When Dhrupad was seven years old and madly in love with racing cars, he realised he could do a Google search on them if he learned to read and write. So he taught himself from scratch. There were no books or even an instructor, but Dhrupad took to it beautifully on his own. His eight-year-old classmate stumbled upon a book on geometry that fascinated her very much. So she began to study it and is far ahead of children her age who go to conventional schools and sit in classrooms.

Carried by the belief that education is not about what is taught but what is actually learned, children at this completely unconventional school can learn what they like, when they want to and for as long as they please. Driven by an innate curiosity, it takes them no time at all to discover what they truly love. “Children learn very naturally, when they find they respond to something. All kids need to be told is that every little thing brings with it an opportunity to learn,” says Ratnesh Mathur, founder, Aarohi Life Education. The children fight and make up and share all that they have learned with their friends.

The current education system believes largely in moulding children into shape, and in the process, creativity and enthusiasm are the casualties. Passing one exam after another is their only goal. When Ratnesh and Aditi Mathur started working with the education sector in 2009, it was to open the eyes of parents and teachers to the robotisation of their children. They were not thinking of a school at the time, but merely looking at catering to the areas of a child’s mind that schools just weren’t doing.

“Thinking skills are the most important thing and our work with children began with bringing more involvement-based learning into their lives,” said Ratnesh. When their own daughter made it into the fifth grade, the Mathurs realised just how much education was based on the system, not the child. “Somebody else decides what the kid learns, when she learns it and how much she should know,” points out Ratnesh. “So our daughter began getting home schooled from the time she entered fifth grade.”

There was to be no endless tracing of the alphabet over the dotted lines, the regimented lifestyle, student-teacher relationships motivated by fear or being forced to dread the days when you had to study a subject you absolutely loathed. There was no instruction-based learning, either, with copious notes and plenty of homework.

Kids were free to learn out of a book if it pleased them, watch a video on the internet or even take a walk outside to watch the principles they wanted to understand being played out in nature. There is no distinction on the basis of age, either. While some might proceed at a slower pace than their contemporaries in certain things, they might find themselves racing ahead in others.

“Our school timings are the only thing we have in common with other schools,” says Ratnesh. The children come in at half past eight and stay till about three. The day itself is divided into 90-minute units and while the child is required to find something new to do for each session, what they choose to do and how they want to go about it is entirely up to them.

Do children actually respond to this sort of freedom? “If they’ve come in from a conventional school, they do find it difficult at first, but they settle into the scheme of things in time. Others enjoy themselves, they know that they are responsible for their learning and that grows on them.” The children are left to understand who they really are, what they enjoy most and how best to learn and how to be resourceful about it too. And as with their academics, they are left to fend for themselves with their relationships as well. “If two kids fight or someone is frustrated, we don’t really intervene. This is how they learn about emotions and human relationships,” says Ratnesh.

Parents are kept constantly involved in their children’s progress. The unusual approach to education is still looked at with a good deal of scepticism. “We have very few children with us because this concept is still so new,” says Ratnesh. On the principle of teach a man how to grow food and he will never starve, here one can say teach a child to think and she should be just fine.