bhaktivedanta academy mayapur

2017/2018531 Gaur Ābda

Annual Report

Bhaktivedanta Academyilluminating society through spiritual education

Bhaktivedanta Academy provides spiritual education through academic classes and hands-on activities in a natural outdoor campus which could rival a botanical garden.

Our holistic experiential approach inspires students to become leaders in preaching Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

INTRODUCTION

Bhaktivedanta Academy is an institution dedicated to manifest-ing Śrīla Prabhupāda’s vision for Vedic education, a system meant to train its students in the phi-losophy and practice of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. The model of Vedic education is the gurukula educational system. In the world today, various social and political factors have caused the margin-alization of gurukula education in favor of modern secular methods. In India the British occupancy forced the widespread adoption of western-style schools. In iskcon, attempts were made to revive this educational system, but these attempts failed for various rea-sons. Gurukulas closed. Most have now given up the endeavor to develop this educational model,

but Bhaktivedanta Academy in Māyāpur has prevailed through a more than three decade long effort to push Śrīla Prabhupāda’s vision forward, and now it flour-ishes. Today, parents, teachers, students, and members of the broader Māyāpur community are proud of the remarkable school that Bhaktivedanta Academy has become, and are hopeful for a future where this kind of educa-tion can benefit a greater portion of humanity. The way forward is made by small steps, yet its end is nothing short of magnificent—if we can create a class of highly qualified leaders who are pure devotees of Kṛṣṇa, then, in Śrīla Prabhupāda’s words, “there is great hope for the future of the world.”

DEAN’S LETTER

Dear friends and well-wishers of the Bhaktivedanta Academy, welcome to our first annual report.

The future of education is the gurukula system,

handed down since time immemorial. For nearly forty years, the members of Bhaktivedanta Academy have worked tirelessly for the development of the gurukula system given to us by the Founder-Ācārya of iskcon, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda.

This development is across the whole spectrum: development of the students and student care, of our campus, curriculum, understanding of child psychology, and much more.

Our focus this last year has been on a few major areas: refining our care of young boys aged 5 to 8, testing and documenting our curriculum, and endeavoring to become agricul-turally self-sustained for food crops.

Approximately 85 percent of the schools food needs are now covered by our own cultivation.

Students continue to travel to var-ious temples by invitation for Deity installations, festivals, yajñas, and other functions. We built three new pavilions for martial arts training. This coming year we want to create a better financial position for the school, with last year’s shortfall hit-ting 2.2 million rupees.

We look forward to your contin-ued support as friends, well-wishers, and supporters of Bhaktivedanta Academy.

In the dust of the lotus feet of the Vaiṣṇavas,

Śrī Mādhava Gaurāṅga DāsaDean—Bhaktivedanta Academy

BHAKTIVEDANTA ACADEMY PEDAGOGY & DIDACTICS

As the educational ethos all over the world brings more doubts than solutions, society in general faces innumerable challenges and difficul-ties in understanding the goals and means of education as a whole. This is the result of centuries of massive political interference and lack of proper understanding of a higher and progressive educational system. Avant-garde institutions, popping-up here and there around the globe, try to make education different from the status quo, driven by the demand of those who are sick of the calamities of the contemporary world. Although sincere in their intents, even these institutions lack a solid platform to support their ideas.

Śrīla Prabhupāda, as merciful and visionary as he was, seeing the world in decadence, established the International Society for Krishna Consciousness as a tool for uplift-ing global consciousness. Placing education with a pivotal role in this movement, he gave hundreds of spe-cific instructions about educational philosophy, sociology, didactics, ped-agogy and curriculum. He instructed that “the old system of gurukula should be revived as the perfect example of a system designed to produce great men, sober and responsible leaders.”

In its almost forty years of

existence, Bhaktivedanta Academy has established strong foundations for the gurukula system of educa-tion. HH Bhaktividyā Pūrṇa Swami researched this system extensively throughout India and deeply stud-ied Śrīla Prabhupāda’s instructions on the subject. From these sources he derived a great vision for gurukula education which is unparalleled throughout the world in both its scope and depth. The current team of lead-ers and educators at Bhaktivedanta Academy strives to manifest this vision, and by these efforts we feel the beginnings of a new era in edu-cational practice, although there is a long way to go until this vision is fully realized.

