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Free DVD about Brockwood Park

KFT is pleased to send at no charge a region-free DVD about Brockwood Park School which includes video and sound clips of students and their music, a film about the School by a former student, excerpts of K speaking about education and more. Please email your request to orders@kfoundation.org.uk or call +44 (0) 1962 771 525.

 

Please include your name, address and we would be very interested to know where/to whom it will be shown. E.g. 'attendees at a video showing,' 'my neighbour who has a 13 year old daughter,' 'I want to learn more about the School,' 'a group of parents at a meeting on holistic education,' etc.

 

 

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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 the link below to visit the DfES Web site:

 Brockwood Park School Ofsted Report 2005
 

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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

 To view the complete letter. . . )

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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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Videos for Loan (within New Zealand)

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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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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).  Available in NZ - $10 for 2 years from Jane Evans,64 Ryburn Rd, RD4, Hamilton, New Zealand. Email:  

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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:

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  Inwoods Junior School

Inwoods is a small junior/primary schools, non-residential. It is situated about two km from Brockwood Park school in a beautiful rural environment. Student - staff ratio is very small.

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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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