Introduction

How did two relatively sensible adults end up running what some call a "crazy experiment" in education? You're welcome to skip our origin story and dive straight into the playbook, but since people often ask what cocktail of courage and insanity led us here, we'll share the short version.

Comini sprouted to life in early 2022, in that strange twilight of the pandemic when we (Priyanka and Sai) moved from Bengaluru to Mumbai with our two young children (then aged 5 and 1). Like countless parents before us, we searched for a school that checked our boxes: pedagogically sound, geographically reasonable, and actually focused on learning rather than test scores. We came up empty.

This familiar parental frustration might have ended with the usual compromise of picking the "least worst" option, except for a peculiar convergence of events. Sai was deep into writing a book about how minds learn (he's a neuroscientist by training), and the disconnect was jarring. Here we were, living in an age where we understand more about learning than ever before. We know how brains develop, how children construct meaning, what conditions help humans flourish. Yet our schools seemed frozen in industrial-era assumptions.

Then came Zoom school. Suddenly, education invaded living rooms worldwide, and parents watched in horror (yes, horror is the right word) as the curtain pulled back. Six-year-olds sitting still for hours. Teachers heroically trying to engage dozens of black squares. Children's natural curiosity slowly congealing into compliance or rebellion.

What might have remained an interesting theoretical problem became deeply personal when Priyanka decided, "This is broken. And I want to spend my life fixing it." She wanted to do the messy, daily (and ultimately joyful) work of being with children and reimagining what learning could be.

So here we are, almost four years in, with a thriving community of families who've joined this experiment. What follows comes from showing up every day with wonder, attention, intention, and just the right amount of "we have no idea what we're doing" to keep us humble and hungry to learn.

The pages ahead will take you into our days: chaotic, purposeful, and alive with the noisy thrum of children doing what they do best, which is learning by living. Welcome to our ongoing experiment.