Bhaktivedanta Academy’s beau-tiful and bucolic campus resembles more a sanctuary than a modern educational institution. The design is not merely aesthetic; it serves an educative function as there is con-stant interaction of the Academy’s members with nature, animal care, and agriculture, whereby an incredi-ble 85% of the food being consumed is organic and produced on-campus. The confessional education, estab-lished with the highest brahminical standards, involves all students in worshiping the Deities through yajña, pūjā, cooking and cleaning. Gurukula

students have an important role in organizing all the main festivals of Śrīdhāma Māyāpur for thou-sands of devotees. The culture of living in the āśrama is a strong basis for building character and bringing out benevolent qualities in students. The knowledge and understand-ing of Vedic scriptures and Śrīla Prabhupāda books are the means of learning how to live a Krishna con-scious life, and the acquirement of academic proficiency is a medium of presenting Krishna consciousness in interaction with the secular world.

In the gurukula system students are not just numbers; they live with the teacher and have strong ties of rela-tionship, as stated by R. K. Mookerji in Ancient Indian Education:

“Here the personal touch, the living relationship between the pupil and teacher, makes education. The pupil belongs to the teacher and not to an institution or the abstraction called the school. A modem school teaches pupils by ‘classes,’ and not as individuals with their differences. Is it possible to think of a common treatment of patients each of whom

has his own ailment? While it cannot be applied to the diseases of the body that can be visualized, how can it be applied in handling invisible, intan-gible, and sometimes intractable material, different minds and moral conditions?”

Many are the challenges faced during all these years of endeavor to revive the original and highly effective gurukula system of educa-tion. Lots of effort has been made by many devotees in terms of study, documentation, and application of curriculum. Still there is a long way to go. Toward that end, in Bhaktivedanta Academy we have a Curriculum Development Department which seeks to better understand and apply Vedic education, as presented by Śrīla Prabhupāda, to show the whole world that there is no better system to uplift the consciousness of society in general—not only to a higher level, but to the highest level of Krishna consciousness.

Prāṇanātha dāsaDirector of Curriculum Development

LEADERSHIP

Bhaktivedanta Academy is headed by the Council of Deans, which includes Prīti Vardhana dāsa and Mādhava Gaurāṅga dāsa. They are responsible for the administration of the school, the academic classes, the āśrama activities, the campus and other facilities, and the care and progress of every student. Under them is the Administrative Board including Baladeva Śrīmān dāsa, Kṛṣṇa Caitanya dāsa, and Śrī Paramahaṁsa Gaura dāsa. Their duty is to implement and uphold all the directives and policies established by the Council of Deans. They conduct the day-to-day management of the school and ensure the safety and supervision of the students.

But the gurukula leadership doesn’t end there. The unique quality of gurukula’s management is the involve-ment of the students themselves. Our mission is to train leaders for Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s movement, but leadership cannot be studied or taught in a classroom: students become leaders by practicing lead-ership. To facilitate this, our gurukula has a student hierarchy which, in effect, makes them self-governing. At the top is the school’s head boy, a senior student, usually 16–18 years old, who has proved his character and ability through years of dedicated service. Under him are several group leaders (responsible students usually aged 14–16), who each take care of a group of several boys. When it’s time to clean the campus, the teachers needn’t go around to engage the boys;

the head boy assigns each group to an area—the kitchen, the pumps where the boys bathe and wash clothes, the temple hut, the central building with classrooms, offices, or the extensive library—and the group leaders take their groups there and engage them in practical services.

These services are a crucial part of our students training, because they enable students to apply in prac-tice the philosophic principles they have studied in class. In other words the students become highly learned personalities, developing theoreti-cal understanding along with strong character and spiritual values. In this way, students learn to live up to their ideals, and from this training they get the experience, skill, and confidence to take up leadership roles in the ser-vice of Śrīla Prabhupāda.

CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

Ever since it was founded, Bhaktivedanta Academy has given great importance to the development of curriculum in order to reestab-lish the traditional system of gurukula education as requested by His Divine Grace Śrīla A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. As the isk-con Māyāpur project and the world iskcon society grows, there is an increasing need for a formal and unique education that fulfills the needs of the Society as predicted and ordered by the previous ācāryas. The need for educational projects distinct from the modern system of education pervading the world now is not only felt in our movement, but also by pro-gressive educators all over the world who see the bad results contemporary educational methods are present-ing. For this purpose, establishing a formal theory and practice of the

philosophy, psychology, and episte-mology of education, as well as a clear system of pedagogy, has been the goal of the Academy’s Department of Curriculum Development.

