My name is Anand Khalsa, and I attended Khalsa Montessori School from preschool through 4th grade…read more While my experiences at Khalsa Primary School were nurturing and positive, my three years in elementary school were marked by emotional abuse and neglect from my lead teacher, Carie Modeer. I saw this behavior directed towards a number of students, including myself.
My primary school teacher, Judith, created a safe and supportive environment for all students, using Maria Montessori's methods to encourage a vibrant classroom community. When I left primary school, I was a happy, upbeat kid. Judith reported that I was a "fair-minded, natural leader", who would "be an asset to any elementary classroom."
Yet, as soon as I entered Carie's classroom, I was singled out for mistreatment and exclusion. Throughout most of my first grade year, I was locked in a bathroom hallway, isolated from my peers, who I later learned had been instructed to ignore me. Later on in elementary school, I was more often shamed in front of my peers than isolated.
Isolation, shunning, and shaming were all weaponized as tools of punishment by Carie for anything she deemed as "bad choices", which included (as per my report cards) "gets distracted easily", "has trouble staying organized", "frequently daydreams" or "asks too many questions of adults". I must thank my teacher for, at the very least, accurately recording my early struggles with executive functioning, as her reports were instrumental in getting a diagnosis of ADHD-PI later in life and receiving treatment.
Yet unfortunately, in the classroom, Carie treated my neurodevelopmental struggles as serious moral failings warranting punishment, and repeatedly told me I was making "bad choices" and therefore couldn't remain in the classroom environment with my peers. I remember being emotionally crushed by my isolation. My pleas for help with my struggles, and my insistence that I was doing my best, were met with either silence or quiet derision.
Maria Montessori strongly discouraged the use of isolation or shunning as a punishment in schools, saying "it behooves us to think of what may happen to the spirit of the child who is condemned to grow in conditions so artificial that his very bones may become deformed." If this is the case, why were these techniques being used at an ostensibly Montessori School?
The answer lies in the school's foundations. Yogi Bhajan, as he was known, was a cult leader who taught his own version of Sikhism he called Sikh Dharma or 3HO. The Khalsa School was founded by followers of Bhajan, who has since been disgraced as a serial abuser of women and children, as confirmed by an independent report by The Olive Branch.
Bhajan's followers were encouraged to send their children to Indian boarding schools. These schools were run in an intensely disciplinarian, and often highly abusive manner, with children subjected to everything from malnourishment to confinement. While the scale of abuse differs in magnitude, the parallels to the Khalsa School are difficult to ignore. Across these very different educational settings, the underlying educational principles that Bhajan commanded his followers adhere to remain eerily similar.
Rather than following the Montessori Method in good faith, the school cynically deploys "Montessori" language and aesthetics in order to conceal their underlying teaching philosophy, which is much closer to that of a strict Christian day school, with some features of an early college preparatory academy.
In fact, Khalsa School's principles run in direct opposition to many of Maria Montessori's teachings, which include: accommodating each individual child's unique needs, interests and pace of development, creating a vibrant classroom environment that encourages frequent interaction and collaboration between students, and strongly discourages the use of punishments and rewards, particularly social isolation.
Instead, Khalsa School's core principles, include: enforcing strict disciplinarianism with little tolerance for individuality or difference, creating a cold, sterile environment where children are told to sit still and shut their mouths, and creating a culture that encourages faculty and students to shun and bully any children who are different and don't fit in to the "Khalsa mold". These unspoken tenants are all, directly or indirectly, influenced by the teachings of Bhajan.
A former assistant teacher who was present during my time in Carie's classroom called it a "prison of silence". That phrase sums up my experience quite well. For those three years, I felt like I was suffocating, drowning, with no escape in sight.
I wish I could go back in time and warn my parents to not send me to Khalsa. Instead, it has taken me nearly 20 years of my life to unravel this very traumatic period of my childhood. Now, I hope sharing my story can help others to avoid what I went through.
