The west coast of Koh Phangan
has over the last few years become a centre for yoga, holistic practices and
spiritual endeavours. The healing arts of yoga, reiki, tai chi, Pilates and
meditation are much in evidence. Agama Yoga has created a New Age university to
attract acolytes wanting to teach yoga. And now we have Serenity Residence
creating a school in very much a New Age mould. Woolly thinking and commercial
interest find another way of joining forces.
The Serenity Residence
mission statement reads:
"Each person finds
identity, meaning and purpose in life through connections to the community, to
the natural world and to humanitarian values such as compassion and peace."
Like with Steiner Schools in
the UK, the emphasis is on personal development. There is nothing wrong with
that. The opposite, a Gradgrind philosophy of memorising information to deploy
in a dehumansing world of profit and machines, is far from desirable. However,
a balance must be struck. Children need to learn to read and write, do sums,
name capital cities, understand the science of climate change, be able to read
the fine print on interest rates as well as discover they like finger painting
and playing the guitar.
The world outside of Koh
Phangan is interested in academic qualifications, syllabuses, systems for child
security, eye checks and the whole panoply of concerns of a parent that has to
take responsibility for a child until it can take care of itself.
That is why the spelling
mistakes on the school website are very worrying. Even more worrying is the
sentence construction that lumps together big ideas of 'self-actualisation' and
'collective responsibility'. Where was the responsibility to put an apostrophe
in 'everyones'? Big assertions without details of implementation or the need to
spell check should be a red flag for parents. These nebulous ideas might make
sense when you are cross-eyed and bristling with pranic power but fail to fly
in an educational context where performance can be measured by exams.
The good news is that the
fees are reasonable - just 4,000 Thai Baht a month. There is also facilities
for school lunches, and there is a school bus. The average class size is just
10.
The name 'Serenity Residence'
demonstrates the commercial core to this enterprise. The residences are a group
of apartments for short and long term rental. They can probably be bought by
anyone with the cash. It is a business geared to those looking for yoga
holidays. It is a small step to move into the ex-pat market: those who fell in
love with Koh Phangan and higher consciousness and want to subject their
children to sunshine, sea and limited educational resources. I wish they had
done more to disguise the off-shoot nature of the school. It could have been
called 'Serenity School'. Or maybe not - that still sounds like a yoga school.