During the 2017–18 school year this department had signif-icant improvements. Since the official reestablishment of a cur-riculum department in 2016, great achievements were made, and during this last year its work was consolidated with around five members revising old studies and documents developed in the last decades and implementing practices in both the āśrama and aca-demic curriculum.

Some of the remarkable advance-ments of the group are listed below:

• Revision of the curriculum materials for the 14 books of Vedic knowledge• Approval of different documents and studies in the area of curriculum and

pedagogy• Reorganization of the library and digital archives• Integration of enthusiastic and dedicated members of iskcon Pune to the

curriculum team• Weekly meetings to discuss education, curriculum and students’ develop-

ment with all teachers, tutors and trainee teachers• Implementation of some aspects of the tutorial system of education• Reorganization of the primary education āśrama activities and alphabetiza-

tion system of the school

• Our elementary English class had a 20% increase in average read-ing speed over the course of the year.

• All primary students aged 4–7 were alphabetized by the end of the school year, matching the UK reading standards for their ages.

• Eight boys finished our three-year Śāstra-cakṣus course, an in-depth study of Bhagavad-gītā, Nectar of Instruction, Nectar of Devotion, Śrī Īśopaniṣad, Jaiva-dharma, and Śrī Caitanya-śikṣāmṛta.

• Five boys finished our secondary education program in all standard subjects, and will be starting tertiary education for specialization in their chosen fields.

• We launched a debate program in our secondary English class to improve students’ rhetoric and oratorical skills.

• Students in our Śāstra-cakṣus course each completed more than 30 essays over the course of the year.

ACADEMIC RESULTS

YEAR HIGHLIGHTS

This year of 531 Gaurābda (2017–18) has been a year of renewed endeavors to improve and perfect our educational model, both in the āśrama and academic sectors of the school. Fourteen new students were enrolled in September, bring-ing the total over seventy. This is a list of major achievements made through the year:• New intake of fourteen students and graduation of two students

• Hosting the Parā Śikṣā symposium to facilitate dialogue on Vedic education

• Launch of a rebuilt school website

• Formation of a new team for curriculum development

• Students’ writing and performance of a Sanskrit-language drama

• Deity installation in Bali conducted by gurukula students

• Janmāṣṭamī festival at iskcon Penang, Malaysia conducted by gurukula students

• Release of a new and improved edition of our mantra book

• Birth of three new calves in our gośālā• Construction of three martial arts training pavilions

• Senior students’ preaching trip to Europe

• School tour of South India organized by students

• Improvement in system of smaller boys’ training (ages 5–7)

• A renewed endeavor to perfect our āśrama training system

• Publication of the second edition of Defeating Vatsāsura

• iskcon temple opening in Ukraine conducted by gurukula students

• Māyāpur TOVP cakra installation performed by the Academy

VARṆĀŚRAMA COLLEGE

Alongside his instructions about gurukula, Śrīla Prabhupāda also gave prescriptions for the institution of a Varṇāśrama College. The idea of Varṇāśrama College is intimately connected with gurukula education; Śrīla Prabhupāda’s vision was that after their primary education at gurukula, students would continue with a more specialized course of study at the Varṇāśrama College to develop vocational skills for use in Kṛṣṇa’s service. As we develop our gurukula curri culum, we are faced with the need for a more systematic process of tertiary education for our older stu-dents, and Varṇāśrama College is the perfect solution. This idea has been part of the plan for our Māyāpur gurukula from the beginning, but in the last year we’ve had major mile-stones in its development, and we are pleased to announce our plans for the Varṇāśrama College to be insti-tuted as one of the colleges of the Bhaktive danta Academy, esta blished to research and teach the various vocational aspects of the varṇas.

Another part of this plan is to create a living space for vānaprasthas, sannyāsīs, and gṛhasthas who want to live a more simple way of life and

be involved with the project. Most of the Academy teachers will reside on the campus with their families. Natural materials are being used for their dwellings as much as possible to demonstrate that we can rely on what Kṛṣṇa provides for all aspects of our daily lives.

