Monali Lodha
Founder, Radiance A. B. Lodha Memorial Foundation
Founder's note
Why I started this learning space
I have written about how I came to this work in Why I chose to build this kind of learning space. Alongside my Montessori training, I also studied Sustainable Management at the Ecological Society.
At first I approached Radiance as an engineer, designing what I believed was a better system for others. Meeting Manish Jain of Shikshantar changed that. He helped me see that we cannot reimagine education without reimagining life itself: our relationship with the soil, with our neighbours, and with our definitions of success.
If Montessori offered the tools, Krishnamurti offered a mirror. Even the best materials can only produce a refined form of conformity if we adults remain bound by our own conditioning. So inner work became central, for me, for our teachers, and for many of our parents. Krishnamurti's question, "What is the educator teaching if not himself?", has become my daily reckoning.
Gandhiji asked of his own education: "What of that? In what way have I benefited myself or those around me?" We keep asking this of ours. Our ambition is to deepen rather than to scale: to stay small enough to care, humble enough to learn, and connected enough to be accountable to the land and community we inhabit.
Today I teach Mathematics and Science to children from two and a half to ten years, and I work with our educators on what we teach and how. I also help run the J. Krishnamurti Study Center, where adults meet to read and talk together.
I am still learning. The notes for parents on this site are one way of sharing what we do, why we do it, and where we are unsure.