Brockwood offers the ground for such
beginnings of learning. We can choose to send our youngsters there or not. We
might find that it does or does not fit our expectations. We might find that we
keep waiting for others to solve our problems and that there are no experts out
there.
As a mother, I have found Brockwood over the years to be a unique extended home
to my children from their fourteenth to eighteenth years. I am glad to have the
support of an extended family and home where time, space and care are possible
amongst a large international group of people — that apart from the school
curriculum there is time for exploring such fundamental questions as the
“beginnings of learning” and an environment for healthy living; while elsewhere,
during exactly these volatile years, the world at large is pushing on young
people, with the force of a broken dam, all of its trends, false values,
confusions and contradictions.
(This letter was published in "The
Link", issue #22 2002/3
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Why is Brockwood Special?
written by a student, Lucile Demory, aged 15, and
reproduced from The Brockwood Observer, Autumn/Winter 2004/2005.
Click here to transfer.
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A free CD
"Inward
Flowering", a discussion, mostly with students, at Brockwood Park school 10
October 1976 (80 minutes).
"Is
each of us, here at Brockwood, flowering, blooming, growing. Or are we following
a certain narrow groove........regret the rest of our life."
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SOME OPPORTUNITIES
AT
BROCKWOOD
PARK UK
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Brockwood Alumni
Brockwood Park is
very keen to keep in touch with ex- students, mature students and staff. A
newsletter has been started for Alumni called "Brockwood and Beyond"; it can
be ordered from this address:
Bill Taylor
Brockwood Park School
Bramdean
Hampshire SO24 OLQ
UK
Fax 44(0)1962 771875
email:
So if you as an alumnus have not
kept in contact with the old school, this is a good time to reforge the link.
Also visit
http://www.brockwood.org.uk/alumni/index.htm.
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"The Brockwood Observer"
Gives an 'inside' view of life at
Brockwood. It is published twice yearly by staff and students. It
can be subscribed to along with with "The Bulletin" , which
is published by the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust (UK) at
Krishnamurti Foundation Trust.
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The Intentions of the school
These, stated by Krishnamurti in many public talks and his books, can be
summarised as follows:
To educate the whole human being
To discover one's own talent and what right livelihood means
To learn the proper care, use and exercise of the body
To appreciate the natural world, seeing our place in it and responsibility for
it
To explore what freedom and responsibility are in relationship with others and
in modern society
To see the possibility of being free from self-centred action and inner conflict
To find the clarity that may come from having a sense of order and valuing
silence
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Inwoods
Junior School
Inwoods is a small junior/primary
school, non-residential. It is situated about two km from Brockwood Park school
in a beautiful rural environment. Student - staff ratio is very small.
Inwoods Small School website
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A course for young adults at Brockwood
For more information,
click here to transfer to the "for students" page.
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From the Director of Brockwood
Park School
An article by Bill Taylor,
"Education for the Art of Living - Brockwood Park School and the
Krishnamurti Legacy".
click here
to transfer to this page.
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