The first house was recently com-pleted. It was built using timber that was planted on our land 25 years ago. The trees were harvested by hand and the boys got the opportunity to use teams of oxen to shift the timber from its growing place, 500 meters to the College campus. Boys also partici-pated in the building process whereby they learned many valuable skills.This first house’s design was inspired by traditional Southeast Asian vernacu-lar architecture, and features a ground floor workshop that initially will be used to kick start some of the cottage-industries that we want to develop as part of the overall educational experi-ence. Construction of a second house using stone is already underway.

These projects take time to develop, but they are vital to the progress of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s mission. In his words, “this varṇāśrama college is very essential.”

Expenses

Kitchen bhoga ₹ 23,62,746Transportation ₹ 51,500Agriculture & Goshala ₹ 10,33,281Campus maintenance ₹ 13,90,055Security ₹ 3,36,000Electricity ₹ 2,61,500School & Ashram supplies ₹ 2,44,500Savings deposit ₹ 1,90,000Petty cash ₹ 86,255Hardware supplies ₹ 1,72,000Construction ₹ 2,16,500Medical supplies ₹ 40,000

Teacher maintenance ₹ 11,67,500

Total ₹75,53,837

IncomeSchool fees ₹ 52,82,868Fixed deposit ₹ 6,25,000Total ₹ 59,07,868

Shortfall – ₹ 16,43,969

Other IncomeDonations₹ 1,62,650Fixed deposit₹ 1,75,000Grants ₹ 10,50,000Shop ₹ 2,00,000Total ₹ 15,87,650

Final Shortfall – ₹ 56,319

Projected Final Shortfall for 2018 – ₹ 10,64,920

FINANCIAL REPORT

Jan–Dec 2017

If I had to choose between having what I got from Gurukula or having every-thing else in the world, I would invariably pick the former. Gurukula gave me the best parts of who I am. It has been the best thing in my life, and I am endlessly grateful for the extraordinary teachers who made that possible.

Balarāma Dāsa, 2015 Student from America

Gurukula is the only place where character development is a side-by-side educa-tion together with academics. I understood more about true relationships here. Teachers are fully involved in students’ lives and the atmosphere here is just like a family. I love gurukula and all my teachers.

Kṛṣṇa Caitanya Dāsa, 2018 Graduate from India

Gurukula was a turning point in my life. Not only did it teach me the funda-mentals of becoming a kinder person, it also instilled in me a strong spiritual framework which, I wholeheartedly believe, will allow me to grow as a servant of Kṛṣṇa.

Gaura Jīvana Dāsa, 2015 Student from Canada

STUDENT TESTIMONIES

These children are the future! We need your support to further develop the Bhaktivedanta Academy so that we can more fully equip them with the appropriate tools for developing a self-reliance and progressive spiritual life that suits every type of personality, in every sphere of life.

BhaktivedantaAcademy.comfacebook.com/ba.mayapur

bhaktivedanta.academy@gmail.com

DONATE

We accept donations via PayPal at our website’s Donate page. However, for larger donations, you can make a direct transfer using the bank information below:

Citizens of Country Other Than India (Incl. Dual Citizens) Account Name: “International Society For Krishna Consciousness”Bank Name: Kotak BankAccount No: 8512103738swift Code: KKBKINBBCPCBranch: H. B. Sarani, KolkataBank address: 21, Centre Point Building, Hemanta Basu Sarani, Kolkata: 700001

Citizens of India OnlyAccount Name: “International Society For Krishna Consciousness”Bank Name: Kotak BankAccount No: 8512103714RTGS / IFSC Code: KKBK0006570Branch: H. B. Sarani, KolkataBank address: 21, Centre Point Building, Hemanta Basu Sarani, Kolkata: 700001

After remittance, please provide the donor name, country name, date, amount, purpose, and a copy of the swift transfer record to the following emails:bhaktivedanta.academy@gmail.com mayapurtreasury@pamho.net

We thank all the devotees for their support and dedication throughout the last year. Begging for the blessings of Śrī Śrī Guru and Gaurāṅga, we conclude our annual report on the Bhaktivedanta Academy project.