For the past 16 years, Sonoma residents Linda Shore and David Barker have been quietly running one of the more unlikely education projects on the planet: teaching modern science inside Tibetan Buddhist monasteries scattered across northern India.
The couple, both longtime veterans of San Francisco’s Exploratorium, first traveled to India in 2009 and have returned roughly every other year since. They arrive with suitcases full of low-cost, Exploratorium-style tabletop exhibits that can be rebuilt from local materials, helping monks and nuns turn abstract concepts into hands-on lessons. Their work, part pedagogy and part traveling exhibition, supports monastics as they teach cosmology, perception, climate science and even quantum ideas in ways that match traditional learning styles.
As reported by the Sonoma Valley Sun, Shore and Barker have made about a dozen trips to India to run workshops and build teaching materials. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific notes that Shore, who earned an Ed.D. in science education and led the Exploratorium’s Teacher Institute for decades, later served as the ASP’s CEO, while Barker spent more than 30 years as a designer and art director at the Exploratorium.
Roots, Funders And A Dalai Lama Directive
The broader Science for Monks initiative traces its origin to a 1999 directive from the Dalai Lama to introduce modern science into monastic curricula, with early financial support from the Sager Family Foundation, according to the program’s own history. Over time, the work shifted from intensive multi-week workshops in the early 2000s into the Sager Science Leadership Institute, which trains cohorts of monastic science leaders to run classrooms and local science centers, per Science for Monks & Nuns and background notes on Bobby Sager’s site…