During our educational careers, many of us had an abundance of what we refer to in our VTE Teacher Training Courses as negative learning experiences. Perhaps the majority of these negative learning experiences, which are referred to as such because they don’t encourage learning, but rather impede it, revolved around assessment.

Remember those dreaded final exams.

Don’t worry, the assessments in our Bhakti-sastri course are completely different than what you have ever experienced before. Our teachers stress that when our students go through the assessment process they are simply engaging in devotion service by diving deeply into the nectar of Srila Prabhupada’s books and trying their best to understand and apply our Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy.

We don’t publicize the results of the assessments, but rather the results are between teacher and student and are dealt with in such a way as to assist the student in learning and assimilating this transcendental knowledge. As a result, our process of assessment does not encourage students to do well on exams to achieve profit, distinction and adoration, but rather encourages them to make spiritual advancement.

Our assessment process is wholistic in that it addresses the knowledge, understanding values, and skills devotees require to be effective preachers, teachers and leaders within Srila Prabhupada’s movement.

Remember how we used to “cram for exams” filling our heads with useless knowledge, answering from rote memory on the exam, and then forgetting what we learned the next day? What a waste...

In our assessment process, only 40% of the assessment mark is based upon memory and recall which includes sloka memorization. Students undergo oral assessment on the slokas, which is how devotees will use the slokas in their preaching. In another 5% of the assessment mark, students keep track of their own sadhana practices, and, as a result, most of our students have the best sadhana of anyone in Mayapur. After experiencing deep taste from these practices, most students upon graduation continue to make these strong sadhana practices an integral part of their devotional lives.

We will save the remaining assessment details for when you are in Mayapur, but, in summary, you will be assessed on the basis of your devotional knowledge, understanding, skills and values. The assessment will be a very important and positive aspect of your devotional learning experience from which you will achieve deep happiness. You may not get straight A’s, but you certainly will get a lot of transcendental bliss.