Equals-One school

(Shraddhavan:) “Before Aspiration School opened in December 1970, the few children of Western parents already living in Auroville used to go to the =1 school – if not regularly, at least off and on. Although this school was located in Pondicherry, it was connected with Auroville and was probably run under the umbrella of the Sri Aurobindo Society, like the journal of the same name, which was edited by Medhananda, the Librarian of the Sri Aurobindo Library. =1 stood for new ideas in education and society. The founder of the school, Medhananda’s parter Yvonne Artaud, had even already been given the title of ‘Director of Auroville Education’ by the Mother. She had prepared a proposal for ‘Auro Devenir’, a vast educational environment for Auromodele, which the Mother had endorsed by writing on it, ‘Voilà une excellente programme, qui doit être réalisée.’ Roger admired her ideas very much, and I think that the original design for Last School was inspired by one of her drawings for Auro Devenir. In 1970 the =1 school was being run mainly by Fausto, a young man from Ecuador, along with an American woman called Gloria — of course under Yvonne’s guidance and inspiration. Shanti Shah worked there for some time, before joining Aspiration School in April 1971. =1 school continued to function in a way up to 1974 or 1975, but probably could not continue after Fausto left for Switzerland. Nevertheless the revolutionary work being done there was a great inspiration to us in the early days of Aspiration School, although it could not be a model for us, since the conditions it worked under — a very protected environment on the first floor of a Pondicherry house, very few students, perhaps a maximum of 10 at a time, mostly of Western origin, with young parents who were ready to support unconventional and informal educational experiments — were very different from the harsh realities we had to deal with in Aspiration.”

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See also

• Yvonne Artaud